Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Ahhh...Memories!



Two weekends ago, I had 3 amazing young women come to visit me here in Charlotte. These 3 girls were on my Ghana team this past summer and we became very close. Camden is from Asheville and is my age; and Trish and Margaret are from Illinois and are still in college. We had such an awesome time! They got here on Friday and we spend the evening laughing and reminiscing about all the crazy things that happened while we were in Africa. We hadn't seen each other since last August, but it's like we just picked up where we had left off. I had been cooking dinner in my crockpot all day. That was my second meal to make in the crokpot, and it turned out to be pretty good! The first dish I made in the crockpot was a different story, however. That night I took them around downtown Charlotte and the temperature was perfect. Thankfully, my practices had been cancelled for that Saturday, so I took them to the National Whitewater Center in South Charlotte (if you've never heard of it, look it up www.usnwc.org - it's where all the Olympic whitewater kayakers train and it's amazing!) We couldn't afford to go whitewater rafting, do the climbing wall, ride the forever long zipline, or even eat at the delicious restaurant there, so we just hiked the beautiful mountain biking trails there....and of course, the best part, watch all the kayakers and rafters fall out of their vessels on the rapids! We were exhausted that evening, so we rented The Grizzly Man and laughed our heads off at Timothy Tredwell, but then we got sad at the end as we realized that's actually a very sad story. Sunday, they went to church with me, then drove back. It was such a blessing to have them stay for the weekend! We had brunch after church on Sunday and prayed for each other and shared how drastically God had changed each of our lives since we had been back from Africa. His timing is so perfect because I had been having a couple of rough weeks leading up to the weekend my friends came, but being around them and realizing He had been testing their faith just as much as He had been mine was exactly what I needed! I hope I can continue to keep in touch with these girls and always look to them for encouragement and prayer! Below is a picture of us in Africa. Look back at the pic at the top of this post and just compare the two....

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