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i'm back in grapevine from my week off, and what a great week it was. the Lord blessed me with tremendous rest and quality time spent with people i love. here's some of the highlights...

--swimming with madison on friday in her new pool.
--meeting cayce's kindergarten class and being bombarded by the cute randomness of 5 year olds. i.e. "hey guess what...i have a dog that pooped on my sister." pretty cool kid...
--jumping off the rope swing with gregs at least 100 times at lake travis, and watching her land on "the bull." p.s. thanks for an amazing weekend cal.
--playing "signs" with some of my favorite people in the world (once at the lake, once at the mansion) and laughing harder than i have in a long time...i love my friends!
--driving 3.5 hours to abilene at 6 am on 2 hours of sleep in a torrential downpour while demetrius slept the whole way...wait a minute....
--worship with my family sunday, and the gentle words of eddie.
--a humbling night of basketball with zach and john mark. newsflash...i'm old.
--golf with my dad and wooden bat batting practice with my brother and some ball-playin' friends.
--eating at cahoots, little panda, joe allen's, and lytle...need i say more.
--having dinner with some former GCOCers, now wildcats in my parent's dining room.
--did i mention playing "signs" a.k.a. the best game ever with my friends? absolutely hilarious!
--just sitting in the living room at night talking with mom and dad. speaking of that...
--sitting down for meaningful conversations with people who've touched my life. that's something i miss about being here, but i loaded up on it this past week.
--taking in an intramural softball game of my club buddies and bumping into so many faces whose smiles and kind words lifted me up.
--dinner with the moudy's...which could be the name and idea for a sitcom.
--driving back to grapevine.

there are too many other wonderful people and occurences to list, but there's a few for ya. and as wierd as my last one might sound, it felt good to be driving back here. this has become my new home, and will be for some time, which i'm very excited about. i feel like the Lord has put much on my heart this past week, so i should have much to share and write about it.

before i left abilene i found a small wooden star in one of my bags i thought i had lost last summer in ukraine. it was with some friendship bracelets i had from kazakhstan that i used to carry with me every where i went for 3 years. needless to say i was ecstatic to uncover these precious momentos. written on the flat wooden star is the word "Mizpah," which has come to have a significant value in my life. that is what Laban named a pillar where he and Jacob had met. there he said these words, "May the LORD keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other." (Genesis 31:49) these words have found their way back into my pocket, and are always in my heart.