First off, I must shout out to Stormy - who turns 21 today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABE! :)

Secondly, WE HAVE SNOW! Not much. Hardly any, really. But enough that all of my Texans would be excited. Actually, as of now, it looks a lot like a Texas snowfall but I have been promised a lot more to come. This is just the beginning of the first "real" winter in over 5 years for both Gareth and myself. Very very very excited. I love snow. I am excited to use the scoopers to shovel for people. :D That was always my favorite. I honestly enjoyed shoveling. Usually, I would sing praise songs and shovel and before I realized it, I would have completed not only my own driveway and sidewalk but our neighbors as well. Backbreaking if you don't do it correctly - whole lifting thing, but sooooo much fun. :)

Keep praying for A and M and their family. They are going through a lot - as is always the case when you leave a cult behind.

16 days until I am in Texas. WOOT. I am so excited! Better have your bear hugs ready.

OoOOOH! I have some quite exciting news. Well, exciting for me. See, my apartment has a funky heater. It is working now, but as of a week ago, we were waking up to 54 or 56 degrees indoors. Colder inside at night than outside at times. We shoulda gone camping. Anyway, Kate found out about this slight issue and decided to be incredibly kind and now I have a BEAUTIFUL blue/khaki reversible down comforter on my bed. I have always wanted one. So Merry Christmas to me! Do I have the coolest best friend or what? Seriously, the kid also got me a coat to keep me warm. I guess she was afraid Texas thinned my blood out and doesn't want me to freeze. I will post pictures later.

As much as I do not like the rush when it is busy at Walmart, pray for more business if you can. If we do not get more shoppers and sales, then we have to start cutting back and having someone get laid off at the holidays would just suck. Right now they are cutting hours by a half or hour increments but the next step would be to fire a few employees. I am fairly safe because I am a front-end worker and am trained for 2 different positions and being trained for a 3rd, but there are a lot of employees who have families who cannot afford to lose their job. Especially since the store is the biggest employer in town.

After a long fast from David Crowder (he gets a little overplayed on our stereo here), I am currently enjoying his music again. :) Makes me smile. But soon we will have to swap him and his cool shoes out for some Christmas music. I have a tree to decorate in the front entry-room. So much fun!

Yay for Tuesdays and days off from work and days to work in the cafe and working heaters and an incredibly amazing awesome and mighty Gracious God!

There are 19 days until I am back in good ole' Tejas. :) I am stoked. You have no idea. I was ordered to return to Utah after my trip but right now, I am just concentrating on the Texas part. I cannot WAIT to see you guys. Seriously.

Pray for my little sister still. Lindsay has swelling on both optic nerves and on the discs in the back of her eye causing vision problems and migraines - which may or may not be related to the arnold chiari. And she is being tested for another possible disease - ehler's danlos syndrome. That is the way that she spelled it, so if I am incorrect, let me know. If they decide to test her for that, she will need to go to Maryland for the testing. She is headed to New York this Friday for a follow-up appointment with the doctors from her surgery and to get some answers about the vision issues, possibly scheduling the Maryland trip. They (my parents, Lindsay, and my sister Mandy and my gram) are going to spend a few extra days in NY to see the Christmas decorations and everything. They are super excited about that part of the trip. I think that is the extent of their Christmas this year, but it will be a nice trip.

Please pray for my family and for myself. This is my first Christmas away from home. And I am not dealing well with it. I am focusing on Texas and kind of ignoring Christmas for that very reason. I honestly LOVE Christmas at my parents, even though things usually don't go well with my family all the time. You know the story. It is rough because I am different now. Very different. But the amount of love for them has only increased since I became a Christian. And no matter how much I love the Thompsons, this is not family. Not in the same sense.

Which explains why I am so excited about Texas, too. :)

As far as ministry goes, keep praying for A and M and their family. I will explain more later in person. Pray as always for T - still on my heart all the time. And Jo from work - her son is still dealing with a ton of crap. Poor kid is physically sicker than anyone I know - and I know a lot of sick kids... *coughkatecough*

Work is alright right now. Nothing special but more opportunities to talk. I like that. :)

College house is kinda down right now. There is some internal stuff going on and they are dealing with it and most people are feeling the tension. And we kinda had a bust for a float at the holiday parade. It was an amazing concept for the float but it didn't work well. So, our message - His Message- kinda got diminished a bit. It was really disappointing for all of us but especially Chip. He called the whole thing "retarded." He is doing much better today, though. I think we need the Christmas break to kinda re-coup and get our bearings back.

