Birthday celebrations

This has been one of the best weeks ever. Not only was it a great week of ministry, and not only did I have 3 people randomly contact me to send support after a dry period, and not only did God provide a new used car for me after finding out my current one is not worth fixing…BUT I also had one of the best weekend celebrations of my birthday ever.

As some of you know, my laptop computer is old and broken. I resolved to have my next computer be a Mac  so I was trying to save. My parents, combining Christmas and my birthday, sent me a Macbook pro that arrived on my birthday! I was very surprised, and very grateful for God providing yet another huge thing I needed this week! Then I had a small group meeting with my middle school girls who gave me a huge picture frame with a ton of photos of us from sleepovers, Adventure Camp, chapel, etc. and it was so sweet! I ended the day with dinner with 2 good friends on post at my favorite Mexican restaurant.

The next day Josiah and Storey (Club Beyond staff) came to visit for the weekend. Storey got a recipe for my fave dessert from my mom and made it for me! Then I gave them a short tour of Bamberg. Right as we were about to go to our dinner reservations at the famous smoked beer restaurant, I saw the couple we’d noticed wearing Chacos in the monastery we’d visited earlier (no one wears Chacos in Germany) and LO AND BEHOLD he was wearing a Young Life fleece! I turned to Storey and said “Should we talk to them???” And we all walked up and started a conversation. They are YL volunteers in Minnesota, and are traveling the world for a year together! We had such a good conversation about places they’d/we’d been that we invited them to dinner with us, and then to dessert at my apartment! Afterwards, we played Dominion together and then exchanged Facebook info. It was so cool to randomly meet members of our Young Life family in the middle of a city in Germany. If you want to follow their adventures around the world this is their blog: http://jdtraveljournal.shutterfly.com/

We ended the night with doners (delicious Turkish food) downtown after venturing out to see all the St. Patrick’s Day excitement. The next day they came to chapel with me, we went out to eat at my favorite Italian restaurant, and then went for a walk in the park.

It was a great weekend with good friends and just what I needed. God has provided so much for me lately and I’m overflowing with gratitude.