So now I'm 22

I turned 22 on Wednesday, April 16. It was a good day. I started off the day by doing my morning devotional and digging into the Word. Lately I've been extra hungry and thirsty for the words of Jesus. As I've already read through Matthew and Mark, I've realized how much I want my life to reflect Jesus more and more! Seriously, He's a pretty sweet guy! He had some amazing compassion, love, authority, power, grace, mercy, and so many other things that will make this list go on and on, but you can read more into His words on your own.

After reading my Bible and doing my devotional, I talked to Josh (my brother), my parents, and my Grandma Lupita. It was good to talk to these people because they have played and still play a huge part in my life. The days before my birthday, and especially on my birthday, I like to reflect on my life in the past year. I ask myself if my life meant anything? Did it change anything? Did it bring glory to God? Did my life point to Jesus? I realize that I'm not perfect and have failed a lot, but I pray that I continue focusing my life on bringing Jesus the glory and honor through my life. I want for people to know Jesus more because of my life. When I leave this earth, I want people to remember Jesus Christ more than me!

After one of the ESL classes that I and Amber-Lee help Sean with, we had the 2 ladies who attend the class come over to our house and have dessert, coffee/tea (water for me), and play some Dutch Blitz (a card game). We talked a bit about us, and they talked a little bit about themselves. The ladies really enjoyed coming over and we loved having them over because we had never really had any visitors come to our house. As they were leaving, they invited us to one of the ladies house for an "Okonomiyaki Party." Okonomiyaki is a very traditional, famous Japanese dish and is something that our whole team enjoys immensely! We're really looking forward to May 12 so that we can build those relationships a bit more.

Yesterday night, Friday night, our team, the Hieberts and Sean surprised Amber-Lee and I with a really good dinner cooked by Leona (it's Amber-Lee's birthday today, April 19). And after we ate and had an amazing dessert, Amber-Lee and I opened our gifts that our team bought for us. I got 2 sweet Japanese shirts with some awesome English sayings that make absolutely no sense and a notebook.

After dinner and the gift opening, they made Amber-Lee and I go to the house to "relax." I knew they were up to something else, but obeyed anyways. At around 8:30ish, Brianna, Simone, Darlene, and Amber came into the house and started telling us to put on jeans! They were being very pushy as well. They hurried us and then blind folded us. They then lead us to the Hieberts van. They didn't tell us what we were doing or where we were going and kept us blind folded until we got to our destination. We ended up in a small room which was at a Karaoke place. Japan has these Karaoke places that you rent a room and have your own private room with your own Karaoke machine! It was so much fun and we took some awesome videos, but I won't put those up here because we all know how embarrassing Karaoke can be! We had a really good time and it was a really fun night of "surprises." I love my team! They're awesome!