Anyway, it is dead quiet in here, everyone is in bed or playing halo upstairs in the guys dorm or whatever. So... I am going to go to bed or find a movie or a book or something fun. Sleep well, Texas. I will see you soon.

Please pray for A and her family. Trying to leave the cult behind. God is so great. :)

More on other things later. Pray for K.J. and her family - friends from LU.

Thanksgiving! :) God has been so faithful! I prayed for compassion and patience at work and strength and energy and the chance to be a light. I spent the entire day with the exception of one particularly foul customer in a great mood and actually was given the opportunity to remind several people that holidays were not about stuffing their faces or about stress but something far greater. And it was so cool. I really enjoyed being at work today. How often can we say that? :)

Pray for T. So much there. He is in need of Christ in the biggest way.

Tomorrow we will be having dinner in the evening sometime after Travis and I both get off work. Dinner will be at the Thompsons. Actually, so will breakfast (brunch, really - 11am), then work from 230-630, and then dinna. Then just to hang out. Until an early bedtime because I am going to work at 5-freakin'-am on Friday so that all the crazies can buy their Christmas gifts. Then, after I get off work at 9am, I will run away with some of the guys and Deeds (hopefully) to go up North and play for awhile. Excited about that. I am thinking it sounds like a great weekend. And that's still just the end of the week itself.

Guess what guess what guess what! :) I will be in Texas this time in exactly one month! WOOOOOT! So stoked. :D

Saturday was an awesome day. I went "up north" with Zach, Rusty, and Gabe. We just hung out for awhile - Dessert Industries - the absolute largest thrift store that I have ever been to. Think Walmart supercenter sized. Seriously crazy. It was so good to just go away for awhile and not be here. It felt very LU-like because it was 1 girl and 3 guys, but not odd or awkward. Just good.

Today, I am dragging. There is a weight. I can't name it but I can feel it. My shoulders physically ache and my spirit is quiet. I slept last night and dreamed of the people that I have been given to minister to the entire time. Over and over again, they came through my mind, images that would not go away. But the weight that I feel tonight is not totally connected to that. Like I said, I can't name it.

This week will be an intense one for work. We are and have been super busy but this week is the start of the craziest of all for us. I work almost every day for at least a few hours but each shift feels like much longer when you have customers haggling with you over prices. It will be an opportunity to show grace and compassion. And patience. Pray that God grants them to me. Hopefully, without too many troublemaker customers to cause the need for it. You know what I mean. :)

Check out 1 Peter 2:6-10. Our sermon passage today. It was intense.

I itch to write. I had a poem the other day that the Spirit gave me but I unfortunately, never stopped to write it out and now it is just a figment on the corners of my mind waiting for the right words for expression. My brain is incapable of thinking of words to say what I have been processing. I feel like there are so many things going through and yet not really much at the same time.

I keep catching myself doing little things and thinking about how incredible certain things are - earlier I was raking leaves and I was thinking about the design of the rake and then I used my fingers to rake a few of them into a little pile to load them into the wheelbarrow. That caused me to think, Hmm, bet this is where the idea for the rake came from. Wonder how God came up with His design for fingers. You know, the little things, where He stops you and says "Yo, Look at ME! See me here, princess. You are mine but more importantly, I am yours and I AM. Look. Just shut up, stop and look. How amazing is my creation?! How amazing am I?" It isn't a long pause or even one that really stops your day. Just the ones that cause you to sit for a moment and be like "wow..."

Kind of funny, because at the same time, I feel so close to my complete and total self-absorbed'ness. It is all about me. All the time. Seriously. And it makes me ill. Father, heal me from myself. Satan is so good at placing in the smallest distraction but he really doesn't have to do much because I end up my own worst enemy.

I am so desparate. For T, and my other co-workers, and the girls that I have spoken with. I ache physically even for them to KNOW and to understand. Life is so incredibly empty. Solomon had it so right... meaningless. Vanity. Without Christ - it is all worthless. Please pray. Salvation is so close but still so far because they do not WANT it yet. Pray for desire for Christ.

Desire for Christ. I want to desire Christ more. I do not desire what I should. Help me, Father, to want you.

I HAVE PLANE TICKETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!! I will be in Longview after Christmas and I CANNOT WAIT! Now I need to find a ride to and from the airport in Salt Lake. Which could be interesting since the Solid Rock group will be leaving for a backpacking trip the same day that I fly out. But that is a minor detail. I HAVE TICKETS!!!! :) Thanks go to Kate for her awesomeness. :D