I'm finally here!

Yes, I'm finally here in beautiful Colorado Springs! And I mean, it. is. GORGEOUS.

First of all, I want to thank all of you who were praying so hard for safety on my trip out here. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. The worst part was getting off of Greenville's icy roads!! Once we were out of Greenville, the roads were clear the rest of the way!

TRIP SUMMARY:
Mary Avery (one of my best friends since 6th grade and my college roommate for 2 years) and I left Greenville on January 15th, spent the night in Nashville, then traveled to St. Louis, where we ate lunch and went to the top of the Gateway Arch with Jessica (a friend of mine from my Cordoba study abroad trip). After a few hours in St. Louis, we continued on to Kansas City, where we spent the night, and then spent the entire next day driving across the very flat and usually boring state of Kansas to get to the beautiful Colorado Springs. Fortunately, one of the girls in my Campus Crusade for Christ Bible study is from the Springs, so we stayed with her incredibly hospitable family that night and then checked into our apartment the next day!

I LOVE it here already! It is so incredibly gorgeous! I left a freezing and icy Greenville, SC to arrive at a beautiful, sunny 50-degree Colorado Springs!

After all the FLI students moved into their apartments yesterday, we all gathered at the Focus on the Family campus to have a mini-orientation and dinner with all the students and staff together. There are 44 students total: 33 girls, 11 guys...yeah, I know, shocker.

I've met almost everyone by now and I have been blown away at the sincere kindness and excitement that everyone has here! Everyone on staff is so thrilled that we're here and all the students are so excited to be here. All day today, we started our 2-day orientation schedule and went through the 4 different syllabi for our classes with our profs (which I'll detail in a sec). The FLI staff and our professors are such cut-ups--they had all us students laughing almost the whole time! However, we definitely saw the faculty and staff switch from hilarious to serious when they started to discuss the reason that we're here. When the professors started talking about their heart behind their particular class, and the material that we're going to cover in it, I could really see how sincerely passionate they are about this program, which made me so much more excited. :)

I am living in the program's only 2-person apartment with a super sweet girl named Danielle, who is from New York. We have gotten along so well already and have even opened up with each other about some about things we're struggling with and things we're passionate about. She has been such an incredible blessing already.

Click the link below to see a more detailed description of the 4 classes I'll be taking this semester:
http://www.focusleadership.org/Display.asp?Page=classes

Also, at the bottom of that web page, you'll see a section called "Professional Practicum." That's the internship I'll have while I'm here. From what I understand, we'll be in class everyday from 8:15am to 11:30am on the Focus on the Family campus, eat lunch in the cafeteria there, and then do our internships twice a week in the afternoons. I just found out today that I got my #1 choice for my internship placement (yay!), which is Focus on the Family's Constituent Relationship Management/Fundraising department. I don't have any nonprofit marketing experience, so I am so excited about this opportunity! I told the internship coordinator that I would love to incorporate my Spanish skills somehow too, and she said that Focus' Hispanic CRM department would love to have me help them for a few weeks too! I am just blown away at what God has provided for me here. The staff here truly care about us students and really want us to get the most out of our experience here. Click on the link below to read a little summary of my internship:
http://www.focusleadership.org/Display.asp?Page=practicum-CRM

About a week before we arrived, I volunteered to help with the group's praise and worship band, and then found out yesterday that we were supposed to lead worship that night! But, honestly, it was such a blessing to lead worship the very first night we were together and I'm so excited to help in that area over the next few months.

I have absolutely loved meeting and getting to know so many college students who passionately desire to know God more and delve deeper into what the Christian worldview is all about. It's just so incredibly refreshing and encouraging.

I do ask that you pray for our student/staff retreat this weekend. Please pray that we all get to know each other more so that we can learn to fully trust one another and really become transparent and vulnerable with each other inside and outside the classroom.

Thanks for reading! I love you all and I thank God so much for you. :)