Ok So here I go...

After recent circumstances in my life I was encouraged by a sweet friend to write. I began to think about what I could write about and what I know or am interested in most. My conclusion was travel, bargain shopping, and fashion. I will begin with travel.

When I was 15 years old my parents took my family on a cruise to Mexico. We visited Cozumel and the Keys. It was my first time out of the United States. I remember we didn't need a passport then because I didn't get mine until 2 years later. I was 17 years old and a Bible school student. My parents were assisting the missionaries in the Bahamas and my sister and I were left to our own devices. :) I was a missions student and when the opportunity to go on a missions trip to South America, Guyana came up I was so excited. I had to go. I worked a little job at a data entry place and saved some money to go. I also asked grandparent's and family members for their support and they gladly obliged. The cost of the trip was $700. I have no idea how I remember that, but I do. I didn't have a passport and would have to drive to Chicago to get it because of how close the trip was. I woke up early in the morning before the sun rose and drove to the Kluczynski Federal Building in Chigago, Il. This was before gps. I don't know how I made it there and back, but I did! I stayed there all day waiting in line only to be told I needed to show my Itinerary. I didn't have it with me. I got out of place in the line and ran across the street to a fax store, called my travel agent and asked her to fax me my itinerary. I felt so grown up. I went back to the federal building and waited in line again. The office was about to close and the man that had been working with me must've felt sorry for me because he waved for me to come to the window with several people in line in front of me. I told him I needed to leave with my passport that day and he said I would have to come back 3 days later or wait for 7 days. I could do neither and told him so. He told me to wait for a few minutes and came back after what seemed like hours with my passport! There it was! Me in my favorite aqua blue shirt that I had chosen to wear that day with page after page of crisp empty spaces waiting to be stamped. I drove back to the school feeling important and independent. I was late for curfew, but the chastisement was well worth the gain. This little book would open the door to some of the most impressionable times of my life.
I can't remember the exact dates of the trip to Guyana. I think it was sometime around September. I remember it was still very hot there. 15 years is a long time ago to try and recollect everything I saw and experienced, but I will try and do my best. I remember there were 5 of us on the trip from school. I remember visiting the zoo there and a wooden playground. I remember walking through dirty neighborhoods handing out flyers for a tent revival and seeing houses on stilts with hammocks tied to the posts. I remember the ladies from the church cooking us breakfast, lunch and dinner, mostly plantains, chicken, rice and beans.I remember showering from a large rainwater reserve because the sewage was terrible. I remember getting up at 6am every morning to pray for the revival while trying to stay awake. I remember people asking us if were were apart of Jim Jones cult. I remember the dirty sea side. I remember a big yellow and white tent and dancing in the dust without my shoes on for hours hand in hand with the ladies from the church. It was freedom. No inhibitions. I remember sitting in a chair for 3 hours while 3 ladies braided my hair in their house and fed me chicken and rice with punch. I remember taking a bus ride with one of the ladies from the church who I would see years later at a General Conference with her UPCI evangelist husband. Guyana was amazing, humbling and and adventure. It was the first of many to come.

I left Bible school and moved with my family from the great state of Ohio to South Carolina. We were there of for a year before moving on to Florida.
My next trip abroad would be 5 years later. It was a missions trip to Guatemala and Honduras. My brother encouraged me to go with him and we began to save our money to go. We both drove used cars and lived at home so it was pretty easy to save. I worked at a rehab center in Jacksonville and was able to come up with the funds needed for the trip. We went with a large group of kids from Florida and it was wild fun! Our Trip was planned and filled with activities every day. Not a moment was wasted. We were in services almost every night and participated in reaching out during the day. Some of the group made animals from balloons and others played instruments. We all sang and seemed to draw a crowd wherever we went. We sang in the street, on corners, in the square and in churches. We visited the market place and shopped through endless rows of wooden frogs, colorful skirts, straw purses, coffee and voodoo dolls. We visited Antigua and Lake Aitilan. We picked up fallen pumice rock from out of the lake and took a million pictures of the bubbling, lava filled volcano from the night sky. We visited ancient ruins and swang in colorful hammocks. We rode on crowded buses with sweaty, stinky people and loved every minute of the immersion. We crowded into church buildings where people sat outside looking through the windows and doors just to hear the word of God. We visited burial grounds and a dump where a large population lived off of the spoils of the dead. We survived getting sick from eating local church food and water. We learned our lesson to not sleep outside after being bitten by thousands of hungry mosquitoes in our hammocks throughout the night. We snuck away to a hippie pizza joint and enjoyed a slice of pizza. We visited Honduras and its ancient ruins. On our way home from this glorious trip 4 of us caught a bump on the flight and took a flight voucher to stay over another night. We were taken to a nice hotel and fed dinner on the airline. The next day we took a cab into the city and wandered around downtown. We stopped in a cigar shop once visited by John F Kennedy. We flew home with our horizons a little more broadened. This bump would soon thereafter pay our way to our next adventure, Panama.