please pray for my lana (my roomie).
as some of you know shes deployed to afganistan and heres part of a recent email i received from her after i sent her an email asking what happened on her base (it was in the news) and how she was doing physically, emotionally and spiritually. (i did get her permission to share this and she asked for prayer also as the elections are happening in afganistan right now which makes it more dangerous)

heres the email...

I'm ok... a car bomb hit our main gate, killed 7, injured 91 and blew up my room. I was at work, outside when it hit. I didnt really have a clue what was going on. No Americans were killed. I feel for the families and people that were lost though. I cant imagine. These people have to live in fear every day of their lives. It just isnt fair.

Physically I'm good. :) Praise God.

Emotionally...not so much! I'm pretty much miserable. I'm just so ready for this nightmare to be over!!! I mean really, when does it stop.

Spiritually...God's good. I'm so thankful for all he's done. He's loved on me SO much and blessed me beyond anything I could possibly deserve.

I miss you. I cant wait to come back! Then I cant wait to get to AMERICA for good! I found out today that I'm going to Alabama. Again, not necessarily where I wanted to go but it's where God wants me. :)

Pray for me!

Lana

so this last week has been filled with crazy amounts of time with kids. ive been meeting tons of new kids who are moving here and ive had to say some really hard goodbyes to kids that i love a lot. but here are some picture highlights from this last week.
shiv and morgan (morgan wrote in my last newsletter for those of you that get that) came over to paint and make brownies

gabby and aiesha playing settlers of catan with me (shortly after this picture i went to a dinner to say bye to aiesha)

so i was house sitting (teenager sitting) for brook and aaron (her brother) while thier parents were out of town and brook had a while ago asked if she and devynn (the other girl in the picture) could sleep over at my house and "sneak out" so this is us sneaking out at 1am to go to the park.



shiv and morgan came back over for frisbee golf and other adventures

morgan got her frisbee caught in the bush

but we got it out

taking pictures while youre driving is really safe (shiv was trying to be a creeper in the background and she did a fantastic job)

matt, one of several new kids i met this week, trying out the zipline in my town

today...actually yesterday, was my birthday, well its still my birthday in california, i guess thats a benefit of living in europe, 33 hours of birthday...anyway, it was great. i felt extremely loved and it came at such a good time (im well aware that it comes the same time every year) because id just been kind of feeling disconnected with how much id been gone this summer. i had a group of friends come over and we grilled out, drank good wine, ate a lot of cake and played pictionary, it was really wonderful, especially since i had such low expectations for today.
perhaps one of the stranger things that happened was receiving this text from my cell phone company "Sehr geehrte Frau Wallace, T-Mobile sendet Ihnen die besten Gluckwunsche zu Ihrem Geburtstag"
basically, 'miss wallace t-mobile sends you best wishes on your birthday'.
i didnt know phone companies did that. so random.

simon and louis grilling out

louis and rachel with the cake they decorated for me

kim enjoying the frosting more than the rest of us