Last post

Below I typed up a list of books I have read if you are interested and want some suggestions for some holiday reading!  Also I just posted my post on Portugal right below this one!  But if you are going to read a post- PLEASE READ THIS ONE!!!


We leave Cascais tomorrow and are heading to Lisbon, then flying to London, and then flying home on Monday.  I can't believe the end of this has come so soon- and i can't believe Tina is going to Minnesota and I am going to Texas..  THANK YOU for yall's prayers and support.  I am so blessed by my friends and family. 

The only other time I have ever kept a blog was when I went and spent the summer in Haiti.  I ended that blog just like I am going to end this one.  If you have a dream, DO IT. God has PUT your dreams in your heart, He knows what you are passionate about, because He has made you passionate about them!  He is not a kill joy and wants the best possible life for you.  Do what you are passionate about.  God loves you so dang much and He wants you to ENJOY life.  John 10:10 says "the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come so that you may have life and have it abundantly."  I have wanted to live in the Caribbean my entire life, and the Lord provided an opportunity, so I pursued it, and got to do that for an entire summer, while taking bible classes and scuba diving EVERY weekend! Then from pursing that dream I also got the opportunity to backpack Europe after our outreach in the UK.  God is GOOD. When the Lord provides an opportunity, TAKE IT! He is GOOD! It is not too late, and it won't happen next year- start pursuing what you know you love now! 

The biggest way God speaks to me is through watching other people.  I would not be who I am without my friends and my family, and it has been so encouraging watching the people in my life follow their dreams.  My sister quit her very stable job in Colorado to move home and do what she has always loved- teaching.  Lauren worked her butt off, got an internship with DISNEY, and now LIVES in Disney World in Florida.   Ally knew she always wanted to live in Colorado, she moved having no job and no place to live, and now works at the best architectural firm in Denver and snowboards every weekend with her new best friends.  Nick is doing missions in for a year in 11 different countries- he is seeing the WORLD. Rita is working 2 jobs at running stores working her butt off to finally open her own running store and run her own business.  And all these people are doing better than ever.  Yes it SUCKS we are not all in College Station together anymore, but I honestly think it is better watching people find so much joy doing things that God has created them to love. When you follow your dreams, or do something "different", people are going to tell you you're crazy, but do it anyway. God will do more than provide. He loves you so much.- sorry to get corny on yall, but i really do have a passion for people to do what they are passionate about and not settle for something comfortable or just easy.   

As we said way too many times in college- YOLO- you only live once.  Do it the way God intended.

I love yall, and thank you again for everything. 

THANK YOU mom and dad- yall have supported me through everything- i know yall think i am a tid bit crazy, but yall are my biggest support. I hope one day I can be half of the parents yall are.


Now I get to go home to the best friends and family ever! AND A PREGNANT SISTER!!!!

I'm so excited to come home to my friends and family!!

i loved teaching in Belize

I think i fell in love with the Mediterranean 

Coolest hike I will probably ever go on in Switzerland

I can't believe I got to dive every weekend for 3 months.. I swam with dolphins, sharks, went freaking NIGHT DIVING!

Ally living her life in Colorado

 Nick across the world!

Lauren living her dream at Disney World

Portugal!

I can’t believe we have already made it to our last country.  Portugal is beautiful.  The Atlantic ocean is SO different than the Mediterranean.  We are staying in the town called Cascais, and it is awesome.  There are little streets with shops and food and it is just a great place to walk around.  When we booked our place here, we just found a really cheap place in Caiscais, so we booked it and when we got here we were like… oopsies;) It is 6 miles away from ANYTHING, including a supermarket, but still considered in Cascais.  It is so funny.  It is also for honeymooners. Awesome.  But it is BEAUTIFUL and right on a beach.  And it worked out perfect because there is a beautiful path right along the ocean the entire 6 miles to town, so we just get up and walk every morning for about 2 hours to town.  It is a beautiful walk, and there are really cool benches on cliffs, so it looks like we are sitting on the ocean, and if it is nice outside we will pull over on a bench and read for a while and then continue.  My life is pretty great right now.  The town is awesome and the people are so nice.  The thing to eat here is cod fish.  We ate a Portuguese meal Tuesday and it wasn’t my favorite, but it was still pretty good.  They eat a lot of fish and potatoes in olive oil.  I would definitely recommend Portugal though, it is amazing and beautiful!!  We made some friends at the mall who work at the movie theater (cool, I know) and we got FREE tickets to Twilight- so yes, we saw Twilight in Portugal.  We got there VERY early to get a good seat, and we ended up being the ONLY ones in the theater.  Twilight is not a hit here. Dang.  Cool way to end a post, on twilight.  

some reading I got to enjoy..

