Hey everyone….

So, its Tuesday… I leave on Friday for the youth retreat… and then early… very early Monday morning with my family for Guatemala. Everyone wants updates, and regular ones… this is the only way I could think of to do that efficiently considering how busy we will be and sporatic internet connections. I don’t know if anyone will actually read this and if you are… Im sorry hahaha…. My thoughts might tend to be all over the place. I’ll be using this as a bit of a journal for my own benefit as well. As my wonderful lifegroup girls can tell you, when I get lost in a random thought.. look out. So bear with me… read if you want… don’t read… whatever, its all good.

I’ve spent alot of the past weeks trying to figure out what God is doing with my life… exactly who I am and why I am where I am. Had anyone told me a few years ago that I’d be a youth leader… heavily involved in a community (Church… but I love the word community so much more) … talking major stuff about myself with a random group of people (my own life group) and on my way to Guatemala… well I would have called you nuts. The Guatemala part seems to me to be just about the only part of my life that makes sense. Its kinda the thing Geoff, me and the boys have always done… We’ve been doing Katrina relief work with various organizations since the hurricane… We’ve been to Alaska to build homes…. so Guatemala fits… sort of. The rest it occurs to me has happened because I finally stopped doing life my way and have embraced letting God do it for me so to speak. And look where I am now .. (see above haha). And you know what? Life is so much better. I have a sense of finally kinda being on the path I was always supposed to be on… again I say finally!

I see now that meeting Ted and getting involved with Wells of Hope is no coincidence… becoming a youth leader for Southridge is no coincidence…. meeting and marrying Geoff was no coincidence… Alley and Dave ending up going to Guatemala with our family is no coincidence…. there simply is no such thing…. its all part of a plan… a plan that includes so much pain sometimes its unbearable… but in the end it all somehow works out. Its taken me a very long time (41yrs) to realize that and somehow the realization makes it all seem so much better… I am only one person…. but I can make a difference…. nomatter how small that difference is… I CAN be the change, even if only a tiny speck of it… I CAN!

Much Love & God’s Blessings….
Rita