grace, love and the metro.

Things here in Virginia have been going wonderful.  I can honestly say that I am well adjusted and am enjoying my internship (I have been for a while, this is just a late message).  This past week has flown by I can't believe I only have one and a half weeks left here.

The metro is probably the place where I have done the most thinking this summer.  The place where I have realized how stinking blessed I am.  I have a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, friends and family that love me to pieces and a God that offers me never ending grace.  Coming here has made me realize how much support I have back home; I have wonderful friends, families and neighbors.  If I would have stayed at home for my practicum credit this summer I would have never realized how much I am loved.  While also being here, I've seen how awesome Jesus really is and how much love and grace He has poured onto my life.  A love so great that shouldn't be kept all to myself, but one that should be shared.  Shared in the states and across the world; like Thailand.  Which I'm excited about, super excited, but I'm trying to focus on finishing up my internship first.

Along with blessings, I've realized how broken and powerless I really am.  That I was worthless, yet God still gave up His son for me.  Seeing how powerless I am this summer, helped me see how powerful my Jesus really is and how wonderful it is that He is able to work through me if I allow Him.  Oh man, it overwhelms me how awesome Jesus is, while at the same time makes my heart smile.

work, but no cheezburgers.

I feel like I never tell you guys about what I'm actually doing with my internship.  That is mostly because nothing too exciting happens while I am work.  I'm not bored to death or anything, but no fascinating stories to share with the world.  Well the other day as I was drinking my chai I almost died from choking on it, but that's about all my excitement here.  Speaking of chai no where around here sells chocolate chai; only good ol Olney,IL has it apparently.  Anyways...

I'm still updating/formatting CV's and starting to work on setting up LEAD's email update (which you should all join).  Last week wasn't too busy, but it was productive.  We were all able to stay at the office all week and attack our to do lists and pwn them.  Which has been nice, because the last few weeks things have been crazy and we didn't have much time to just set and do our work.  I feel like this coming week will also be a laid back week, but watch me eat my words on Wednesday.  So yes, just fun office work for me to do, it's actually not that bad, just something I wouldn't want to do for the rest of my life.  For this summer though this work has been entertaining.  Even though its not as fun as finger painting, taking naps, and having picnics with my bff 3-5 year olds, a lot of growth has occurred.  Growth this old bird needed to partake in.

Half Way Suckers!

The beginning of this week marked the halfway point for my internship. Woah dang!  It went faster than what I thought.  I remember the first week thinking, what did I get myself into, this is going to take forever and a day.
Yet I'm half way through thinking I survived and there is little time left. Ha sometimes I am a drama queen.

Being half way through this journey God has blessed me with (yes blessed), I can't help but be thankful for what Jesus has done for this poor soul.  I'm not going to lie the first couple weeks were slightly miserable (remember dramatic).  Jesus was stretching me and I was being a complete grumpy pants with Him.  However, that stretching process was what I needed.  I needed to be thrown out in the deep end and have absolutely no control, to where all I could do was hold on to Jesus and trust Him with my life. With the stretch I was able to learn and see that I actually have no control what so ever, that I am completely powerless; that I just need to trust Him and everything will be ok.  Granted I haven't mastered this and will have to work on it my entire life, and God's wonderful sense of humor will always reminds me of that.  I've also learned that I'm going to have to make a conscious choice every day to turn and follow Jesus.  My whole life is going to be a stretching process.  It might not be the most enjoy thing, but will be the most beneficial.

Along with being halfway, leadership roles of Wycliffe staff are passed down to the interns.  So my leadership position is for being the leader of the leadership development team.  The leadership development team has to conduct a Thursday class to help the interns become leaders. So part of my task is making sure the class goes good and everything gets done; fun times for me.  It's really not that bad, I just need to get off my lazy butt and do it.

paths.

"I think God is teaching you how to be still" is the quote from my mentor this week. ummm Jesus why do you always have to be correct.


So this week, I have realized some amazing things.  At first with this internship, I was wondering what on earth I was doing here, but this week I remembered that the main reason for this internship was to see what I wanted to do with my life.  With talking to numerous people about life and what I should do, my brain kept coming back to social work.  People were like so how does Wycliffe fit in with CRJ...umm it doesn't is usually what I would answer.    Then I would talk about how I would probably end up doing social work or working with people. 
So this week I went to a home group/bible study, but before it the lady picking me up, was actually a social worker and knew I was thinking about doing social work with my life.  So, being a good social worker she gave me encouragement to be one and tried to recruit me to her field.  Then we talked about our strengths in our leadership class and when thinking about my new ones and how I use them; all my responses were all like I wan't to help mend broken people or help build up people and such.  These were all little nudges from Jesus.


