Top Twenties!

My Top Twenty Favorite Memories From My Twenties in (mostly) Chronological Order:

Ten years apart...haven't changed too much! :0)

1.     Turning 20 years old while living in Heidelberg Germany with 50 other Pepperdine Students. Starting with a bang! Visited a good deal of Europe while living there!

2.     Working as a counselor at Frontier Ranch during the summer of 2007...oh so many lovely friends, squeezies, late night talks on the soundboard, breaking into the kitchen for cookie dough, belaying, my first date, 7-11 slurpies, s’mores and crazy chaos!

3.     Graduating from Pepperdine University...so much hard work, phenomenal teachers, great friends, free t-shirts, and the best view imaginable!

4.     Africa…it’s played a large role in my twenties and I could easily come up with twenty or fifty favorite moments from my time spent on this unique continent, but I’ll cram it all together right here. In the summer of 2008 my whole family and some of my closest friends got to go to Uganda together and it was my first time on the continent…if you’re thinking of coming, be careful! It’s completely addicting! The red roads, the pineapple at every meal, the lovely people, the cutest babies in the world! In the summer of 2010 Kate and I led a team of buddies back to Uganda and Kate and I went on our own again, this time adding Zimbabwe in the summer of 2013. After six years my family all got to go together to Africa once again in the summer of 2014, this time to Tanzania and Zimbabwe. And I am currently living in Benin as I type this and have spent time during 2016 in South Africa and Ghana as well. Coming to the continent of Africa has changed my perspective on missions, adoption, relating to other humans in general, and life as a whole. God has used these countries I have had the privilege to visit and live in to change my perspective, my life, how I view the world, how I view myself, and how I view Him. And it’s not over! Not by a long shot!

5.     Going on the Alaskan cruise to celebrate the afore mentioned graduation as well as Mom and Dad’s 25^th Wedding Anniversary (not sure which was better, the Arcuri’s surprising us by coming on the cruise too, or Dad being able to keep it a secret!)

6.     My community of my first job teaching Outdoor Education at Mission Springs...people who were so different than me, but God knew I needed. They didn’t end up being that different after all…we dressed up in costume to watch Disney movies, read kids books aloud together, wore onesies out in public with me, climbed trees with me and were gentle encouragers when my fear of heights got in the way of climbing said trees, gave me a bedazzled headlamp so I wouldn’t have to be scared of the dark during night hike each week, prayed together when babies were about to be born and when proposals were about to be made, and smashed bananas on their heads and dressed up as six foot long banana slugs all in an attempt to teach kids well!

7.     Working for the Disney Cruise Line onboard the Disney Magic...hardest job I’ve ever had, most fun job I’ve ever had, ten hours a day, seven days a week, getting paid to make floating lanterns from Tangled with four year olds, and once again finding the most wonderful community in quite an unexpected place!

8.     Working at Disneyland Park…I’d tell you more, but I’d have to kill you :0) Since I can’t pay tribute to that, I’d like to throw into this list the number of times I’ve had the chance to go to Disneyland in my twenties…I hold strongly to the fact that it’s one of the most magical, lovely, and enchanting places on earth and I love it with all my heart! I swear, I hear God’s voice clearest when I am sitting on the curb for two hours waiting for the Soundsational parade to begin, and I love it! It thrills be every time, never gets old, and brings joy to my heart!

9.     Teaching elementary school with Kate, being big buddy/little buddy classes, living in the land of kindergarten where cupcakes, ducklings, and glitter are plentiful and where we learn together what letters say and what Jesus says.

10.  Becoming a Sweet Adeline! Singing has been a huge part of my entire life, but I thought the competitive singing was over when I left highschool…I was wrong! I Joined Sweet Adelines with Mom and Kate and competed with my chorus as well as in several quartets, including one performance on the international stage and receiving the Most Promising Tenor award for my region! I love singing, especially with my family! There’s nothing quite like that red lipstick and false eyelashes! :0)

11.  Being Jenn’s stage mom…one of the complete and utter joys of my twenties was being around for Jenn’s highschool career and especially being there for all of her shows! I loved helping Jenn prepare for auditions, cheering her on when she got her dream role, crying with her when she did not, working backstage doing Jenn’s hair and makeup, taking photos of every show, and sitting in the front row for each performance. The culmination of this was getting to take photos of her from the wings of the Pantages theater in Los Angeles when she performed there!

12.  Jenn and my Broadway Sistermoon (when Kate went on her honeymoon). We went to Broadway and saw ten shows for under $300 and reveled in every minute of it! Jenn is one of my favorite people every to go to shows with! And while we’re on the topic, I would be remised if I didn’t mention in this list waiting in rush lines…I’ve spent a significant amount of time in my twenties waiting in Broadway rush lines to get cheap tickets to a Broadway show…it’s cold and long and makes your rear ache, but get a sister or cousin to do it with you, get a Starbucks and a McDonalds hot apple pie (maybe a bagful to share with the others in line) and all will be well! 100% worth the wait!

13.  Attending weddings…I have attended several weddings in my twenties for so many people that I have been praying for for so long! Johanna Chambers, Will Handley, Kate Minor, Liz Flage, I prayed so long and hard for each of you and getting to attend or be in each of your weddings and see first hand God’s goodness and faithfulness meant the world to me! I love you and your spouses so dearly!

14.  Working the 2012 and 2015 Urbana Missions Conferences with Kate and then with Dad. Worshipping with thousands of believers from all over the world in so many different languages brings unspeakable joy to my heart! So does singing the announcements over the PA in the exhibit hall! :0)

15.  Paying off our student loans...Kate and I were just slightly excited about becoming financially free!!! Didn't you take pictures when you submitted your last payment!?!

