Hi! (:
This is my first blog post, as you might have noticed. I'm really excited to start this blog and see where it goes. Okay, so to start off with, my name is Beatrice, but people call me Bea. (: I'm currently attending Heritage Bible College and taking the One Year Global Adventures program. :) Which is why I'm writing this blog in the first place. This is my homework assignment so that I can incorporate the community into my journey this year to Cameroon, Africa! :) I'm super pumped for it & God has really been preparing my heart for this trip and teaching me about Him this year & I can't wait to see what He has in store for the rest of the year :)

Thankyou to everyone who has been praying for me, I appreciate the time that everyone has invested in making this year happen for me :)

This semester I'm most excited to actually go to Cameroon, and above all, to see the amazing things that God is going to do through us. :) I know that he is going to be the most important factor this semester, and I trust that He is going to teach us so much & I'm super excited!

However, I'm nervous about the work load. The work at Heritage is ridiculous, and last semester I was known for staying in my room and never coming out. This was really hard for me because I'm a very social person, but the schoolwork took over all my time & I was oftentimes very depressed and lonely. I'm striving to not let that happen again, but it kills me to not get work done too. We'll see what happens, I know God has a plan & I'll put up with the work if it means obeying Him.

That leads me to what i learned on my Christmas break. I had an amazing, relaxing, fun time back at home & I realized the joy that I had been missing all semester. I seriously considered not coming back to school. However, God taught me the classic "trusting in Him," throughout the Christmas break. To begin with, I was approached with the opportunity to accompany three of my friends who were singing at a brethren Christmas service, by playing guitar. I'm a beginner in guitar, and I'm not very confident in my guitar skills, not that I have much at all :P I decided that I would get over my stage fright and unconfidence, and just do it for fun. The day of the Christmas service I was on facebook, and I read a girl, Andrea, on my Global Adventure team's status & it said, "He who does not have Christmas in his heart, will not find it under a tree." I really thought about what that meant in terms of Christ being the celebration of Christmas, and that the realization of that is where we find true joy in our holiday, and so on... Later on that night I was sitting in the service with my friends, almost ready to go up, and all of a sudden I felt this intense pressure to say something about what I had been thinking of & our song, "How Many Kings," fit the theme perfectly. However, I was in a brethren church, and I was scared that even if no one said anything, that someone might be offended if I were to speak before we did our song. However, when we went up, my friend forgot her lyrics & I had the perfect opportunity to share what had been on my heart. I realize, that I would have never done that, but somehow I know that it was God who gave me the courage. I know now that I was probably making a bigger deal than it was, and I have no idea if anyone was offended or not, but, as far as I know, I was the first woman, and probably teenager, to ever do that at that church & someone from the church even came up to me afterwards to encourage me on what I had said. Once again, God taught me to trust Him, and He'll take care of the rest, and through going back to the basics of the Gospel, I really experienced the true joy of Christmas.

How many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many Gods have poured out their hearts
To romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?