Friday, November 10, 2006

running on a Friday night

Tonight was the first Friday night in about a month where I didn't have a social activity taking place or where I turned down opportunities to go be social. Do you ever have a need to just take time for yourself to think things through and chill out? Well, I decided to go running. I thought two things while I was puffing out white drifts of breath under the street lights' glares:

1. Running is so much more fun when you have cool clothes to run in. (Thanks to Tao, a Chinese MBA student I tutored last year, I have matching running pants and jacket. Black with orange stripes. Sweet. And yes, I mentioned she was an MBA student on purpose--be impressed.)

2. Running really clears your mind and body.

I came home and stretched (which is usually my most favorite part of running), and I reveled in feeling my body relieve tightness. My mind felt open and clear, and I was at peace.

APPLICATION: I have been wrestling with a quote by President Benson for the last little while. He says that the world takes people out of the slums but Christ takes the slums out of the people so they can leave the slums themselves. I am bascially learning how I can work in the "world" and take people out of the slums. I was TIGHT, you might say. I was really struggling, working hard to make things balance. And then I was chatting with my sister late one night, baring my soul, and she said, "Tricia, do you remember why you started this program?" I stopped and looked at her. "So that you could help people stop worrying so much about daily survival and more about accepting the gospel?" The tightness left, and all the sudden my mind was open and clear. Even now the vision and purpose of where I am right now is bringing me so much peace. I saw people in Argentina struggle to survive the next 12 hours. How could they listen to a white missionary tell them about God when their body was screaming for attention? THAT is my target and THAT is my motivation. It's nice to let that sit in my mind.

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