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I took a couple months off from blogging while home for the semester, but I am back to update you just a little about what is next for me! At the end of January I will be heading to Antigua, Guatemala to attend a program called Center For Global Action (CGA). This is the same program that I blogged and wrote letters about back in July. I will be in Guatemala for four months and I will be living in a house with the staff and other interns. We will be working in an orphanage for three days a week, having classes on orphan care and long term missions (as well as other subjects) and I will be mentored one-on-one by one of the incredible staff members there. I am so excited for this opportunity and cannot wait to see what the Lord does while I am in Guatemala! Ill be blogging more about all of that in the future, but for now I wanted to write a little about WHY I chose CGA.

I've always known I wanted to work with children. I remember the strange looks I received as a kid when teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. While my friends were saying they wanted to be pilots, firefighters and doctors, I always said the same two things. I wanted to be a mom and I wanted to work at an orphanage in Africa.

Life continued and as I have gotten older I still feel the same way. I'm less particular about where I end up, but I know that wherever I end up, I will be working with children.

My favorite mission trips in high school were the ones where I got to love on babies. My first job was doing childcare at my local church and if you can believe it - ten years later, whenever I am in Little Rock, I still work there! My favorite three months on the World Race were spent in Ecuador, Thailand and Swaziland. In Ecuador I got to love on children with special needs that I still think of, and miss, daily. In Thailand I was given an entire class of fourteen 1^st graders and had to attempt to teach them for an entire month. It was hilarious, it was disastrous and I played about 500 rounds too many of Little Sally Walker. In Swaziland I spent my afternoons tutoring kiddos, helping with homework and, more often than not, reading books or playing in the sand pile.

So when I was given the opportunity to go to Guatemala, through an organization I am already familiar with, to be mentored and taught and to serve in an orphanage, all while living alongside Christian believers, I jumped on it.

My “why?” for attending CGA in Guatemala is simple: God has given me a passion for children and a desire for them to know how loved they are, both by people and by God. CGA will further those passions and teach me how to physically live them out, while getting the experience I desperately want and need!

I don't know if I will end up in the United States, or some other country, but what I do know is that I want to use the passions and talents that I have been given and I want to grow in them in whatever ways I can! I truly believe that CGA will be a HUGE learning experience and it will be such a great stepping stone to whatever is next for me!