Pumpkin Carving!

Hey everyone! This is my first time to ever carve a pumpkin, so I thought I would show you pictures of this fun fall day I had with some of my roomies. The first picture is of me and Christie picking out the "gunk" and pumpkin seeds from our pumpkins.

We separated the seeds and then the second picture is of Melody, my other roomie, putting them on cookie sheets and covering them with oil and salt to make a really good pumpkin seeds snack. Ever had it? Well, this was all a first for me, believe it or not. So, the last picture is the final product of all our carving labors. Christie's is the one on the far left, mine is in the middle, and Melody's is on the right. Christie and I sort of cheated and printed off some ideas off the internet, but it's not like we didn't work at it. If you can't really tell, mine's supposed to be three blind mice. Melody was the more creative one who decided on her own design. Anyways, it was a lot of fun to just hang out on a Saturday afternoon with two of my roomates and do fall things. :)

Aside from this fun stuff, life is going well for me. I've been learning to take work one day at a time. I'm trying not to look too far into the future and worry about what I'll be doing years from now, and I'm also trying not to even look a few days ahead to something else. I find that when I do that, I don't put all my effort into the people and the relationships I feel God wants me to strive toward. It's hard not to get jaded when for the past 4 months I've seen more than a thousand patients come through our facility, several of them more than once.

However, things really hit home this past week when I found out that one of our patients, James B died suddenly, perhaps of overdose, they are not sure. It was just very shocking to hear this, when just a month ago, I had some really great and in-depth conversations with him. He was a really neat guy, but he was just caught by this addiction. He desired so much to come to the Lord and understand what a life following Him looked like, but this addiction kept tripping him up. I wonder whether he is with the Lord right now or not. God has reminded me through that news just how precious each conversation is and each person's situation. I find myself having to check where my motive is, and, if it's just to get through another day, I need to redirect myself. Sure, I don't know whether I'll be in this for years or just a little while longer, but while I'm at Gateway, I'm going to give it my all until the Lord leads me somewhere else. So, that's where I'm at for now. Thanks for listening. :)