Why Not!

Soooo, I'm linking up with Kelly's Korner today for her Single's Day! I have read Kelly's Korner for years, ever since Harper was born. So I am quite familiar with her Single's Days! Most of the time I just  scroll through all of the links, but this time I figured I might as well post too! I just found out what YOLO stands for this week: you only live once! So here goes!

Hey I’m Laura!

I am 28 years old and live in Greenville, NC! I went to East Carolina University 10 years ago, got saved Christmas of my freshman year, and have stayed in Eastern NC ever since! (I grew up in Greensboro, NC!)

With Stephanie & Melissa!

I have a huge heart for the Lord so I love what I get to do everyday! I am a campus minister and love seeing college students come to know the Lord! 

With Bella & Elissa in Miami!

I also love my family! My nephew Jack is precious to me and I can’t wait to have a family one-day!

I love my friends, both old and new! I love to laugh, talk, and listen! I basically love people! If you are familiar with the strengths finder book/test all of my themes are all people ones. (Empathy, positivity, individualization, woo, harmony!)

This past Christmas with my friend Hunter and Jesse's baby Will! Love that kid!

I love planning parties & entertaining! Having people over is one of my favorite things! I originally came to ECU for interior design, but God had other plans. I do still love to decorate and do diy projects! 

I love to cook and my new best friend lately has been Amish friendship bread! I love cookbooks, southern food, & local restaurants!

I love to travel and go to different places! I love going on short-term mission trips! Every year I have been in ministry, I have gone on a mission trip! Past trips include: Baja, Boston, and Miami! I am looking forward to Spring Break 2013 to go to Chicago!

Baja Mission trip on the border of Mexico & USA!

In Boston! 

With Brittany on our way to Miami! 

I am pretty outgoing! Not so adventurous as in bungee jumping, sky diving etc but love to try new things! I love movies, plays/musicals, and playing games! I am not sportsy at all, but I love to have a good time!

Being silly with my friend Grace on St Patty's day on ECU's Campus!

So,,, there's a little about me! If you know someone who would be a good match, please send him my way! ;) Leave a comment or email me a lauralever@gmail.com 

Summer Wrap Up!

Let me fill you in on what went down this summer! 
One of the most fun things I did this summer was attend the School of Empowerment! This was hosted at Kings Park International Church in Durham and was an awesome three weeks! 

School of Empowerment lunch crew at William's Restaurant,, home of the best sweet potato fries!!

I grew so much spiritually and really feel like the Lord meet me in so many ways! God is so faithful! The months of April and May were pretty dry spiritually because of everything going on with my mom and aunt (mom= car accident, aunt =Diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder called Wagoners disease. She was in and out of the hospital May & June and was actually at Duke hospital the whole 3 weeks of the SOE.) 

July 4th@Kenan stadium in Chapel Hill

I honestly wasn’t spending consistent time with Jesus at all! So I really needed this time with the Lord of refreshing! I learned more about the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and made incredible friends. These three weeks change my life, and deserve it’s own post one day!

Birthday Dinner at Mellow Mushroom! 28 is going to be great! ;)

At the end of July, I went to the mountains to Granite Falls to speak to a church up there that supports me! This was so fun! This church has supported me for a year and this was the first time I got to meet them! I stayed with the most awesome 75 year old I have ever met! It was such a blessing! I love the mountains and had fun hiking up to see some waterfalls with my friend Emily! Glad I was able to swing by and have a day with her family in Marion.

Catwba Falls

The first week of August I was able to go to the beach with my mom, sister, brother-in-law and sweet nephew Jack! This was so fun. I love the beach and being lazy! This trip to Wrightsville beach also included a mini day trip to see my sweet friend Jayme who just moved to Southport! Southport is precious! They were filming a movie with Hilary Swank so part of the town was blocked off! Pretty big excitement around those parts!

Out to eat at Provision Company in Southport with Jayme & Lily!

Carrie blowing bubbels for Jack-a-roo!

 Right before school started back, I moved into a town house with my friend Laura! Laura and Laura living together makes it easy for our neighbors to remember our names! ;) We did that on purpose! Honestly though, we feel soo lucky! The town house has everything we wanted: gas logs, two bedrooms each with their own bath, ½ bath downstairs, two story, (laminate) hardwood floors, patio, lots of storage, painted walls, nice safe neighborhood! Everything is great, expect we got the utility bill today for this month and it was $260! Shut the front door, no really you are letting the bought air out!! We will live with candles and windows open until we can figure things out! ;) So there it is! My summer wrap up! Can’t believe it has taken me this long to get back to blogging and I had so much to catch up on!! Hopefully more posts to come and not another blogging hiatus! 

