happy birthday!!

Happy, happy Birthday to the best mama a girl could ever ask for!!!!
I am so thankful for you and who you are in my life.
I look up to you in so many ways.
I miss you more then words could ever express, and love you even more.

thunderstorms

I love thunderstorms. There's just something about how powerful, raging, mysterious, and dangerous, but beautiful, soothing, inspiring and comforting they are. As I sat up on the steps of the church in the middle of a very loud one, under the arch, and looked out at the huge sky, I was reminded of the face of my Jesus. It occurred to me that Thunderstorms are a lot like Him. We have no control over storms. They can be extremely unpredictable at times. They are fierce, powerful, and dominating. So is our Jesus.
All too often I put Jesus in a box. I make Him what I want Him to be. I take all the things I like, all the things that feel good, comforting, safe, and then that's how I think of Him. That's not ok. Because when you think about it, that's not honoring Him anyway. That's being shortsighted and that's belittling Him. That's not loving Him in all ways. That's limiting Him to how I feel. That's like setting up boundaries in my heart, and only allowing myself to know the parts of Him that seem safe. That's restricting my love and adoration. When we limit and confine Him to what we want Him to be, we miss out on the chance to know Him completely. We hinder ourselves of learning more about Him. Our God as a whole.


My Jesus is loving, comforting, protecting, soothing, intimate, and a safe refuge. He is a peaceful God. He is personal and He is full of Grace. He is compassionate, and full of Mercy. He loves. He forgives. He is always here.

That's the Jesus that we all run to.

My Jesus is fierce, full of power, mighty, just, angry, jealous, condemning, authoritative, commanding, forceful. He is a warrior. He is supreme, He is sovereign, He is dominant. He is ruler of all.

That's the Jesus I choose to forget about sometimes.

Because it's not sweet and comforting. It doesn't always feel safe and soothing. Here's the thing though…sometimes He's not supposed to. Sometimes He chooses to be fierce and angry. Our god is a God of justice. He is not confined. We may choose that in our hearts, even without realizing it, but He is not.
He demands reverence. We are supposed to fear Him. He is a jealous God. He's not always feel good and comforting. We could never, ever find enough words to adequately display His character. He's indescribable. But we can't just make Him into what we want Him to be. Our hearts should not limit Him.

As I was surrounded by that thunderstorm, by the darkness and the coldness, watching the lightening strike and listening to the thunder roar, I was reminded that like our Jesus, they can be comforting and peaceful, but at the same time they are mysterious, dangerous, powerful, and demand respect. We are called to come to His feet with fear and reverence. To remember His power and control. To be in constant awe and amazement of the God we serve.
We are so little in His huge hands. And that's how it's supposed to be.

HaPpY valentines DaY

Happy Valentines Day!!
Spent the afternoon spreading some love around Rajpur, north India today. We baked and decorated dozens and dozens of heart shaped sugar cookies (even made our own cookie cutter out of sand paper and tin foil...actually quite resourceful) and then delivered them to all our friends, shop keepers, & employees around our little town. It was fun to share and celebrate an American holiday with all of our Indian and Tibetan friends. They all thought it was pretty special. It's cool when something so simple and little, like a plate of cookies, can bring so much joy and so many smiles. In a case like this, I think it really is the thought that counts.
Hope you all have a special day celebrating the ones you love the most!

wedding bells

Last Saturday we were happy to finally have a quiet evening without any company, when our neighbors stopped by. They came bearing an invitation to a wedding. Upon opening the invitation we learned that we've never actually met the bride or the groom, but it's our neighbors cousin.
Now 1st of all, let me just say that we love it when neighbors stop by…they are always welcome. But this particular night we were just looking forward to some peace and quiet without anyone extra…seems like our door has not been shut for the past two weeks. There are constantly people here.
2nd, we don't really know these neighbors very well, and so it seemed a little strange that we would be invited to her cousin's wedding. Guess it's just cultural though. I don't think I'd want a bunch of people I didn't know at my wedding, but in India it seems to just be the more the merrier. I think our whole street was invited.

