Dear Philothea

This past weekend I went to a girl's conference. The speakers were Eric and Leslie Ludy, authors of quite a few books. Every one there was Protestant (except me, of course), which was kind of awkward when I crossed myself at meal times. I got a few funny looks, but it made me laugh. Anyway, I didn't understand why I had spent $130 on this conference. Friday night and most of Saturday I wasn't getting anything out of it. I didn't get anything out of it until two subejcts came up: prayer and missions work. The first subject, prayer, opened up a whole new world to me. They talked about the consistancy of praying. I'm a very rushed little girl. If I want something done, it needs to be immediately. I've prayed about serious matters quite lightly and infrequently to God, and yet I still wondered why He was taking so long. Um, duh, now I know. I wasn't pushing for it. I was expecting Him to answer me immediately, instead of taking my time to show Him how much I wanted a particular thing. These things consisted of my biological family becoming Catholic, my guardian being healed from her persistent illnesses, fincancial difficulty, ect. So, I began thinking about how I never have time to pray when Jesus decided to let me know that I DO have time, I just spend it unwisely on FACEBOOK. With that said, my Facebook is going to be exterminated. Good.

The second thing: missions work. A long while ago Jesus gave me a hint at what He wanted me to do with my life. It was this: "Love the world." For months all I could think about was loving the world, even though I had no idea what it meant. I even told my family that I wasn't interested in pursuing education or a career. They didn't agree with that, and told me my job was to obey them and that I was probably misunderstanding God's intentions. After that was said, I slowly waned from my pursuit of obeying God. Yesterday at the conference the girls were shown videos of orphaned children/child slaves. I finally understood what God meant when He said "love the world." I'm to go help those children. I'm to save those souls and bring them to Jesus. I'm to gather them in my arms and love them like they've never been loved before. Ugandan children are HUNTED at night. They walked up to 20 miles EACH NIGHT to escape being raped, abused, murdered, or tortured. They have no food. No home. No family. They are alone in this miserable world. I don't know where I'm supposed to go. I just know I need to go. These are very prime years right now. I'm going to be 18 soon, and will be able to do way more things that I've ever been able to do before. There's another young woman in Uganda right now. Her name is Katie. She is 21 years old and already has 14 adopted kids. THAT'S what I want. I've been wasting time dreaming about wedding gowns, and romantic kisses, and a beautiful home with lovely children, when across the world there are starving, beautiful children waiting to be kissed on the cheek by a tender mother.

Anyway, if you could pray for me in this area I would be so grateful. There is absolutely no way I can turn back to my daily life after having seen those videos. There was one video in which two 11 years were sold as slaves in less than 10 hours. TEN HOURS. They were ripped off the street and sold as prostitutes. Another video was about the story of a 21 year old girl who was sold as a prostitute slave. She was forced to have 15 men a day, otherwise she was beaten and starved. There must be something done to stop this!