Tuesday, June 20, 2000
10:03 PM, on the computer

We got an e-mail from my sister today, I'm just gonna copy and paste excerpts from it, so here goes:

--"we have done ministry for 4 days , 13 dramas and weīve had 540 SALVATIONS!!!! Tons more healings."

--"the people are SO hungry for God here. Their eyes are so empty then they recieve the Lord and there is life again. Ya know Iīm gonna be way different that I was when I come home. We get fed with SO much of the WORD all the time itīs hard not to change, Lori (one of her mission leaders) is great. I have a great team. The guys are so protective of us"

She talked about some of the stuff she's eaten and the condition of the bathrooms there ("You canīt put toilet paper in the toilets here itīs gross b-c if you do you gotta go get it blecccccch. It smells like urine all over the place.")

But still.... 540 people led to the Lord, that's really cool. It's amazing to think that this is my 16 year old little sister in the jungle doing all this stuff, and then the thing I mentioned the other day about the deaf man, wow.

10:30 PM, on the computer

Right now I'm listening to braveSaintSaturn's debut CD, So Far From Home, and I'm thinking "man this stuff is great!" My favorite track is track 11, Two-Twenty-Nine. It's a great song, but it's so sad... it's about the death of Roper's Grandmother (or Aunt, I can't remember) Aunt Gloria, and it reminds me of how I felt when my grandfather died. I wasn't saved back then, but I do remember that I believed in God and Jesus, and I knew of a Heaven and a Hell and a devil, but anyway he was my favorite person in the world and I remember finding out he died and I felt like my world had come to an end. I was depressed about it for a really long time, and I realize now that it's because I knew deep down that I knew my grandfather was in heaven but I wasn't so sure that's where I was going. I also remember something despicable I did during that time, I was still in the middle of my identity crisis (read my testimony for more on this, it's on February 23, 2000) and I used it as a front to try and cover up one of the many lies I told during this period. Just read my testimony for more, I don't feel like getting into it at the moment. But it really amazes me how people constantly want to look at me for how I used to be. Am I not a new creation in Christ? Were my sins not forgiven and washed away by His precious blood? When, Lord, will people just forget about the past and look at me as you see me? I've been thinking about Ecclesiastes 1:13-18, which says "I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

What is twisted cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.

I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge. Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."