Week 4...Lots of love :-)

Another week has passed, and it's been quite an exhausting week! We made the 18-hour road trip up to Missouri just fine and continued doing things nonstop for the next week. The majority of our time in Missouri was spent ministering to people in Springfield. We helped one of UTRI's sponsor churches minister to people downtown, and we spent quite a bit of time with them during a 16 hour prayer/praise service they were having on Sunday. All in all, it was a very fruitful week. I can honestly say that I've never felt God's love as strongly as I felt it this past week, and I'm so thankful we were given the opportunity to go up to Missouri and do what we did.

My job, for the majority of the week, was leading worship/playing music/singing/doing whatever they needed me to do with music, lol. I played more music this week than I have in quite a while. The calluses on my left hand are now awesome from playing the guitar so much, and my endurance for playing the piano nonstop definitely increased substantially, lol. It was pretty awesome! I learned a lot about leading worship and using music to help people feel God's love. The next few weeks, I'll be playing even more music, so I'm excited about that, too!

UTRI is going to be helping out for the next week and a half with a Disciple Now for youth and a Vacation Bible School for children. The church we're going to be working with is a Spanish-speaking church, so there are going to be opportunities for me to practice quite a bit. It's going to be a busy week and a half, but I'm excited to see what's going to happen.

I can't believe that time has flown by so quickly and this 6 weeks is almost over! I love the people that I work with down here. The other girl interns are like sisters to me, and we've bonded so quickly! I can't believe that I'm leaving in 9 days! :-(

I am excited about what's waiting for me at home, though. I'm going to be moving in with my bro and another close friend, and from what I've heard, Frank found us a super nice apartment. I'm going to start planning the road trip of a lifetime with my buddy, Ellen...Route 66...St. Louis to Los Angeles...it's going to be incredible! I'm also going to be helping my chica, Amanda plan her wedding. So...I know that it's going to be an awesome rest of the summer back in Tennessee, but I'm still really going to miss UTRI and all the people here. It's definitely been one of the best summers of my life so far, though, and I know it's just going to continue to get better.

Hope everything is going well for everyone wherever you are. Miss and love you guys!

Paz,
Amelia