Mom and I with precious baby Jack! :) Don't you love the Polo outfit I bought him!

Spring Wrap Up!

So it's been a while.... A long while!

With Bella and Elissa in Miami! They are also campus ministers here in the USA!

The rest of the Miami trip went really well! I came back to life as normal for a little while. Then the next big event in my life was ,,, Campus Harvest where I had the opportunity to speak on a panel during the main session! I was super honored but nervous too!

Our ECU Gang at Campus Harvest!

Right after Campus Harvest I went to stay with my mom Sunday night and Monday. An hour and a half after I had gotten back to Greenville after driving back from Greensboro on Monday, I got a call saying my mom had been in a car accident and was in the hospital! I had all of my clothes in the washing machine and was exhausted so I went to Greensboro the next morning. My mom stayed in ICU for a few days with a total hospital stay of a week. She had a broken neck (in two places) and sacrum (right above your tail bone). It was scary to see her in the hospital hooked up to all of the machines. Every day she got better and then was able to go home!

The month of April my sister and I drove back and forth to Greensboro to take turns staying with my mom! This was a crazy, emotional time but I was so thankful that my mom was OK and alive! Oh I forgot, the day before the car accident, my mom's house sold (the house I grew up in)! So looking after my mom, packing the house, sorting through my possessions was a lot! My mom has a great support system and lots of people who brought food and came to help! My friend from elementary school, Hunter, also came over to help!

One of the "Gems" I had to part with! Made this in interior design class at Page High School!

Wasn't expecting to find this gem in the attic! (1980's Lilly Pulitzer)

In the middle of all of that, one of my besties got married! Christie and Ryan have been together for so long that it was fun to see them finally "tie the knot!"

Bridesmaids with the Bride! Me, Kayla, CHRISTIE, Victoria, & Christina!

The beautiful dress!

Christina and I having a photo shoot on the Yankee Hall grounds! :) We felt like Southern Belles!

Well we got my mom all packed up as the school semester here at ECU was winding down. We had our annual end of the year party at the bottom of the hill and end of the year planning/evaluation meetings. After all of that, I was able to take a few days off, then I started raising support for the summer. This went well and I am super thankful for all of the ministry partners I was able to see! I love having awesome people support what the Lord is doing at ECU!

Our Campus Staff at East Carolina went to the beach for a mini staff bonding trip!

Miami Wrap Up!

And now months later, let me finish telling you about the Miami trip!

Kaylan leading morning devotions!

The last day of the Ten Days Miami Trip we did service work for an orphanage. We painted. Well actually I didn’t paint at all.  I helped Bella shop for lunch. Then we came back and set up lunch. (Even though I didn’t spend the day there, I was glad we were able to serve in the community!) After lunch clean up and a little help at the orphanage,  Bella and I went to Walmart to shop for our cookout that night. While we were shopping it poured down rain and we started to wonder about the likelihood of a cookout! 

Cute girls painting away!

Get it Brittany!

Praying over the center at the end of the day!

We bought the stuff anyway and went out to one of the Florida keys with the whole gang! By the end of the afternoon, the rain cleared up! The drive there was absolutely beautiful! I totally understood why so many people go to Miami! We had a fun time and got to go to the beach! After that we went to South Beach one last time!

Look how clear the water was!

Our trip to Miami was lots of fun! It was awesome to be able to serve and help on another campus! For me it is important to actually see the Kingdom of God and not just talking about it! I am already excited for the next Spring Break Mission trip to Chicago! Hopefully we can take a large group from East Carolina!

Kristen, me, Bella, & Elissa! ENCM staff girls! 

All of our ENCM staff!

Had lots of fun with Sarah & Brittany this trip! 

Our whole Ten Days Miami group! 

http://tendays.squarespace.com/trips/

Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday:

Starting our day off right with worship and devotions!

Today we were at the University of Miami! The campus here is beautiful! I kept thinking it looked like a resort. I hung out with Bella all day! We did the God test with a girl from Ireland, ate free Cuban desserts they were giving out on campus, and then had lunch with one of the girls she meets with. They are both Korean so we were joking about that and they taught me the “proper” way to use chopsticks!

