Summer is proving to be a wonderful season in Michigan. Pablo told me Summer is the best here… but I’ve always disliked the stickiness of summer and the inability to spend time outside due to having a job… but Pablo was right!… its different here.

I don’t have a job right now… so free time abounds!

And so far… the stickiness is very bearable…

But what makes it so great is relationships and connecting!! Today I went out with two of my lovely lady friends, Massiel and Jessie. We went to pick strawberries… then came home and made 3 batches of fresh strawberry jam… while watching Finding Nemo.

Here’s a peek of our day…

Massiel and I hard at work… while singing musicals (ITH)!

Jessie… not hard at work

warm and sweet

my hot sexy friend… Massiel

it got hot pretty fast… and we got tired even faster…

I tried to be a pro… but Jessie said Massiel was the real expert… but I was a close second!

yes.

ay!

YUUUUUMMMM!

*pictures from Massiel’s iphone*

First you pick a passage of SCRIPTURE and you read it and you read it again and maybe again… this is the S in SOAP.

Then you find a notebook and a pen and you write down what you OBSERVE from the passage. I like doing this in bullet form.

Then you continue writing… and you write down how you can APPLY what you observe in the passage to your life.

And finally… you PRAY about it. You can do this kneeling/sitting/standing/laying… you can sing it… you can write it down.. or all of the above!

God has shown me some incredible truths in the last month that I’ve been doing this. And I want to share one thing I have learned… I actually learned it today… and I was brought to tears… so humbled and overwhelmed with Jesus… so I just need to share it.

I read Hebrews 2 this morning.

There are many things I learned from this reading… but one thing stands out…

Hebrews begins by making sure the reader understands the supremacy of Christ. His holiness and power is not in question. In Hebrews we see Jesus as Creator and as Ruler and as everything great and mighty… so as I read I begin to see a picture in my mind of this incredibly powerful Jesus. I see Him in heaven with all kinds of royal fancy garbs… I see him huge… I see him enthroned… I see him spanning all time from before the beginning to after the end… I see him standing over the enemy…. I see him victorious. The words that come to mind to describe this God are words like: MAJESTIC, HOLY, SOVEREIGN, ALMIGHTY, POWERFUL, JUST, STRONG, MAGNIFICENT… etc….

But then something happens… the writer of Hebrews describes this huge God as a MERCIFUL High Priest.

whaaaat??!!

^“17Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. ¹⁸For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. “(from Hebrews 2)

mercy? this all-powerful God… merciful??? why…

and maybe this sounds silly to you… maybe you’ve already come to this realization… but for me this just became real, deep in my heart, in a way it has never been real before.

This amazing God… in all his splendor… looks at me with his strong and powerful face… and his expression changes to one of love, soft and gentle… why? Because He UNDERSTANDS me… He KNOWS me… and the only reason He can do these things is because of His great sacrifice in coming to earth and walking with us… He knows my struggles… He knows my pain… He knows the essence of who I am. So when He looks at me… He has mercy.

Interesting how Jesus is the one with the role as High Priest… not the Holy Spirit… not the Father… but Jesus… the one who came and lived and died and rose again. He unashamedly calls us His brothers… He loves us with a fierce love… it can not be quenched.

I’m undone.

Basically, what I have learned is that the people working at this company are being treated like machines. Working 12 hour days. Living in dormitories with no privacy. No visits from friends and family allowed. They are punished severely. Their lives even outside of work are scheduled for them (when to shower, when to sleep, eat, etc.)…  Isolation.

These people are suffering… and its just plain WRONG. And they are killing themselves… it’s so sad…

So, why is this happening? Because there is such a high demand for electronics in our world today, especially from the good ol’ US of A. Yes, many of our electronic companies are getting their gadgets made through Foxconn— which means we are assisting in this tragedy in an indirect (or not so indirect) way.

I want to do my part in trying to put an end to this… who’s with me??

Write an email to the electronic companies you use. For me, that would be APPLE. Urge them to enforce humane labor practices. We all deserve respect. No ones life should be treated so unfairly just so we can have iphone’s in our pockets.

It’s the least we can do.

**Foxconn produces electronics for:

Apple, Dell, HP, Nintendo, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and other global brands.

Married life is great… I love hangin out with Pablo… I enjoy living in Michigan amidst clean air and (soon) green trees… but I have missed my girls SOOOOOO MUCH!

There is just nothing like ‘girl time’… nothing like being able to spend a few hours just layin around with one of my most loved sisterfriends… and just be.

BUT…

I have made some new lady friends I can hardly believe it to be true (cuz it usually takes me quite a while to warm up to people) but its true. I have found some great friends at our weekly cell group (there are also men in our group). And it has just been great to hang out and girls night once in a while and go on walks or just chitchat over a warm drink…

I’m so thankful God has blessed me with good friends… and so grateful that Pablo is a social butterfly and found his way into this wonderful cell group before I arrived here… what a great community of Jesus Lovers!!

I’m loving my time here…. despite missing my sistren so very much.

**picture taken at a bowling girls night. i lost. maybe thats why i’m peaking from behind… hahaha (from left to right: Brittany, Jennifer, Kessia, Me, Katie)**

I woke up to find this on the kitchen table: A cook book I’ve been asking for (it helps me make delicious things) and a Mrs. Mug.. hahaha… he’s so sweet to me!

We decided to go to St. Joe for the day and hang out there for a while… despite the cold…

I wore the wrong shoes for the long walk in freezing temperature… woops!

Pablo has never before seen frozen waves… and he was so excited…

As we walked onto the beach we almost tripped on this!

Its a bench… almost completely buried in sand from all the storms…

you can’t really tell were the beach ends and the lake begins…. light house way back on the right

close up of the frozen waves…

as you can see the sun was out and things were melting a bit, so we didn’t venture out onto the ice. But one of my most fond memories of being in school out this way was when Cindy took me walking on water here at this lake… climbing all over these frozen waves… great memory.

When we got back home I made pizza dough from scratch (yes i did!) and we feasted!