Turkey in Turkey on Turkey Day!

Hey all! Yes, this is a picture of me eating turkey on Thanksgiving Day in the country of Turkey (as an avid pun-lover, this was right up my alley)! I just returned from Antayla, Turkey, for a missionary retreat for the Nazarene missionaries in the Commonwealth of Independent States field. More details later in the update!

A couple weeks ago, we had our quarterly awards chapel, and the students you see standing are those students of mine who made the A honor roll. Also in the picture are the K-5 classes and Mr. Williams, the elementary principal and assistant director of Hinkson.

Some of the 4th and 5th grade boys guarding their snow fort at recess.

Mr. Hays, my Russian student, and Mr. Lehman all dressed alike on twin day, a student council-sponsored event.

The 5th graders acting a bit goofy, posing in front of the "Bella Notte" background, which was a high school honors choir production from a couple weeks ago.

This picture has been a symbol of what God's been doing inside me these past few weeks. One reason I haven't blogged for a while is because I needed a break...from a lot of things. I had been doing too many things, for too long, at too high a level of expectations and excellence (aka perfectionism). I had a breakdown two weeks ago today, a day in which I really hit the wall on all fronts. After a 1.5-hour conversation with my parents (thank you, Lord, for my wonderful parents!), I was already much better, especially since I had gained some priceless advice that I could begin to apply. It's not that I haven't heard the wise words before. It's that I never really had to apply them. Now that I'm over here in a totally new environment away from my closest family and friends, I must begin to take much more seriously the 2nd greatest commandment: to love my neighbor as myself. I have a tendency to operate on about a 80-20 imbalance, with so much time dedicated to the needs of others and hardly any time spent taking care of myself. How can we really effectively love our neighbors if our cups are almost always near empty? A wise teacher friend recently told me that we're to love others out of the abundance of our cup. If there is no abundance in my cup, then something's wrong.

I'm learning to have to lower my expectations (they often exceed everybody else's expectations of me...and sometimes God's expectations as well), be less hard on myself, and STOP doing so much. Letting go is hard for me. I thought recently about the significance of stoplights at intersections. If stoplights were always set for "go" in one direction and "red" for the other direction, then one line of traffic would never get a break, and the other line would never get to go (duh!). But what about in our lives? If I have the pride to think that my way is always the best and I always have to be "the best" at everything, and thus run myself ragged with work and service, then all I'm doing is 1) setting myself up for failure and breakdowns because I never stop and 2) depriving other people of their opportunity to serve, love, and "go." Life really is a stop and go journey. Jesus really understood that, and I'm just now starting to understand it.

5th grade Thanksgiving Party! We had a time of food; decorating for Christmas; writing letters of thanks to friends, teachers, parents, etc. on nice stationery; singing a couple thanksgiving songs as a class; holding hands as a class (parents and all) and praying a thanksgiving prayer. It was a special time!

Kids love parties!