So anyways, we were told we were invited, and told that we needed to wear saris. We were also told that the wedding started at 7:30, but we should arrive late, because everyone does, and that it ended "when the stars disappear and the sun comes up". An all night wedding…crazy.
So that being said, Mel and I had 3 days to come up with saris that neither of us owned. We went to Dehradun on Sunday to try and find some. Unfortunately, because it was a Sunday, the main sari shops were closed. Ravi told us that it was probably too late to buy them anyway, because there wasn't enough time for them to be made. So we resorted to finding really fancy kurtas instead. Long story short, I found one, Mel didn't. So she decided to just borrow a sari from our good friend Richa. She and I went to go pick it up the next night. After handing it to Mel, Richa said that the blouse had been taken in because Ravi had worn it last and so we might need to undo some of the stitching on the inside. Side note- for those of you who have never seen Ravi, she's tiny. In everyway.
Upon returning home, Mel tried on the blouse…let's just say it definitely needed to be taken back out. We had a good laugh. Not much breathing room.

The next day when our sweet helper Bimla was here, we had her show us how to put it on so that we could hopefully successfully get Mel dressed for the wedding later that night.
For starters, when Bimla walked in the room she started laughing so hard she was crying. I had helped Mel fasten the blouse, and apparently we did it backwards :) We had quite the bonding time with Bimla as she helped us learn how to wrap a Sari. It was pretty funny.

Apparently we didn't learn it very well, because as we were trying to put it back on her around 8:00, it didn't work nearly as well as we were hoping. After about 5 or 6 tries, she headed down our street to our other neighbors, who also happened to be invited to the wedding as well.

By the time the getting ready was dealt with, and Micah & Levi were settled in with Uncle Isaac and Aunt Ravi, we got to the wedding about 8:45. We walked into the venue and there were masses of people EVERYWHERE. It was craziness. When I had asked our neighbor how many people there would be, he told us that 3-4 thousand were invited. I thought that his English was just a little bit mixed up and he meant 3-4 hundred. Nope. Pretty sure he said what he meant. There were at least 2 thousand people milling about. I've never seen anything like it. It was extremely colorful, lively, lots of loud music, dancing, and there was more food then you can imagine. Everyone was dressed fancy, wandering around eating and having a good time. I'm sure we stuck out like a sore thumb, (people were most def staring) but we did fit in just fine as far as dress goes. After about 20 min we found our neighbor Massood, and his family and hung out with them. Aside from the family that initially invited us, they were some of the only people we knew in the entire place. We wandered around eating and meeting people for about an hour and then Masood suggested we go upstairs to the tent to eat dinner. We thought we'd just eaten dinner…he informed us that was just the refreshments. Haha. So we walked upstairs to many, many more people, and much, much more food. The eating was pretty funny, because even though were was tons, and tons of food, and by no means was it going to run out any time soon, you had to be extremely pushy to even get a plate. And then push your way through the food. People were pushing, shoving and elbowing. The males didn't care less that you were a female and much smaller then them, and the fact that you were in "line" went out the window. The older woman were the worst though, which I found pretty hysterical.
We stuck around till almost 11:00 and then decided since it didn't look like anything but eating was happening even remotely soon, we should head home to the boys. As we were driving back up our street, we saw our neighbor, the bride, and a bunch of other girls, just leaving the house. The wedding started at 7:30, it's now 11:00, and the bride is just leaving. Clearly we're living in another culture! It was fun to see/meet/congratulate the bride up close and personal though. Man alive, was she decked out. She looked beautiful.

So anyway, that was our first Hindu, Indian wedding experience. By the end of the night I was thankful I hadn't ended up wearing a Sari. Mel was worried the whole night that it was going to fall off, and it looked cold and hard to walk in. I'll buy and wear one eventually because you just can't live in India for a year and not wear a Sari at least once, but I'm glad it didn't happen to be on that very chilly night :)
It was neat to experience something so cultural like a wedding. Fun to try new traditional foods, and just watch people. Next time maybe we'll actually stay through the ceremony.

A drop in the bucket.

Sometimes I look at this crazy world that we live in and just feel overwhelmed. I feel like a drop in the bucket, and I wonder if anything I'm doing is really making a difference. Or if what I'm doing is making a big enough difference to even matter.

