our God is a cool guy

welcome to my room located in the las vegas dorm complex! i have been here for exactly one week as of today and have tried my best with very limited packing space to make my room feel like me, hence the harry potter fleece blanket. although it has been a week, i still don't have a roommate which has gotten pretty lonely. hopefully that will change soon enough. i have decent internet thanks to my fantastic 2,000 foot long ethernet cable which has been great for keeping in contact with everyone. today was the first day of classes and even though what i am about to say sounds ridiculous, let me first explain. the way that they number the buildings on this campus is not exactly logical or in any particular obvious order therefore, you may have building 239 and then building 247 directly next to it with building 240 being a 5 minute walk in the complete opposite direction. with that in mind, it took me 40 minutes to find my 50 minute biology class today. i was a little bit frustrated to say the least. but hey, i found it, right? now i know for next time. biology was my only class today so i was done with classes at 10 AM today. tomorrow i have lots and lots of linguistics classes all day long which, for those of you that know me, makes me a very happy camper. surprisingly to me, there are tons of international students here from all over the world.  i have new friends from finland, norway, sweden, canada, germany and many other countries. it has been a cool experience because not only am i learning about tswana culture but i am learning new things about places all over the world.

there are an overwhelming majority of americans here including a group of students with campus crusade for Christ who were here for a month and left this morning. these people were so precious and i am really sad that they left today. i remember back in march when i was still at SFA (my home university in the states) i was sitting at starbucks reading this massive book by world gospel outreach when a girl named autumn approached me and started talking to me about the book. i soon learned that she was a part of campus crusade for Christ at SFA and had been apart of one of their summer projects (mission trips) to africa. she invited me to attend some of the campus crusade meetings and look into some of the trips that campus crusade offered. for the last few weeks of school i attended campus crusade and although i was already going to zambia i looked at camous crusades summer projects. i noticed one going to gaborone, botswana from july 1st to august 1st and wondered if i would ever run into them. sure enough i did. furthermore, several posts ago i mentioned a slum/compound area in gaborone called "old naledi" that i felt the Lord really putting on my heart. after talking with these students with the campus crusade trip i found out that they had spent 2 of their 4 weeks working specifically in old naledi with the kids there. they introduced me to the man named matata that they worked with who runs a ministry in old naledi. matata was born and raised there and has an excellent understanding on the problems that transpire in this compound specifically. all of this brings me to my point that our God is a cool guy. if i wouldn't have met autumn back in march who knows if i would have been looking to meet the people working for campus crusade here in gaborone. if i wasn't so creepy about africa and didn't google "worst compounds in gaborone" 3,000 times i wouldn't have known about old naledi. if i wouldn't have met the campus crusade students who knows if i would have ever met matata. everything happens for a reason and He is behind it all. that is why i love my God.