Elissa and Kristen doing the GOD TEST with the girl on the left!

Bella, myself, & Elissa!

I really enjoyed hanging out with Bella and getting to know her. She is what I would call an instant friend. We just meet this week but I feel like I have known her forever! I was picking her brain about being a part of a church plant. We have several of the same themes from Strengths Finder (empathy, individualization, & harmony) so I could really identify with what she was saying/ feeling about being moving to a new place and starting a new ministry. Bella has already asked me to move to Miami, so we will see about that! I really couldn't move but I could get used to seeing palm trees everyday!

Pool at University of Miami!

Me and Elissa!

Wednesday

Today we went back to FIU! I started out with Durga! The girl we talked to was Muslim. So we shared with her and asked questions. At the end she said she was glad we talked to her b/c it cleared up a lot of things for her! Wow do I need to study up about World religions again. I have obviously forgotten everything I learned! oh no!

After that we went to get lunch and got to know each other. (Durga goes to UNC.) We talked for a while and then talked “girl talk” with Andrea and Sarah who joined us for lunch. Then we met up with everyone and talked about their mornings. I got ice cream with Sarah and Brittany b/c desserts at least once a day is a must! Then I went out with Bella and Elissa!

Elissa does what I like to call “awkward evangelism.” She will say something funny or calls someone out to start a conversation! This time she went up to these three female basketball players and asked them if they could sing the FIU fight song for her! They couldn’t but it was a good way to start a conversation. We talked to them for a while and then went into the God Test. It was really fun to see Elissa in action!

The girls didn’t really open up about a whole lot about their personal lives. But the one thing one of them shared was real personal. She told us how she didn’t go to church anymore bc she was gay. Apparently she had gone to church with her family before hand and didn’t want to go with them anymore.

How sad is that, that she feared the judgment of the people at her church. It really makes you think does the church catering to the 99, or going after the 1. It makes me thing about myself as well. As much as I like to think I’m open minded, I know I can be really judgmental. This is so not good and something the Lord has been working in my heart lately. I can be judgmental about how someone is dressed and looks. God doesn’t look at the outward appearance/ sin/ tattoos/ immoral lifestyle. He sees the heart. He wants the heart; wants to wash it clean, and bring healing to it. Lord help me to see people the way you see them! I don’t want to be the stumbling block for someone to come to know the Lord. Please help me to point people to you Jesus, and not to a more moral lifestyle…

ECU girls and Elissa!

UNC girls hanging out!

The rest of the day was pretty light. We talked with a few more students and then did another cornhole/mess around sesh for a few hours. It started pouring down rain so we packed up early and then went to eat dinner at Versailles. It was delish! It was Cuban food! I ordered some type of steak and I split appetizers with Kristen and Ryan. This restaurant was so pretty and fun. The owner traveled to the Palace of Versailles in France and used that for his inspiration in designing/decorating the restaurant. (That was the one thing In World History I remembered and was interested and when Girl Scout Troop went to Europe in High School we got to go to the Palace! So it was really special to eat at this Cuban restaurant! Then we all went to get dessert at the bakery! I got tres leches cake and almond cookies. Yum! We had so much fun at dinner and the bakery!

Tonight for the first time it really felt like a family eating dinner. The students weren’t all sitting with the bffs they came with. Looking around at all of the table tonight, I had a cheesy elementary ed. teacher moment b/c I was so proud of all of the students for making new friends this week, doing new things like sharing their faith, some of them even getting on a plane for the first time, and stepping out in faith by raising support to get there! Tonight I am in the room with a few girls but the students are outside, some of the girls are getting cornrows for the first time, some wanted to have Bible Study time, other girls are painting their friends fingernails, I can hear laughing, people worshiping, one girl is in here talking to a boy on the phone… It’s a good night to be the big kid!

Hey there FIU

(From Monday March 5th)

This has been such a fun full day!

We started the day with morning devotions! So glad Elissa is here b/c she lead worship with a few students.

Then we headed to Florida International University. The campus was huge and so much fun! They had so many sculptures everywhere! At ECU they are mostly just around the art building, so it was fun to see them all over campus. They had several fountains and ponds with turtles, painted bridges, swings, I could go on and on! Alan Mitchell would have loved it! I’m sure someone with ideation designed it!

