Kilimanjaro!

Today I come to my blog with a hurting heart. With the recent news of the Vegas terrorist attack my heart mourns for everyone hurting right now because of it. I think it is important to look at situations like this through eyes of love and mercy because so many tend to fill with anger instead. Even though there is so much tragedy and heartache within this event, I do believe the Lord is holding tight to everyone effected and I pray healing and peace over all of them. When we think about terrorism we tend to think of a Muslim, which is just not the way it should be but that is the societal norm these days. This terrorist however was white, a U.S. citizen and had no criminal record and therefore is being humanized by the news and is not being called a terrorist even though if this would have been a Muslim I could almost guarantee that every news station and twitter account would be calling it a terrorist attack. My heart is full of sorrow because our society has become so full of blinded white privilege that it puts a pit in my stomach. My only hope is that we can begin to see people how God sees people and love everyone and treat everyone equally. I pray that the news reporters would see this awful event for what it is and report with honesty and truth while trying to get information to the public. I also pray for the shooters family and anyone else involved that they would seek the justice of the Lord and they would have peace in them as well. It is hard to walk past our enemies and see the good in them but by seeing the good in God and his creation we can begin to see the world through the eyes of Christ. Stepping back from this subject, on a more positive note, this weekend I went camping with some of the other students and it was by far the most incredible experience I have had so far on my gap year. We hiked up to lost lake in Nederland and it was about a mile and a half hike which for most people probably wouldn't be much to stress over but it was quite the challenge for me. On the way up however, all of my friends were extremely encouraging and would stop and rest with me whenever I needed. We finally made it up and quickly set up camp because we knew it was supposed to rain soon. None of us had signal and therefore we were unable to check the weather. As soon as we were done setting up our tents and everything the temperature dropped to about 35 degrees and the wind gusts were probably at about 60 MPH, so we buckled down in our tents and waited out the storm. We couldn't build a fire and because of that we were unable to cook dinner but never the less, we persisted. After a while me and Emma realized that we were going to have to get more water from the lake and treat it so we could drink it because we were running out. So in the freezing rain and wind and thunderstorm we ran to the lake to fill up our jugs with water. On the way down to the lake Emma put out her hand and caught nothing other than.... a snowflake. We were terrified and ecstatic all at the same time. We ran back to tell everyone but no one really believed us. All of us got some sleep (some more than others) and I was the first one up at about 7 in the morning. I put on my coat and my shoes and unzipped the tent while everyone else was still asleep, and low and behold.. SNOW. We had camped through a snowstorm. There was about 5 inches of snow on the ground and I was so excited that I screamed and woke everyone up. This was really the first time in my life I had woken up to see snow like that and it was more beautiful than I could ever imagine. During the camping trip we had every opportunity to be negative or complain but we all stayed so positive it was incredible. During the first day I was not exactly thriving because of the difficult hike and then the rain and I was not exactly a master at using the bathroom in the wilderness.. needless to say I needed some better aim. But waking up to see snow and sunshine was all I needed for the whole trip to be so worth it. The lord blessed me in such an incredible way and I really cherished that camping trip because it really helped our group bond and I felt so loved and cared for by all of my friends. I will attach some pictures below! Thanks for reading!