During all this happening in my life, I still had forgot that my plan for this internship was to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.  Then out of the blue, I remembered and was like oh yeah, Jesus thanks for reminding me.  So, even though I won't be working with Wycliffe for my life, I know I will be working in the social work field.  Which is really broad and I'm not for sure where in this field I'll be working, but I know Jesus has a plan.  I'm excited about this plan though, I love helping people and that is what is in store for my future.  I guess people helping was something I was always going to do, but never accepted the thought.  I didn't think I would be cut out for it, but Jesus has equipped me with the tools and now I know a small detail of my future plans.

fire?

This week has been interesting, emotional, encouraging, thought provoking and uplifting.

How I got the idea the that being molded and changed for Jesus was going to be a painless process, boggles my brain.  Change is not easy or pain free.  It isn't a one time thing where, I go, "ok Jesus here's my life, fix me" and bam your life is fixed and your walking through a meadow with the LORD.  Instead its Jesus taking you by the hand and helping you through His refining process.  In other words, He drops you in a patch of rose bushes, where it can be a beautiful thing, but when you are in the middle of all those roses, you are constantly being pricked by the thorns.  (my intentions for this post was to talk about God's refining fire and i'm talking about flowers; ha i'm such a farmers daughter)

Change though is good and should always be occurring.  and yes those words just came from tricia thacker, hater of change.  However, Jesus is teaching me that change can be good, even if isn't the most pleasant thing in the world.  That we need to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives and allow Him to change us, while allowing His power to flow through us and impact the world.

thief.

Today at church, Jesus slapped me upside the head (again) with the whole comfortability thing.

The sermon was from Malachi where God is telling the Israelites that they have robbed Him.  That God gives all of us everything we need to show His glory to the world, but we take what He gives us and use it for our own selfish wants and desires to make us comfortable. BAM! We take stuff of Gods and keep if for ourselves to be happy.  I, tricia thacker, take Gods wonderful gift of love and mercy and store it up for my own safe keeping.  I steal from God.  I am a dirty little heathen. Yet God still wants us to return to Him.  This thought is so incredible to me.  That we abuse the gifts God gives us and He still has a desire for us to be with Him. Crazy.  Also that its not about the act that we personally do, but that the act of giving to the LORD whether through money or time, is us having bonding time with our creator.  That is what truly matters, using the tools he has given us and using them with Him.

As I was setting in church, I thought to myself how much of a thief I really am.  So many times I ask for God to help with this or that, yet He has already given me enough tools to help the world.  I have just taken His tools and used them for selfish reasons to help my life and not others.  So Jesus was telling me, tricia I have given you enough strength and love to give the world, so get up and do it and we will have a great time doing it together.

Also today I talked to Margery an elder lady that works in the SIL office about her life and work with Wycliffe.  It was amazing how encouraging her story was, that she didn't always know what she was doing, but God always had a plan.  Just the faith and trust she had in Jesus, gave me so much hope.  God has given me all that I need to survive, we may think its not enough, but it is.
Surrendering and all is wonderful, but acts of God's glory have to follow with it.

my first work week

So I have finally been doing what I have been planning and preparing for since December this past week.  I can't lie and say that it has been the best time of my life, but overall it has been a great experience so far.  The work I have to do and the people I work with are wonderful, its just been myself that has gotten in the way of having the "best" experience.  The adjusting to a new life style change and different surrounding just hasn't been my favorite part.  I am doing a lot better thanks to Jesus and everybody's prayers.  I was just at first feeling inadequate and worthless at this job, because I wasn't seeing how this was going to benefit me in anyway, which shouldn't matter cause its not about me.  But these were just negative doubts that were being hurled at me from the lil annoying devil.  And it didn't help that I was homesick, so basically I've been dealing with culture shock this past week. However throughout this week, I've talked to people that work with LEAD and it has given me motivation to continue with my work.  I always do better when I'm busy with something, that way its not just me and my thoughts eating away at my soul.

THE WORK! So basically I just do what my supervisor tells me to do.  He has given me a few projects to do like uploading a gazillion pictures to flickr and formatting curriculum vitae's and then me and Mariah have to both figure out how to organize/set up their library.  So throughout the day we work on these projects while also having meetings that informed us more about LEAD and we also met with different people that worked in our office and other individuals with LEAD.  While also on Tuesday's and Thursday's we attend our online internship classes of leadership training and faith and culture class thing.  This week though we got the privilege to take off work on Wednesday and go to DC so that was fun.  It was a great week over all though.  I still really don't know why I'm here, but I know this is where Jesus wants me, so I will attempt to do His work.