A Glimpse of My Life

So it's been three months since I last updated my blog, and it feels like so much has happened since then.  I can make excuses about how busy life is here and how I feel like I have hardly any free time.  When the free time does come, I want to spend it with other people, building relationships with the other staff members, spending time with God in prayer and reading my bible, doing everything I don't have time to do during the week like laundry and cleaning my room, and just taking time to rest and breathe.  But I know that's not an excuse to neglect relationships outside of His Mansion, and it's still a learning process for me to balance relationships here and back home.  But for those of you who are interested in what's going on in my life, here's a glimpse of the past three months.

In August I became the supervisor of the canning room, where we process all the vegetables grown on the hill.  So every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I worked in there and when the men brought in the vegetables I was in charge of overseeing them be washed and cut and blanched and packaged and frozen or canned or whatever needed to happen.  I had no idea what I was doing, so I just did what I was told and what the instructions said.  Some days I worked by myself, some days I had fifteen workers in there.  Every day was different and some weeks were a lot more hectic than others, but I learned more than just how to process different types of vegetables.  I learned to be patient under time pressure, how to teach others in a helpful way, and how to manage what felt like ten different things all going on at once.

In October I went back to PA for the weekend and visited my family in Hills Creek State Park, where we go every year.  Spending time with them was extremely refreshing and much needed.  Since coming to His Mansion, I'm realizing more and more what relationships are and how much my relationships back home can be so much deeper and stronger than they have been.  It's definitely going to be a process, but during that weekend I opened up in ways I never have with my family, and I'm excited to see these relationships grow.  It's incredible what God can do when I let go and give everything to Him: all my fears, insecurities, and desires, and invite others into them.

I've said this so many times in the past couple weeks:  I feel like in the past five months I've lived five years of my life.  I've experienced so much since I've been here, and I could talk all day about it.  I look forward to sharing stories and experiences with everyone, and if my computer wasn't about to die I could write pages and pages.

Here are a few pictures from the hill.  I'm sorry for the randomness/bad writing of this blog post.  If I had the time I would go back and re-write it to make it perfect, but like I said earlier there just isn't time.  I know as long as I give you guys a glimpse of my life, it doesn't need to be dressed up and presented perfectly.