Christian books:

“Don’t Waste Your Life” –John Piper

                -It is about the way a Christian life can eventually lead to a life that God did not intend at all, basically a boring and predictable life.  It is the way a life can be and the way God intends life to be.  It was a really good book and a quick read- I had to do a book report on it YWAM.

 “Screwtape Letters” –C.S. Lewis

                -This book is scary but good.  It is C.S. Lewis’s way to trying to show how the devil works (or tries to work) in peoples’ lives.  It is about an uncle demon writing to his nephew on how to deceive people.  I really liked it. (another books report)

“Chronicles of Narnia” –C.S. Lewis

-Magicians Nephew

-The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe

-The Horse and the Boy

                -I read the first 3 books of the Chronicles of Narnia.  They are basically a way of displaying the gospel in a ferry tale setting. (to a younger audience). I am not sure if I will finish the series, but it is really creative and interesting!

“Velvit Elvis” –Rob Bell

                -Despite his new controversial book, I loved this book by Rob Bell.  He does a great way of telling the gospel and has awesome things about forgiveness and love.  I LOVED this book. (another book report for school in YWAM)

“Traveling Light”- Max Lucado

                -This was my FAVORITE book I read the entire time.  It is supper basic but it is about how we carry all this stuff we do not have to, and so much of the stuff we carry (like anxiety and guilt) is actually sinful.  It is SO GOOD and I would recommend this to everyone! I LOVED it!!

“Facing Your Giants”- Max Lucado

                -Goes through the life of David and relates it to us.  It is an awesome book and I learned so much about King David and it was really easy to apply to my life.

“Fearless”- Max Lucado

                -The title says it all.  It is a book about living a fearless life.  We are NOT supposed to live in fear and so many of us do. 

“Heaven is For Real” –Todd Burpo, Lynn Vincent

                -This is about a kid who “died” and went to heaven and ended up being saved by doctors, and slowly over 2 years he revealed to his parents that he had seen Jesus and what Heaven was like.  Some of the stuff that happens in this book is CRAZY. I would recommend it it is a fun read.

“Crazy Love” –Francis Chan

                -LOVED IT! It is about what love for Christ, and from Him, does in our lives.  READ IT!! It is great.

“A Lineage of Grace”- Francine Rivers

I read all 5 of these books:

-Tamar

-Rahab

-Ruth

-Bathsheba

-Mary

                -In these books Francine Rivers unfolds these girls’ lives in the bible and writes a novel with added detail about what she thinks it was like for these women.  I LOVED reading these books and learned so much!! I would definitely recommend these!!!  They are about 100 pages each, so its really fast and puts so much in perspective.

Leadership Books:

“The Walmart Way” –Don Soderquist

                -The way Walmart started.  Basically a business leadership book.  It was really interesting to me because I had NO idea walmart started as a small town business. (had to do a book report on it)

“Leadership is an Art” – Max DePree

                -Don’t read it. So boring.  We had it read it for school for YWAM. 

 

Biographies:

“A Child Called It”- David Peltzer

“Lost boy” –David Peltzer

“A Man named Dave”- David Peltzer

                -David Peltzer wrote three biographies about different stages in his life.  I LOVED them all, but it is a hard read because he is the 3^rd worst child abuse victim in California, and it is just really sad, but ends great and I loved it.  

“The Glass Castle”- Jeannette Walls

                - Second time I have read this because it is one of my FAVORITE biographies ever.  READ IT!!

Random others..

“Sarah’s Key” – Tatiana de Rosnay

                -A story from WWII and what is was like in Paris.  I loved it

“The Heart of the Matter” – Emily Giffin

                -Soap opera book. I ran out of books and got this for free at a hotel.  It is about an affair.  I wouldn’t recommend it.

“The Da Vinci Code” –Dan Brown

                -I loved it- crime, mystery, trying to figure out the twists.  I thought it was really entertaining, you just really have to read it knowing it is fictional.

Spain 2!

Spain is still incredible! It is awesome we have been able to spend 3 weeks here.  Valencia was awesome- It was really fun city with the weirdest looking museums I have ever seen.  We went to 2 of them- the Aquarium (the biggest aquarium in Europe- it had whales. crazy) and the Science Museum.  It was a blast, and of coarse I was in heaven in the aquarium.  One of my favorite things we have done yet, is we spent the big bucks and went on a winery tour in the wine country near Valencia called Requena.  It was AWESOME.  Our tour guide PICKED us up in his Mercades Bins and the first thing he said was "I have never picked someone up from a hostel before- and I was so thankful I when I heard your address, now I can finally have real fun"- not sure what he meant by real fun, but our guide was so nice and the tour was awesome and SO beautiful! It was so cool to see Spain wine country.

