Without Borders | Sin Fronteras

For those of you who don't know, I am currently working as a substitute bilingual interventionist in a K-4 dual language program at a local elementary school. Now, you're probably wondering "what is a bilingual interventionist and what do they do?" The answer to this question is a bit complicated but I will try my best to give a good explanation.  As a bilingual interventionist I mainly work with small groups of students and provide extra reading intervention/assistance in Spanish. My students spend half of the day learning in English and the other half learning in Spanish. During the Spanish half of the day, I go into each classroom for about a half hour to work with groups of students and help them develop reading strategies, comprehension skills, and phonetic awareness.  Now that I've briefly explained my role, I'm going to move on and share a few things that I have learned and observed about bilingual education over the past few weeks.

Well...over the past few months I have started writing a few blog posts and I haven't finished a single one . So, since I seem to be much better at posting updates on Facebook, I have decided to share some of my posts from Facebook on my blog as well. I will also (eventually) add more posts and content to my blog that are not posted on Facebook, but, for now, I'm going to start with sharing posts so that my blog gets updated more often.  *I will also try to post most things in English and Spanish to help challenge myself in my language abilities  I hope you enjoy reading! _____________________________________________________________ English Today I ran across this beautiful bilingual worship song from the Urbana missions conference back in December 2015 and I thought I would share it with all of you! (I'm actually somewhere in the audience of this video and this conference is where I first got connected to TEAM!) Being bilingual and having studied Spa

Make sure to check out my June newsletter if you haven't already! (the link is down below) ↓ Click here to read my June newsletter Also, I'm sorry for not posting for so long...summer has been very busy! I'm working on a new blog post now and I should be posting it in the next few days! 

"A quien madruga Dios le ayuda"...this saying is one of my favorite Spanish  refranes * that my señora taught me during my semester abroad in Spain last spring. The Google Translate version of this saying is "God helps him who gets up early" but it's actually roughly equivalent to the English saying "the early bird gets the worm." Now this is a hard saying for me to relate to because I am most definitely not a morning person. I usually prefer to sleep in if I can and the idea of getting out of bed at 5:30 or 6:00am is not appealing to me in the slightest. *saying or proverb      However, last week I had to be awake before 6am every single day for work and/or the Holy Week services at my church, which started at 6:30am. Although this idea initially sounded like torture to me, I woke up each morning feeling surprisingly refreshed and ready to start the day. The Holy Week services that I attended on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday were a wonderful way

Make sure to check out my first newsletter if you haven't seen it yet! You can read more about me, TEAM, and my future ministry in Spain!  Click on the link below!  ⬇ April 2017 Newsletter

Overwhelmed . If I could choose one word to describe my life and my emotions the last few weeks, it would probably be overwhelmed....but I don't necessarily mean overwhelmed in a bad way. Yes, I have been overwhelmed by work and support raising and trying to balance a million and one odd things, but I have also been overwhelmed by God's grace and the outpouring of love and support that so many people have shown me. So, in this blog post I want to take some time to reflect on a few of those overwhelming-in-a-good-way moments. Numero uno . Last Sunday at church I had a TEAM booth out in the lobby and I also had an open house after the second service. Shortly after the first service ended, a group of about 5 or 6 women from the prayer team came up to me at my booth. At first I was slightly nervous because I didn't know some of them, and they all approached me at the same time. But then I found out that they had all been praying for me and they had made me a beautiful prayer

Something that I really enjoyed during my time as a student at Northwestern was our Sunday night Praise & Worship (P&W) sessions. It was such an awesome experience to gather with my friends, classmates, and professors each week to worship and hear more about how God was working in the lives of the students and faculty on campus.  Last semester at P&W one of my classmates shared a message about Ecclesiastes and the meaning/translation of the word " hebel ."  As someone who loves to study words and language, this message immediately captured my attention.  Hebel  is a Hebrew word that is used 38 times in the book of Ecclesiastes. Its meaning when translated into English is something along the lines of breath, vapor, or mist . While I'm not sure if any of these English translations fully capture the original meaning of their Hebrew counterpart , they do convey an idea of something that is fleeting or momentary--something that lasts only for a short time and

Last Wednesday, March 15th I celebrated my 22nd birthday. My birthday has become a time of reflection for me over the past few years and this year I spent some time reflecting on my birthday celebrations in recent years. As I thought about these special days, two memories really stood out to me.  The first memory is from three years ago when I was away at school during my freshman year of college. My mom (who was 8 hours away at the time) called my host mom and helped her plan a surprise visit to campus with cupcakes for me and my friends. The frosting on the cupcakes hadn't turned out right and my host mom was embarrassed, but I was so overjoyed by her thoughtfulness that I didn't even notice. And the second memory is from last year when I celebrated my birthday in Spain. My friends pretended like they were too busy to celebrate because they were studying for exams but they surprised me the next day when they "kidnapped" me, took me on a bus, blindfolded me, and wa

Last week I attended TEAM's Missionary Orientation in Asheville, North Carolina. I didn't really know what to expect upon entering into orientation but I was very impressed (and overwhelmed) to see the schedule that the TEAM staff had planned for the week.  Throughout orientation we had several sessions about TEAM's vision and core values and I felt that these sessions really helped me to get to know TEAM better as an organization. We also had sessions about marketing, finances, and fundraising, and we had individual meetings with our mentors and the counseling staff. But I think one of the best parts of orientation was getting to meet other missionary appointees (this is what we are called before we are on the field) who are going through the same process as me. I met incredible couples and families who are giving up their lives in the U.S. to follow God's call to serve Him and spread the gospel in places like Nepal, Greece, Thailand, and Portugal. And I also met a g

Well it's been quite a while since I last posted and I thought now would be a good time to post an update on what God is doing in my life :) For those of you who don't know, I graduated from Northwestern College in December 2016. And, like most recent graduates, I am often asked about what I'm going to do now that I'm finished with school. So, that's what this post is going to be about...the amazing journey that God is leading me on and where He is leading me next  :) I am so excited to announce that I will be returning to Sevilla, Spain as a missionary!  As many of you know, I studied abroad in Sevilla last spring and I grew very fond of the city and its people. After returning home from my semester abroad, I began talking with some people at a mission organization called TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission). After talking with them for a few weeks and meeting with my wonderful missions coach, Kelsey, I decided to apply for a midterm mission assignment. It