4.15.11

It’s Friday!!!! And .. IT’S MY LAST DAY OF ROTATIONS- EVER!! Next week is Semana Santa (Holy Week) so our clinic is closed. Which means I am DONE with clinical rotations. So crazy!! After clinic we went to West End to have dinner. Then drinks on the beach. I mean, who gets to just hang out on the beach after dinner on a Friday night? This girl! It’s so fun.

Also, today some of the volunteers told me I was the coolest “married person they’d ever met.” Apparently it’s not too common to be married at such a young age in other places. But they said I didn’t act like an “old married person.” So fun. I’m glad I have such an amazing husband!

I am still reading “Crazy Love” and I highly recommend it. A lot of things about this book inspire me, but I just wanted to share this one:

“The Bible says that when we obey God’s commands, we benefit. I think we naturally assume that if we look out for our own interests and concerns, we will be happy. But people who sacrifice for others will tell you that seasons of giving are the most rewarding of their lives. It turns out that the Bible is right - “It is better to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). People generally do find greater joy in giving freely to others than they do in rampant self-indulgence. Regarding this, the playwright George Barnard Shaw writes, “This is true joy in life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”"

And “David Livingston, a missionary to Africa during the 1800s, once said during a speech to students at Cambridge University, “People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa… I never made a sacrifice. We ought not to talk of the ’sacrifice’ when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father’s throne on high to give Himself for us.”"

These two excerpts just completely sum up how I feel here. I always think “I’m not where I need to be in my relationship with God, so I can’t possibly give to others.” But it’s amazing… when you give to others you relationship grows.

Lace