Journey to the Center of the Earth

The title of this blog that has outlined all of my adventures is titled Journey to the Center of the Earth. When I left for DTS, I had two goals in mind- 1) to know God in a deeper, more intimate way. I wanted to get to truly know my Creator who is good, trustworthy, kind, compassionate, and gracious because I didn't know Him from those perspectives. 2) To get to the center of myself and essentially fix the very broken foundation that existed. One day on outreach, near the end, I realized that I reached both of my goals. I had found the center of myself, I had journeyed down to the center of the earth, and I can say that it was a hard process. Geologically speaking, the center of the earth involves intense heat and like magma and stuff. To travel there (besides essentially being impossible) would be probably more of a feat than getting to the moon (I am no geology expert, so I could be totally wrong on that fact).
Over DTS, I found God in amazing ways. I found a Creator who has immense love for His creation, a love deeper than you and I could remotely understand. I found a King who rules with justice but who also is slow to anger and deeply merciful and compassionate. I found a Father, who literally gave up the one most precious thing, and I found a Son who was willing to lay down everything- all for me. That truth in its wholeness is mind blowing. Right now, I've been captivated by a few verses in Titus 3- "At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life." He did it all simply to make me an heir, simply to adopt me as His child because He wanted a relationship with me. What greater love exists that one who completely empties Himself, laying down the incomprehensible glories of heaven, so that He can have a relationship with me?
I found God in the little things from the incredible nature around me to the friendships formed. I found God through amazing lectures and amazing stories of others. I found God as we emptied ourselves on outreach. I found God in so many places and in so many people.
Through this time, God rebuilt the foundations that I stand on- the foundations of my faith, the foundations of who I believe I am, the foundations of everything. He taught me how to actually replaces lies with truth- even if I can only manage to focus on a very elementary truth. He taught me to fight for myself because He said I was worthy to be fought for. Are there still moments of struggle? Yes, I am human after all. There will always be struggles in life of some kind. But in the midst of struggle, I've learned to lean and depend on Him. It's beautiful.

So, since I have been talking about the center of the earth... While we were on Tanna, where we stayed for 2.5 weeks in the bush with the most amazing family, God blessed us with the amazing opportunity to go to the top of Tanna's active volcano. Yes, that is correct. Our team was on top of an active volcano that was technically exploding. Thankfully, it was a "sleepy" day and was only at an activity level 2 of 5. We even performed our dance on top of the volcano for some of the tour guides that were waiting around. (Tourists go on tours of the volcano all the time, so what we were doing was exactly unusual for a tourist on Tanna. However, because of the risk, it's pretty expensive to go up, and God totally provided for us to be able to go up!) It was really amazing to see the volcano doing its thing and shooting up some magma!