It's interesting though, because living in Rajpur India for 6 months, I've been exposed to a lot more poor, hurting, lost people then ever before, and I've experienced lots of new parts of the world over these last two months, but the thing that my Jesus keeps teaching me, and reminding me about, over and over again, is hope. His hope for His people. For this fallen world.

I see the devastation. I see the poverty. I see the need. I live among some of the poorest of the poor. I know it's world wide. I know the problem is not small.

But my Jesus just keeps reminding me of how big He is. And how great and hopeful His perfect plan for His world is.

It's easy to look around you and feel completely and utterly overwhelmed and helpless. Like nothing you could ever do will make a big enough difference. But what I've experienced over the last 8 months, is that if you choose to live with open eyes you will see it all…all of it. But you will also see God at work. He's all over the place. You just have to learn to recognize where He's working.

While I was gone these past two months, my Jesus spoke to my heart about a lot of things, but one thing that He reminded me of over and over again was that I'm not alone in this. We're not alone in this. He has His perfect plan and He willingly encourages each member of the body of Christ to be an intricate piece to His puzzle. He gives us the opportunity to be part of His plan. And there are people all over the world that have said yes to their savior and His plan.

While I was in Thailand I had the opportunity to meet and spend time with Stanley and Linda Cheng. They are missionaries from Singapore who followed Jesus to Bangkok, Thailand. They live on the AIT campus and do ministry with graduate students. It was a huge encouragement to spend the afternoon with them, getting to know them, learning about their work and ministry, and hearing amazing stories about what Jesus is doing. It really, really encouraged my heart, to see first hand some of what Jesus is doing through this amazing couple.

That night when I got back to my hotel I stood out on the back balcony listening to my ipod. My room was on the 14th floor, and I had an amazing view of the city of Bangkok. Lights as far as you could see…just city everywhere. My ipod shuffled to the song Invasion/Hero, and I actually listened to the lyrics closely for the 1st time.
The 3rd verse goes like this-

Yeah. God is not pleased, man it's clear that His standards missed, Cause the world is rampant with sin, it's an abandonment. Man is feeling stranded, feeling hopeless since his banishment. God is angry at the distortion and the mismanagement. Evil is at work, but don't be thinking He can't handle it, He promised He would do away with all of it, dismantle it. He's put up with this damage in His world, but He's promised us That He'll destroy all His enemies and then He'll walk with us. New Heaven, new Earth, that's where all His sheep dwell, Jesus succeeded in every part of life that we failed. Died the death we couldn't die, paid our price with 3 nails. Began the work He promised, in the end we all will be well. Already beat his enemies and when His Kingdom's realized, all those who oppose Him will see Jesus with through some real eyes. Deliverance is offered us, the hero He is urging us, salvation is exclusive to His people who have turned to trust.

This world is a mess. But God's got this. And somehow, we all get the amazing opportunity to play a small part in it all.



Bangkok felt huge that night. That's all I could see all around me. And Bangkok is just one city among the hundreds in Thailand, and Thailand is just one country among the hundreds in the world. But I was reminded that even when we feel so small, and we know we are just one Katie Sue Linn, in one small part of the world, who can only make such a small difference, there are so many, many, one Stanly and Linda Cheng's out there doing the same thing. All over the world. Jesus was whispering hope to my heart that night.

One drop in the bucket feels so small and insignificant, but when one drop joins with many, it eventually fills the bucket up. As believers, we are all called to different things, but those different things all fit together in the master plan that our creator is weaving together. And we all have one thing in common. Following Jesus with everything we have, and sharing His love with everyone we meet. It's pretty amazing and humbling to think that He allows us to be a part of things. He allows us to join Him where He’s working. And when everyone works together to play their specific role, eventually we get the job done.

friends are good for the heart

Katie Greenway got to Shanghai the day after we got back from Thailand. It was SO good to see her walk through that gate at the airport! Hugging a friend for the first time in 7 months, is just a wonderful thing.

We spent the next 9 days laughing, exploring Shanghai, catching up on life, watching countless office episodes, being stupid, eating lots of pocky, staying up way too late, encouraging eachother, and just making memories together. It was so much fun to all be in China together! Definitely 9 days that will not soon be forgotten. I'm so thankful for all the amazing friends that my Jesus has blessed me with. I've got some great ones.