News (and a little bit of freaking out for how little time is left)

Lots of News Updates this week!  Turns out there are a lot of things that have happened and that ARE happening, that I may or may not have been doing a good job at keeping you updated on (spoiler, I haven’t—sorry about that).

News Piece #1

I head home in 37 days. THIRTHY-SEVEN DAYS!!! Whaaaaat?  My official return date is May 20^th, I’ve bought plane tickets and everything.  Please don’t ask how I feel about that because there are lots of emotions and I can’t quite sort through them all.  I’m both happy and sad, excited for that day to come and wishing it was farther away.  It’s really complicated and confusing, and I’m trying to work through it all, but it’s hard!  And….maybe eating my weight in ice cream from Pops isn’t exactly the best way to handle it…but who knows? (Side note, I haven’t ACTUALLY eaten that much ice cream, but if I had gone every time I WANTED to go, then I would have eaten like, eight times my body weight by now.)

I suppose a sub-note of this news is the question everyone has been asking me lately “So what’s next?”  The answer to that is, “I’m not quite sure yet”.  God told me to hold tight until he tells me what to do next, so that’s what I’ll do, obviously, but here is what I am leaning toward before God changes everything.  I would love to stay in St. Louis for a while.  My family has lived there 5 years this month, and of those 60 months there, I have spent approximately 12-15 months living with them—and not even on a continuous basis.  As you might imagine, that has made it hard to call St. Louis “home”.  People constantly ask me “so where are you from?” or some variation of that, and I go back and forth between saying “Chicago” or “Chicago-land area” and “St. Louis”. But usually it comes out, “Well, I consider myself from the Chicago-land area, because that’s where I grew up, but my family recently moved to St. Louis right as I was starting college, so I’m from Chicago, but my family is in St. Louis.”  It’s kind of a long explanation, and it’s been exhausting saying it over and over again for five years. So what I would REALLY like to do is to live in St. Louis for a while, to plant my own roots there, so that when people ask me where I’m from or where “home” is, I can say “St. Louis” without feeling dishonest.  Granted, I’ll always be FROM Chicago and the surrounding area, but at least I won’t feel like I’m fibbing a little if I say “St. Louis”.  So I want to stay there for a bit, but I have no idea doing what.  I like to think I have time to figure it out…but I’m not really sure how accurate that is.  Oh well, I’ve been given orders to “sit tight”, and so that’s what I’ll do for now.

News Piece #2

I’m working with the Emerys, Suzanne and Edwin (and the other brother Naín, who I don’t really see at all, but is still and Emery) full time now.  Through much prayer and many conversations, God called me from Rahab and toward the Emerys.  The biggest downside to this is that the Emerys are awesome and it will be VERY hard to say goodbye to in May!

Most of the time Edwin and I just get to hang out and be awesome together.  He was shocked to discover my love for Pokémon, and it took a few days to pick his jaw up off the ground when he learned that I was basically a Pokémon master with all the knowledge I have about the game.  I mean, come on! I’ve been playing since I was younger than him!  I know my Pokémon.  Also since working with him on a regular basis, I exercise like I used to when I was in P.E. classes!  I am very pleased to say that since I started working with him, my stamina and endurance have greatly improved!  Also, Edwin LOVES sports, and so I become his “coach” for whatever the flavor of the day is (usually soccer or hockey) and through practices and things, I learned that I’m not half bad as a goalie!  Granted, it’s against one person, and the goal in the park by their house is fairly small, but still!  An accomplishment is an accomplishment!

Prayer Requests

I just…don’t know what I want, and that makes choosing anything so much more complicated.  So if you would like to be praying for me, you can pray for peace in the turbulence of things changing and coming to an end; you can pray for me to stay in the moment and not get caught up in the future; you can pray for whatever my job situation ends up being that it will be just what I need at the moment—and if it takes me abroad again that I’ll have the strength, courage, support (of every kind), and community to help me to do it again.

Thank you so much for all you have done and are doing for me.  I honestly cannot express in words how much all of your love and support has meant to me over the past six months.  Has it only been six months?  It feels like a lifetime ago I departed for the first time to Costa Rica.  Maybe in some ways it has been, because I am so different from the Kiki that came here; I’ve grown and changed so much, you might not even recognize me when I get back—but that may just be because of how tan I am ;) 

But seriously, sometimes I stop and think to myself “Am I really doing this?  Is this really my life?  Am I ACTUALLY spending my first year out of college (or most of it, at least) working in COSTA RICA??”  It’s amazing to me where God has taken me over the past year alone, that I can’t even imagine where he’ll take me during the next chapters of my life.  I DO know, however, that I’m really excited to see all the places I’ll go and to see all the work God does in my life.

Peace and Blessings,

Kiki