We then headed south and have been in the Costa Del Sol for 7 days.  We are in a town called Nerja, and i absolutely LOVE it here.  It is the cutest town ever, right on the beach, and it is surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountains.  I could live here.  It is beautiful, the people are awesome, and you can beach it and hike/climb on the same days.  There are famous caves here, which is apparently one of Spain's biggest tourist attractions, so we hiked to them and the caves are HUGE. Also, the restaurants are really cheap and we have found really cool small places with the nicest people and awesome food. This has for sure been one of my favorite places.

Something we have learned is the smaller the town we are in, the less amount of people speak English.  You should see us trying to communicate with people here.  Getting more toilet paper took about 15 minutes.

We are heading to Portugal tomorrow and its our LAST long travel day!!!!!!!!! I am so excited about that- because let me just tell you what our long travel days include- tomorrow we are catching a 2 hour bus at 3:30 PM, then our first train is at 6 until 830, then our next train is from 10:30 until 7:45 the next morning (and no, we do not get one of those cool beds on trains) and then we have 2 buses, a metro, and a taxi to our next place. WHEW. wont miss those days;) But we are so excited to see Portugal, I can't believe its our last country, and I will be home a week from Monday!!

Love and miss yall, AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!!! Ill see you a week from your birthday!!!

Our door to our hostel room in Valencia- classy.  We only travel first class;)

Some of the museums, there is about a mile of buildings like this, its awesome!

 Spain wine country! Requena

Nerja!

Nerja- this was on all the postcards, so we found it to take a picture with it.. cool i know

Inside the caves!

 

1 Euro tapas!!

Our favorite restaurant we found!

Spain!

So far Spain is AWESOME!! We got here about 10 days ago and spent 4 days in Barcelona and then a week on a Spanish Island called Ibiza.  We LOVED Barcelona.  The city is so alive, if that makes sense.  It is a place where we could people watch all day.  That is one of our favorite things to do- go to a popular street, find a restaurant outside, get a drink, and people watch.  We had a blast doing that in Barcelona.  The first night there Tina was exhausted so she went to sleep, and i couldn't just go to sleep our first night in Barcelona, so i went to our hostel pizza party (cool i know).  But it was so funny- I ended up sitting at a table with 7 guys, 2 spoke English, and we just laughed and talked all night.  I have met the coolest people backpacking from all over the world.  I met one girl in Barcelona from Tiawan who e mails me everyday... haha it is so fun!  It is funny meeting people here because they immediately give you their information and say 'anytime you come to Venezuala you have a place to stay!"  We have barely met any Americans- mostly other people from Europe, Australians, Asains, a few from South American, and Canadians are everywhere! It is sooo cool meeting people doing this.  Sometimes when we meet older people (usually women) they give us money.  It is so funny, but they give us something like 20 Euros and say, "treat yourself! You have got to miss your mom so much!!"- it has happened about 3 times, and it is so funny and such a treat!

Back to Barcelona- they had markets like I have never seen before.  I tried to take pictures but they do not do justice.  They were HUGE and everything was soo cheap.  It was so cool to see, never thought i would take pictures of a market.  We also went to La Sagrada Familia church which is famous church because the architecture is done by Anthony Gaudi.  It was the weirdest looking place I have ever seen. We also spent a day at the beach, and then my parents bought Tina and I a nice lunch with was SUCH a treat.  WE got seafood paella which is just amazing.  The food in Spain is so good. We sat at that lunch for about 3 hours and just enjoyed it.  We are having a blast.

The island here is crazy- but we are here in off season so its pretty quiet which we love.  It has been more of relaxing and reading at the beach as opposed to trying to see everything in a city.  It has been a blast. Tina's birthday was on Saturday, and we had so much fun.  It rained most of the day (bummer) but we bought a continental breakfast, rented a movie on iTunes (big treat) and hung out at an awesome cafe and ate a great dinner.  We had to stop telling people it was her birthday because they just kept giving her free shots...  All we wanted was free ice cream.  Finally it came with candles and all!

I started reading Chronicles of Narnia, and it is kind of hard to get into.  Makes me feel like I have no imagination... dang.

We are heading to Valencia tomorrow, and then the very south of spain- Nerja, on saturday.  It is a 9 hour train ride and then a 2 hour bus ride. WOO HOO!! I can't believe it is already November, this is going too fast. 

Love yall!!

Meat at the markets!

Rambla Street!  We loved this area!

Tina at our nice lunch my parents bought us.  One of the best meals of my life!! I have the best parents in the world!!

Ibiza!  They have the funnest cafe bar type places!

HAppy birthday tina!!

Tried my best to let Tina at least have one present on her birthday.. I made her one of those scrapbook mugs.  Usually Rita finished off my art and craft things, not my specialty. ;)