Texas.

Right, so I completely forgot to relay 2 stories about my drive(s) in yesterday's blog.  The first being: Texas is a land unto itself.  It's so so so weird.  Never have a seen any state, country, people, land or anything with as much pride as Texas.  And I've been here for a total of, what, 3 days?  Seriously, driving down the road every enormous pickup truck had a shiny badge that read "Texas Edition".  C'mon, Texas, seriously?? I thought it was funny.  Could you imagine if New Mexicans had that much pride? Me neither.

Second tidbit is that somewhere between Midland and Dallas (this was about when I was wondering how long I could actually spend in my car alone without screaming just for the heck of it), I passed a temporary sign on the side of the road which read, "Incident Ahead. Left lane closed."  So I stayed in the right hand lane behind the white SUV that I had been trailing for a while when all of a sudden, the car in front of me slows WAY down and I had to slam on my breaks to avoid hitting it.  Then I noticed that there in the median in the middle of the highway was a semi truck on its side which looked like it had been through hell and back.  People were already there starting clean up (recovery, I expect, had already taken place as there was no ambulance), but the sight was shocking.  The hood of the semi was halfway blown off, and the semi itself laid on its side.  I thank God that I was paying enough attention to not run into the car ahead of me and that there was no one following me.  Needless to say, after that I was even more alert than I already was.

Alright, those stories out of the way I can get on to today.  Today I got to go volunteer with Gospel for Asia.  My uncle & my cousin both work there, and my other cousins & my aunt volunteer on Tuesdays.  So I got dressed in my best "business casual" from my suitcase and hitched along for the ride.  When I got there, my uncle gave me a tour of the place.  Now, I've heard of Gospel for Asia before, but until this afternoon I had no idea just how far their ministry actually reached.  The stories I heard today of people desperately in need, not only of physical help but also of spiritual help, were uplifting, amazing, shocking, and convicting all at the same time.  And to hear that Gospel for Asia is not only meeting the spiritual needs of these people but also their very tangible physical needs was encouraging.  Active participation in the gospel looks a lot like that, I imagine.

After the tour, I was put to work.  Stuffing envelopes! Not gonna lie, I got pretty good at it.  After envelope stuffing it was on to the prayer meeting.  Having no frame of reference for some of these prayers, it was a bit difficult for me to truly appreciate it, but it was neat to see the people of Gospel for Asia praying for specific things in specific places and specific people and the expectation that God will DO.  It's faith that I don't have... yet.

So that was today.  Tomorrow its on to other things.  I believe we're hitting a used book store that is located in an old opera house.  Schweet!  And then my cousin & I are gonna try our hand at making Cornish Pasties. No idea how they'll turn out.  She's gonna teach me how to make a pie crust b/c I'm royally awful at baking.

Welp, I'm off to get some sleep.  It's been a long day, and tomorrow promises the same!

TALLY:
still the same... I haven't left Dallas yet!