We did evangelism on campus using the God Test which is a tool we use all the time at ECU. We all partnered up two by two. I was partner with Kim. The first conversation we had was great! It was with a girl Kelly, she was a little hesitant to talk to us at first but we just made small talk and then did the God Test. By the end we made a friend! We are hoping to hang out with her again Wed when we go back to FIU.

After that conversation it was time for lunch. Let me tell you, FIU’s student center puts Mendenhall to shame! There were so many restaurants. We ate at Pollo Tropical and had the most delish meal I’ve ever had on a college campus!

After lunch we found some cool sculptures that we wanted to take pictures of! Then we decided it was time to actually get down to business. Kim said she wanted to talk to a guy and I was like “umm are you sure you don’t want to talk to a girl??” She wanted to talk to him so I just said “ok!” It went alright, but not the greatest. At one point he close the God Test book and passed it back to us! Ha! So that shows how into it he was. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

After lunch we did an outreach with corn hole, ultimate Frisbee, and football. Basically we were just hanging out on a grassy part of campus. This was fun, I just sat and talked with the girls! It was fun to get to know Kristen and Bella more!! So thankful for our friendships. It is always nice to hang out with people in the same station of life as you doing the same thing! I felt so encouraged talking to them about ministry and being single. Bella and I are the same age and have a lot in common.

Tonight after dinner we went to the University of Miami and did a prayer walk there. It was awesome. I was walking with Bella, Calvin, and Akeem praying for the campus. It stirred something inside of me! I have always had a heart for different college campuses so going to two today was incredible! We were praying for divine appointments, that the students we met this week would eventually be student leaders that would pour out their hearts and lives for their college campus, both while in school and for a season after college! Praying that students will get plugged into the ministry/church/ and go to Campus Harvest this year!

Bienvenidos a Miami

Our Miami adventure started yesterday really early! I woke up before my alarm at 2 am! We left Greenville at 4:10am to go to RDU. Precious Kendall picked me up and then rode with us to Raleigh so she could drive the church van back! What a trooper! The plane ride was fun b/c Sarah and Brittany had never flown before! People watching at the airport is my favorite and I sure wasn’t disappointed! After we got to Miami, we pretty much hung out yesterday during the afternoon at the Middleton’s house and got to know everyone.

Today we ate breakfast at a Cuban restaurant. Thank God Elissa speaks Spanish b/c the little bit I remember wasn’t cutting it! Then we went to SouthCoast, the church plant we are helping with this week. Worship and the message were sooo good! I took so many notes that smoke was coming out of my pen. We talked about Nehemiah and the parallels between him and Jesus. I really needed to hear this message b/c it called out so many things in my life! One of the biggest idols in my life is comfort. I love to be comfy cozy all the time. Ross talked about how he didn’t think God was too concerned about the physical comfort of the people in the Bible. He was saying no great leaders in the Bible were ever comfortable. Super convicted! I so need to stop complaining/whining when I’m not comfortable/get me way!

The other thing he said that really stuck out to me was that part of their church’s DNA was the concept of refusing to offend God by not believing Him for big things! I so don’t think this way at all! This really called out hope and faith in me for things that I am believing for, both in my life and for what I hope to see on ECU’s campus!

*I am so excited for the rest of this mission trip! Honestly this Ten Days trip more than ever, I have been more concerned about keeping up with the ECU girls, not what I would get out of the trip. I have already been challenged & inspired and we really haven’t even started yet.

I am excited to see what God does in the lives of our ECU Students!

I am excited to hang out with Elissa and do evangelism with her! She and I were the only girls in our class at EN’s School of Campus Ministry. We got really close living together during those two months! We may both have “Positivity” and “Woo” (from Strength Finders) but we are completely different too. Elissa is super bold and exuberant. I am pretty outgoing but she is way out there! So I am stoked to do evangelism with her on FIU’s campus. I want to bring back her passion and boldness! Tomorrow is going to be fun!! (or F-u-n-n as Victoria says!)

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So Why Miami:

“Miami is home to about 6 million people and home to over 400,000 college students. National Geographic named Miami as the most diverse city in America.”

“With the generally Catholic Latino population, most likely only about 1%-1.5% at most of that Christian population is evangelical Christians. This is lower than Mainland China and lower than Europe.”

“At FIU there are about 45,000 students with around 300 students total attending all the campus ministries put together.”