God's Plan Not Mine

From the early on in my teenage years God has been teaching me that he is always in control. I may try to plan my future, but then God has planned differently for me. When the unexpected turns in the road come up, at the time I couldn't understand what God was doing, sometimes I'd get mad.
Now looking back at the what I had planned at age 14 and what God planned, I can tell you his was a lot better, even though there was pain and struggles. An ankle surgery that forced me to give up dance, a broken foot that wrecked my summer plans and wouldn't heal to 100%. Not getting a job when I wanted to, broken relationships. So many of these things ending up bring good things into my life.

If I had things hard things happen I wouldn't have done Art school, I wouldn't be doing photography. I wouldn't have gone on that amazing art mission trip to Italy and Moldova. and most importantly I wouldn't have met Sean (my husband). And we wouldn't be expecting our first child in December.

Here's what I imagined my life to be when I was young.
- Keep dancing till I finished high school
- Age 18: Get a Job
- About age 20-21: Start date a guy from church
- About age 21-23: we'd get married
- Around age 25: start having a family.

Pretty boring don't you think? Well, I can imagine God was laughing at my imaginary future. I had no idea, that by my 21st birthday I'd be married and pregnant! God is good his plan is best! With the struggles he brings blessing and I so thankful for all he's taught me through it.

I don't know what my future will be like, But I know God has a plan and that I can trust his plan.

The Beginning of We

Sean and Deanna were in the same painting class with MSOA the spring term of 2014, and occasionally spoke while working on they’re paintings. They both ended up going on the MSOA College Beach Retreat in June (2014), where they played quite a bit of pin pong together. They laughed and made jokes. Every outing around the beach they always found the other not far off and if you see any of the pictures of that trip you will find that to be true. Was it a coincidence or intentional? If so who was following who? If you asked Sean or Deanna they’d say it was both. Though they tried not to be obvious, even to each other.

Sean 5th person to the right in the white shirt/brown jacket and Deanna left of him in the pink shirt.

After a summer with no contact aside from one brief email, they were both excited to see each other when the next school term started. They continued as friends, but always wondering if the other liked them. Until December 11^th 2014 when Sean asked Deanna a question that was the start of their love story.

Deanna remembers right before Sean formed the words, she had thought “I wonder if he likes me?”. She hadn't imagined that he'd answer that thought so quickly.

It didn’t take long for things to change from “I..” to “We...” and now we are going to be wed and we shall be till death do us part. 

I'm Engaged!!

Time has gone by so fast, in 5 days from now it will have been a month since the love of my life got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. It's almost been a whole month of having this beautiful ring on my finger, I'm engaged! I really can't believe it's been a month, well 26 days to be exact. I still remind myself (and Sean) that we're ENGAGED!




For those of you who don't know much about my fiance Sean, here's a few things I like about him;

•  He's very creative in Fine art, Digital art, Lego art, Stop-motion, music, and much more. Plus we met at Art school so I really like that he's creative otherwise we probably wouldn't have met.
• He as a passion for missions and serving God. 
• He can cook! Thank you, Jesus! For those of you that know me well, know that I dislike having to cooking meals. I always hoped that the man I would marry could cook, so I don't have to every day.
• He's patient and kind.
• He makes me laugh so much.

There are much more reasons for why this guy has won my heart, but I don't want to get all mushy on you. That's all for now, I'll probably be posting how our relationship started on here soon.

God's Love and Exhibition Time!

Hey everyone!
So much work has be going on that I haven't had an opportunity to sit down with my computer to write anything besides for my writing assignments. God has done a lot of work in me, and I'll try to write about what he's done with me. Here's one little highlight:

I know that the bible says that God loves us, but I always felt like I was a disappointment and that he couldn’t possibly love me unconditionally. I wasn’t worthy of his love and that he couldn’t love me because I have sinned so much. I would hear people tell me that God loved me, but I just couldn’t or wouldn’t totally believe them because I was listening to the lies and reminders from Satan of sin I have done that God hates sin, so he couldn’t love me. I started to try to remove the lies instead trust in what the bible says about God’s love, but I still doubted them because I hadn’t heard God say it to me. I hadn’t heard him say that he loves me with his voice, and I think part of why I didn’t believe is because I have felt like I've had a lack of affirming words and people saying they loved me in my life.

In my quiet reflective time I started to think of the story about the prodigal son and how the father ran to his filthy son and embrace him, and how the Father is God. Then I heard the words “I love you.” God, the heavenly father loves me as I am.

That's one thing, there's a lot more but I'll update now on what is happening and how you can pray.

Today we set up our artwork in the building we're using for our exhibition. We are opening the exhibition tomorrow night, pray that we'd have a great hit off and that all of us visual artist will be open and engaging with the guest that come. 

And in two weeks I'll be packing up to go to Moldova.

It's been a month?

The time has been going by so quickly. Learning, Creating, and worshiping God. So much has happened, and I can't begin to recap what's gone on this past month. I'll just let the pictures tell the story.

a quick 1 hour drawing with pastels

My favorite Italian food of the Abruzzo region (where i'm staying) "Arrosticini" it's lamb meet on a skewer.

Italian Welcome!

-January 24th/25th- First Day

A lot of traveling, airplane food, and passports.

-January 27th- 

Tonight I shared my portfolio with everyone in the school, sharing the story about my paintings. I was so nervous as I usually am when I do public speaking. And of course do to the alphabetical order my last name falls in I went first, I had some clumsy moments. Knocked over a music stand and my mouth went dry to where I couldn’t say a word properly. Yet at the very end after all the other visual artist had shared, I was encouraged by how many people came up and told me what piece they liked. Each person liked a different painting or drawing that I show on the slides, and it was so encouraging and motivating to see people being blessed by my work and being excited to see what I create while I’m here. 

-January 30th-

Today we finished the training of Worldview, which was very eye opening how we view the world differently. Then we went on a trip to Castelli (which is a town close by), we got to wounder around the town, then we visited an art school there that specializes in ceramics. We watched a student working on the wheel with  some clay, but he found imperfections (hard pieces) in the clay, so he had to throw it out and started over to a beautiful piece (pictured below). It was a reminder to us that if we are hard in places God can't form us into the masterpiece he wants to make.

 And more pictures to come. ;)