Once again I find myself apologizing that it's been so long since I wrote a journal entry. My hope was to get back in town last Sunday, and make a journal entry on Monday. Well, every day last week was insanely busy!! Every morning I would tell myself I needed to get online and send some pictures of our vacation to people online...and every night I was kicking myself in the butt for not getting around to doing it! So, here I am. I don't have all 300 vacation photos labeled and ready to send to everyone, so I am just showing you all a few of my favorites (ok, so it's actually over 100 of my favorites!). Maybe one day I'll have all of them in an album on AOL, and will send them to all of you. MAYBE!! FYI, the pictures above aren't in much of any order. After the two hours it took me to get them all on here and labeled. I was out of energy to organize them!
We had a great trip to South Carolina! The beach house was amazing, and we absolutely loved being right on the beach. I've seen the ocean before, I've been to the beach before, but I've never lived on the beach before. I've never been able to watch the tide come in and go out, to hear the waves crashing outside my bedroom all night long, to watch the sun rise over the ocean. It was wonderful. The weather didn't exactly cooperate, we had a few chilly days and one rainy day. The last two days we were there were perfect though! One day we made a trip to Charleston. We stopped at Boone Hall Plantation, just north of Charleston for several hours. It was a great place! Then we visited the Battery, which is where you see the kids crawling all over cannons and such used during the Civil War. You know, the Civil War started right there in Charleston Harbor...and we got to see the actual cannons used that day. And believe it or not, we were actually there, in Battery Park, on the exact day that the war started. Isn't that amazing! After we explored the park and looked out across Charleston Harbor toward Fort Sumter, we took a drive to the city market area of Charleston. Finding a place to park was a nightmare, especially since we were driving a huge (bright red!) 15 passenger van!! But it was really fun walking through the city market, and seeing what all the vendors had to offer. I had dreams of buying a hand woven sweet grass basket...until I saw the price!! Maybe one day...
All in all though, we had a great trip! It was so awesome having so many of our family members under the same roof, and sharing this trip with them. And the best part is that while we were on the beach, Rhinelander got several inches of snow! HAHA Isn't that terrible!!
We have a lot of other important things going on in our lives right now too. The first is that Anna has decided to be baptized in the Catholic church. She is so excited! I'm not sure when she will be baptized yet, there is no way she can join her classmates for first communion (it's next week), so we're not in any hurry. I need to find a Catholic couple to stand up as her godparents, and then talk with Father John about setting a date. I have a couple in mind, but I haven't seen them since I met with Father John last week. I'll be sure to let you all know as this develops. Also, I have decided to enroll in some classes at the Catholic church to learn more about the faith. The classes start up in the fall, and are for adults. Father John says all sorts of people come to the classes, people who are from another denomination who are interested in becoming Catholic (a lot of them are marrying a Catholic and want to become members of the faith for that reason), people who were raised Catholic but have been away from the faith for many years, etc. I am excited at the chance to learn more about it all, and we'll just see where it goes from there. We did attend Mass this morning, which was nice. I'm sure I still stick out like a sore thumb (Father John assured me that wasn't the case, haha), but I enjoy the services, and Anna was thrilled to go.
This week has also been an exciting week for me, as I've finally reached out into the volunteer arena and found myself in demand almost immediately!! There are two groups I am hoping to start working with. The first one is a new group in Rhinelander, just in the process of starting up. It's officially called the Pregnancy Resource Center of the Northwoods WI. PRC for short! They are going to deal with a lot of different pregnancy related issues, including crisis pregnancies, abortion, adoption, infertility, family planning, etc. It's a Christian, pro-life organization, so they willcertainly approach issues much differently than some other organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, or even the health department. The biggest news I have about this group is that they have asked me to be a member of the board, which is very exciting! They invited me to attend a board meeting yesterday at 3:15, and it was great. I am so excited about being a part of this group, and feel like I have a lot to offer them. I have a real passion for this sort of work, and this is going to be the perfect outlet for me to help others through difficult times in their lives. I will be attending volunteer training from 9AM-4PM on Friday, May 4th...and board member training from 9AM-4PM on Saturday, May 5th. There is a trainer coming from Heartbeat International (who we are affiliated with) to do this training, which is a huge honor!
The second group is called the Tri-County Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Wow, that's a mouthful...and I'm not sure if they even have a shorter name they go by! I have been trying to contact this group for a few months about volunteering with them. Yesterday afternoon Pavan and I went to the home show in Rhinelander, and they had a booth set up there (April is sexual assault awareness month). Well, I went right up to the two ladies working there and told them I wanted to help out, if they wanted some help! They were so excited. So I gave them my name and phone number, and went off to look at the other booths at the home show. As we were leaving, Pavan decided to give blood...the community blood center was there. Personally, I didn't really want to join him, so I went back over the their booth and was chatting with them. When they found out I was a registered nurse, they got so excited. They immediately asked if I would be willing to receive SANE training (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner). Apparently the hospital had trained some SANE nurses, but then decided they didn't want to be involved in the politics of it all, so now the program is up in the air in our area. This Friday they are having a meeting with several groups in the community to discuss the program. Well, I sort of laughed and told them...you know, I worked on an infectious disease unit, that's sort of a huge jump to become a SANE nurse!! So, we'll see what happens with all of that.
I just have to acknowledge that amazing things can happen in your life when you turn it over to God's will. He truly has a plan for each of us, but sometimes we fight it so much that our lives end up a miserable mess. Looking back on my life, there are a lot of things I wish I could forget. A lot of things I wish I could sweep under some rug and never think about again. Believe me, I've spend many years just trying to forget certain things about my past. As a Christian, I know that God allows certain things to happen in our lives to bring us closer to Him. Sometimes he puts us through the fire to burn off those impurities that are keeping us from Him. Sometimes we won't accept His will for our lives, and we end up broken, crawling on our knees for help. But you know what?? It's at those moments that we finally look UP!!! We all have to acknowledge that we aren't perfect, that we make mistakes...and sometimes those mistakes are big ones. But they don't define us, and we aren't doing anyone any favors by just sweeping them under a rug. Because you know what I've figured out, what suddenly occurred to me the other day? Maybe God allowed these things into my life for another reason....maybe in His perfect will, He knew that those experiences would give me a unique ability and a unique insight to help other people through hard times in their lives. Maybe He could use me to bring other people to Him!! Isn't that a wonderful thought!
Ok, so I really better get off here. Pavan is on call this weekend, and he has been incredibly busy. Just as he was cooking some brats on the grill, he got called back to the hospital for a ruptured appendix. Poor guy. He was so exhausted from being at the hospital all night last night, and now this. And to top it all off, he's on call tomorrow again. But next weekend we are going camping in the Rambler. Not far from home, but it will be nice to take it out and see how it goes! I know Pavan is looking forward to leaving his pager behind for a couple of days. You know it's bad when you've only been back from vacation for a week, and you're already needing another vacation!!
More later!
Rebecca
