Happy Birthday Nickolas John!!!

Before you get a status update, there is a matter of utmost importance, I must wish young Nickolas Schieber a happy 12th Birthday!!!! I will sadly be out of the country and unable to celebrate with you, but I hope its great!

We made it through the night sleeping on the benches of the foodcourt near the terminal. Most of us are still pretty tired, but at least we all got a little sleep. Our plane leaves in about an hour and then we should be in Port-au-Prince about 12:00 eastern time and should be to the village about 4ish.

Hopefully I'll get to connect with you some time tomorrow. As we drove down to O'Hare last night, God brought me to Philppians through a Francis Chan Podcast, reading Paul's words to his supporters, I am reminded how thanksful I am to have the love, support, and prayers of so many people. Thank you all so much, I could not do this without you!!

PS Alex and Jake, I don't know how your games went this morning, but keep playing hard and have fun today!! AO1

A New Adventure Already

Good Morning (?) from Fort Lauderdale,

We arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport about an hour ago. Our flight to Port-au-Prince doesn't leave until tomorrow morning at 9, so the plan was to grab a hotel room for the night and come back in the morning, but you know plans change :) We found out as we arrived in Florida that the hotel we were planning to stay at actually doesn't have a shuttle to and from the airport like we thought and no hotels under $200 a night (like 5 hours for us) offer shuttles after midnight, so in tribute to Tom Hanks we will be spending the night in the terminal (we are toying with the idea of also adopting really bad accents as well). Looks like card games and light sleep for us tonight, but it should be fun!

Off to Haiti

Hey Everyone,

I've only got a couple minutes before I leave, but I just wanted to post the link to our teams travel blog. I will try to update here too, but we will post the travel blog everyday as well.

Please pray for our team, for safety and guidnace in our travels.

Thanks!

http://www.ewbuw.org/taxonomy/term/15

Playdown Update

Al's team made it through playdowns, so on to Nationals as Team Minnesoata 2 :)

Minnesota Playdowns

Good Morning from Playdowns!

This weekend I'm in Minnesota watching Alex's team playoff for a chance to represent MN at the Junior Curling National Championship. She had her first game last night, which they won, and has another game tonight at 7. I'll try to keep updating so you can follow, but updates will also be here

In other news, mom and I wanted to go to church this morning, so we did some research last night and found a church in the area we thought looked solid, got up early this morning and set out for the 9AM service. We get to the parking lot of this big church and there are like 5 other cars in the lot, bad sign we're thinking what could this possibly be like if only 5 people show up for service? Turns out, the early service was cancelled becuase of the holidays, so now were off to attempt the 10:30 service :)

Check back tonight for results on Al's late game!

Exam Week.....

With the arrival of exam week, I have banned myself from blogging so that I don't give myself an excuse to not study, but it's late and my brain is pretty much fried and I decided I'm allowed to write something short, just a little update.

I've been involved with a student org called Engineers Without Borders since spring semester of my freshmen year. EWB is an organization that brings engineering professionals and students together to offer free engineering services to underprivileged communities worldwide. At the UW we have teams working in El Salvador, Rwanda, Kenya, Haiti, and the US. I have mostly been involved with the Haiti team, but because of curling and rowing and summer stuff I have only done design work with the team, I've never gotten to be on the travel team, but Monday night I finally got official travel dates for our Engineers Without Borders winter trip which I will be able to go on this year!!!

Our team is leaving from Madison on January 6th, flying through Miami to Port-au-Prince, Haiti and then will drive to Bayonnais, the community which we work with. While we're there we will do a lot of surveying and other assessment work for a pipe bridge to be built over a river during the spring break trip. We have a lot of the bridge designed already, but need a little more information before we will be ready to implement the project. We will also be working with the people of the community and even running a health info session with some of our members who speak the language and giving out some basics like soap, tooth brushes and toothpaste. Then we'll return to Madison January 14th, just in time to chill a little before classes start the 19th.

I'm so excited to finally get to travel and thought I'd share that with you all :)

Breaking the Silence

As most of you have probably noticed, I have been a complete blogging failure for the last three weeks. School has been crazy insane, but it's finally starting to slow down a little so I've decided I'm gonna take some time to write tonight. Over the last few weeks, I have had a bunch of things I've thought about blogging, but no time to post, so now as I sit down to break the silence, I'm not entirely sure what to say. So here goes...

One thing that I hope will never fail to amaze me is Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Especially since this summer, every time I think of this amazing, beautiful, radical gift, I'm overwhelmed. Over the course of the last couple weeks, I have really been pondering what it looks like to respond to this sacrifice of love. Last week I started reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. In this book, Chan dives into what it looks like to respond to God's call for a "passionate love relationship" versus sticking with the status quo. I've really enjoyed this book so far and love where Chan is going, but have been challenged to look at my own life as well.

Last week I also was reading through the end of the Gospel of Mark. Every time I read through the end of a Gospel, and likewise through the crucifixion, my heart wants to explode in my chest, it's so overwhelming to think about the terrible pain He went through, it's so unimaginable to comprehend His separation from the Father and leaving the people on earth He loved the most, and it's so exciting to know He did that for me!!!! It's crazy! Reading through chapter 15, something new stuck out to me.

Mark 15:16-20--The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.

Mark 15:31-32--In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

As I read these verses, I kept thinking--Do you think there was a moment while Jesus was on the cross that He wanted to let these people have it? Like just a second when He wanted look them in the eyes and cry out to them, "Don't you get it, I'm doing this for you?!" What would He have given for these people to know Him, could He have given more? He gave them everything, and it still wasn't enough. They still chose to ignore Him, no worse than that, they chose to hate Him while He demonstrated the greatest love of all time.

Then, my thoughts slowly drifted to my own life, how often do I do the same thing? I even have the entire Bible laying out everything for me, and there are times I still choose to ignore His sacrifice for me. Chan says:

We forget that God never had an identity crisis. He knows that He's great and deserves to be the center of our lives. Jesus came humbly as a servant but never begs us to give Him some small part of ourselves. He commands everything from His followers.

Am I giving Him everything? Are there parts of my life that have Christ crying out to me, "Don't you get it, I did that for you so you could know Me, so you could know love..." Are there things blinding me from knowing His love or are there areas in my life where I am just completely ignoring Him?

Those are the things people don't really want to ponder, you know? Things, honestly, I feel like I would be okay not thinking about, ever.

But as I forced myself to stay in this uncomfortable place, I began to be convicted by grudges I continue to hold in relationships. People who I refuse to show the love of Christ to because I have not seen the love of Christ from them. This is something I really struggle with. I told a friend once that one of the hardest things for me to do is give grace to people who I think don't deserve it. She was quick to point out that that mindset basically defeated the entire concept of grace, withholding an undeserved gift from someone who doesn't deserve it.....I still do it though.

I know what God desires my life to look like, how He wants me to love my neighbor as myself and pray for my enemies and be a picture of Christ to this world, but sometimes it's so easy to ask, why? Why live like that, why is it worth going out of my way to get stepped on or put my neck out, or even my heart, for people who don't care? I want to, I want to be that girl known for her love, sometimes it's so hard though, and more than that sometimes it's so scary. You know?