A Newsletter from Long Ago

Tonight as I was searching for old lesson plans on an animal unit I taught during student teaching, I came across some of my Spanish papers from high school. It was interesting to read articles written by my fellow classmates in Spanish just 6 years ago...to see what they planned to do with their lives compared to what I know of them now. As I read the articles, I was saddened by a few classmates who had big dreams for life after high school graduation but have since chosen the path of partying including drinking and drugs. However, there were also some articles that caused me to smile as what started as a "small" dream has since been handed over to God and formed into a pretty wild ride, changing the world one person at a time.

I was a little nervous to read the article I had written, so I passed it by the first time through and continued to read about my classmates. I was afraid my life would fall short of my dreams, and I didn't want to be a disappointment to myself or my peers. I didn't want to be one of those people my classmates would feel "sad" for as they realized that my life hadn't gone as I planned. However, eventually I was brought back to my article, and I realized I'm not too far off.

In my article I talked of moving to the Dominican Republic to teach children and do ministry. 

Later I wrote that I wanted to travel to other places such as Peru and Spain. 

It's interesting that having never been out of the country at this point in my life, God was already preparing me for the path ahead. While I didn't exactly end up in the D.R. I did end up living in Peru for a short time (and plan to go back). I taught children, and I did ministry with Kids Alive. I LOVED every aspect of it (well, almost everything).

Basically what I'm getting at is that at this time I thought the things I wrote were simply "dreams". I remember our teacher telling us to DREAM BIG and write whatever came to mind. Therefore, I dreamed really big, never imagining those dreams would become reality. God knew what He was doing the whole time...sadly, it took me two trips to Peru and lack of a job to realize that for myself :)