North Carolina:

Me with Jayne and Truett, two of the faculty kids

The Chapel on campus at Wake Forest University

Laura, Johnathon, Ashley and I after we received a care package from one of our fellow staffers from last summer.

My sweet intern Summer

The staff ladies during our staff ladies t-time

If I could use one word to describe this past week in North Carolina, the word I would use would be Sanctifying. It was a week filled with moments of my utter brokenness and God's all sufficient mercy, my weakness and his abundant strength, my self pity and his conviction, my inconsistency and his immovability. One of the main catalysts for this would be that my body was fighting a intense cold that zapped me of my physical strength and made it difficult for me to do camp.  Yet in the midst of sickness, God walked personally with me in the details of each day, giving me strength for the moments. He not only sustained me, but also richly blessed me. Here are my bullet points of blessing for the week.

• My precious small group
• Sweet tea
• Two unexpected major southern downpours
• Southern hospitality
• Having a former Worldview staffer open up her home to us on the weekend before camp started so we could have a BBQ and fellowship as a team
• Trying a melted marshmallow on a Reese's peanut butter cup
• Having Truett, my camp director's son, teach me how to write in hieroglyphics during one of the van rides
• My staff director letting me sleep during set up so that my body could start to heal from my cold
• Trying North Carolina's famous Cheerwine....which is basically a combination of Dr. Pepper and Coke
• Squishy flip flops
• Seeing huge bags of Idaho fries at a Five Guys all the way in North Carolina
• Having one of the faculty go out of his way to grab me medicine when I was feeling poorly
• Mosquito bites (I was so frustrated by them that I decided I needed to choose joy about them :))
• Snuggly sweatshirts 
• Giggles with my girls
• The gorgeous chapel on campus
• Accidentally slipping down a flight of stairs in front of my girls
• Talking to one of my student's who was interested in pursuing nursing as a career
• Swinging on a tree swing on campus
• Care package
• Coffee
• My kind and helpful intern Summer who richly blesseed me 
• A student coming up to me and saying, "I heard you played the harp. I have been prayig that God would send me someone who plays the harp so that I could ask about it because I want to play too. So you are the answer to my prayer."
• Deep and healing sleep
• Having a productive cough to help get the junk out of my trachea 
• Rice checks and soy milk for breakfast
• 2 people coming to know the Lord when the students did evangelism at a bus stop on Wednesday
• Eating fish when the cafeteria served it. 
• Soft t-shirts
• Hugs
• Competitive student vs. staff ultimate frisbee game on Thursday
• Being able to taste again after 2 days of not being able to smell 
• My huge bag of dirty laundry
• Talking to my mom and sister on the phone
• One of my students asking for advice on how to handle relationships well
• Having to sit on my suitcase to get it to close because it was so stuffed :D
• The clean feeling after a shower
• Wise advice from my leadership team when I was feeling vulnerable and lonely 

My God is so good to me and he proved that goodness time and again last week. 

~Rachel