16.  I know I already mentioned Broadway, but this show deserves it’s own bullet point: Amazing Grace! It ran for only four months and I got to see it three times in that span with cousins and sisters! No show or music has rocked me to the core like that one! Never before have I seen an audience wait at the stage door simply to thank the actors for telling that story! Never before have I found Broadway actors on facebook in order to thank them and had them invite me back to see the show and to come backstage with them!

17.  January 23^rd, 2015 Neill and I puled off the most epic Disneyland proposal ever! So much planning, so many people contacted, so may secrets, I thought I might burst. I think it took years off my life, but we did it! And she said YES!

18.  Kate and Neill’s wedding…I know I already mentioned weddings, but Kate gets her own bullet point on the list. So many favorite moments…seventeen people sleeping in my little apartment the night before the wedding, the bridesmaid song and dance, Jenn and my musical toast, doing her bridal hair, the seventeen bridesmaids taking up the entire dance floor, the best Bundt cakes in the world, did I mention that I loved the seventeen bridesmaids?!? :0)

19.  Becoming an aunt…it’s been sooooooooo incredibly hard to be away from Kate and miss getting to watch her belly grow, but I am oh so excited and oh so thankful for facetime where I can watch the baby kicking! I couldn’t be more thrilled to be Aunt B!

20.  Living on the Africa Mercy and working for Mercy Ships! Sailing around the Cape, teaching four students from four different continents, taking my littles to play with the patients… It’s an adventure…and there’s so much more to come!

I was asked yesterday if this is where I saw myself at thirty years old…the answer is no. I never thought that I wouldn’t be married with littles when I was thirty, but when asked if this is where I would like to be, the answer is a resounding, yes! I so dearly want to be a wife and a Mommy and I don’t know why that hasn’t been part of the plan, but I know I’m exactly where God wants me and I love the life that God has given me so very much! I. Am. So. Blessed. I love my life! Here’s cheers to thirty years!

If you're happy and you know it..."

A few weekends ago I went out to deck 7 during the patients outside time (all patients who are able are encouraged to go outside from 2:30-3:30pm every day). We have had quite a lot of orthopedic kids recently (the children with bowed legs).

 I knew that a lot of them wouldn’t be able to get down on the ground to play with my little cars or blocks that I sometimes bring out, so I brought out my dot paints, along with little boards that the kiddos could put on top of their full leg casts and lean on to play with the dot paints. They were a big hit and fairly soon the kids moved from dot painting the paper to dot paining their full leg casts!

            The littles sit in their plastic chairs and rest their feet on another plastic chair and generally can’t do very much in terms of playing, so the nurses do a great job entertaining them! I’ve seen whole rows of nurses standing in front of twelve “ortho” patients singing every song they can think of to keep the kids happy. My favorite was singing “If you’re happy and you know it” with the nurses. The kids don’t understand English, but they can tell what motion they are supposed to do. The best part was the verse “If you’re happy and you know it stomp your feet” because these kids obviously can’t do that, so we changed the words to “wiggle your toes.” I wish everyone had the chance to see these kiddos, each with two full leg casts happy and giggling and wiggling their little toes that poke out of each end of the casts!

            Yesterday I brought the kindergartners and first graders (surprise! I have both grades for two weeks and my class has ballooned from 3 to a whopping seven!) out to play with the ortho patients and we had a grand time. My littles passed out boards and papers and dot paints to the little patients and then monitored who needed to switch colors and who needed more paper and such. We were hot and happy! :0)

The Perfect Storm

On Friday evening, just as we were finishing up our ladies retreat for the weekend, an announcement came on the overhead throughout the ship and asked all emergency teams to report down to OR 3. The women in the retreat who are a part of the emergency medical teams leapt up and ran out of that room leaving the rest of us rattled and quite concerned. After a few minutes, the overhead speaker blared once again, this time asking anyone with blood type B+ to get down to the lab immediately. On the ship, the crew supplies the blood bank for all surgeries. We knew for sure at that point that something was horribly wrong. Someone was downstairs in the hospital and in desperate need of blood. Several minutes later they came back on the overhead and asked everyone onboard to stop whatever they were doing and pray for the patient in OR 3. I was so glad that so many of the women of the Africa Mercy were still together after our evening retreat. It was a surreal and rattling experience to be sitting upstairs and knowing that a patient downstairs was actively dying as we sat there. We prayed together and sat together and I cried quite a bit. There was nothing we could do but wait. They came over the intercom to name certain people they knew had the correct blood type to come down to the lab immediately and I shakily walked down to my cabin to get ready for bed. As I was about to go to sleep they came on the overhead for the last time that evening and said that the patient in OR 3 was stable, but in critical condition. The next day we found out that he made it through the night. That following day at the ladies retreat one of the anesthesiologists who had been in OR 3 the previous night told us that as everything went south so fast, she just kept thinking, “No! Why is this happening on my watch?!?” and she distinctly heard God tell her, “This isn’t your watch, it’s MY watch.” She said she could tangibly feel the prayers coming from every corner of the ship towards OR 3. What a scary evening, but what a privilege to be here among these people and with our great God to plead for miracles and for life.

*Update: This patient is now out of ICU and doing well! Praise the Lord! People have been referring to this incident as "the perfect storm" because of the horrific-ness of what happened (can't share too many details, but it's truly a miracle that this man is alive today) coupled with several other complications that happened at the same time, but still having exactly the right people here who knew what to do and a perfect God who has power over all.