Chapter 11:12 - Post Numeral Duo

Maybe I mixed Spanish and French.
Anyway.
Hola from the real Big Apple. I’m actually here. Settled, living, breathing, and drinking in NYC. Spring is here. The glorious sunshine gave me a tiny baby tan the other day. The flowers are in full bloom, and walking down the street is a wonderful combobulation of daffodils, dogwood trees, trash, a fish market, and the occasional whiff of bus exhaust.

Every other face I meet is a different nationality. Hindu woman with a red dot on their foreheads. Muslim ladies in beautiful flowing hijab. Dear old wrinkled Chinese men selling hot soup. Mexican taco trucks, the Halal Guys, Bengali girls going home from school in uniform, and pretty much everything else in between. It’s such a wonderful, beautiful, drastic, sad clash of culture, light, and darkness. Anything from walking past the buddhist temple and seeing a monk perform a ceremony over a new vehicle, to the massage parlour two doors down with suspicious activity. The sun rises and set a every day over the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Everyday thousands of people get up, drink coffee, and go to work. They live a meaningless existence. Pain that tears their lives and hearts Into shreds. And the incredibly beautiful part is that I have the privilege of living with these people and speaking life to them. I can identify with pain. We all have tears in our eyes sometimes under the facade of happiness and fulfillment. But even in the middle of it all, Jesus speaks life and peace and truth. Truth that sets people free. It’s the glorious news of the gospel that gets me every time.
Before I left people asked me, “You we’re born and raised country, are you sure you want to go to the city?” I honestly wasn’t sure how it was going to go, but by the time March 30 came around I couldn’t have been more happy to leave. I’ve said it a hundred times, I’ll say it a hundred more: Gods timing is always perfect. His grace is always sufficient. His love never fails. I fell in love with the sounds sights smells and people. The sound of sirens blasting down my street at 2:30 AM gives me an opportunity to pray for the situation requiring an ambulance. The never ending amount of people Give me so many opportunities to pray for them as I walk to and from class. Life can be spoken at every corner.

Has it been easy? Not by a long shot. Just because I left the chicken air doesn’t mean the last few months of my life have stopped effecting me. Remember how I told you God brought me here for a reason? Yeah, well, I still believe that. Last week felt like a loosing battle. There was a war from my brain space. Things happening at home brought back a lot of fear and anxieties, and I felt like I couldn’t focus and had nothing to give during outreach times. But good long talks with God and my mentor helped me to see that once again, surprise surprise, I needed to surrender. God clearly asked me one evening, “Bethany, do you trust me enough to keep you safe and take care of you regardless of what is happening around you?” I had to honestly answer with a “No.” God is faithful. I can’t get done talking about how good he is. He brought me out of the brain fog and set my feet on rock. For some reason it’s so much easier to chose the path of control and compromise. But being humble and broken enough to be willing to trust him completely is what brings healing. I pray you feel Jesus love for you tonight.

Peace and good tidings from your absent penguin. ✌🏼