Ok, go.

I have wonderful cousins. To be a little more honest than anyone reading this blog probably wants me to be, they are probably the reason I didn't look to my brothers and try to follow in their footsteps because I was always looking up to my older cousins. My extended family has a strangely strong connection and understanding of unconditional love, no matter how long its been since we've seen each other, or how many new people come into our lives. My cousin Renae, who now lives in Oregon with her husband and three children will always come first for me. Same with Deedre who lives in Michigan, or Daniel in Minneapolis.

So anyway, my extended family had a huge impact, is my point. Especially when it came to my faith.

In the past couple of years, three of my cousins have participated in a program called YWAM (Youth With A Mission). Kind of like hard core Christian Peace Corps haha, from what I can gleam of it. Before my cousin Cerrita (who now lives as a director of a base down in Panama City, Panama) went, both of us had been really having trouble staying close to God. She went to YWAM and her life changed. She started to really believe in the power of prayer, and the miracles God can provide us with. And I just was not there. For the last four years that she and I have been talking about all these changes, and she's just reached a place I've consistently found impossible to be at, even more thought I'd never have the chance to get to. But we stay close and I talk with her as much as I can through skype.

So, college hadn't exactly made anything much much better with my whole relationship with God. One of my best friends though, had actually had a great semester at her college and she is feeling especially close to the Lord. She attended the SALT conference which was held here in Sioux Falls the first week of January. One of the nights, I tagged along (for free, whats up) to one of their worship services, and of course because I absolutely love this girl who invited me along.

Safe to say, though, I was a little weirded out.

They were talking about speaking in tongues and baptizing like 3 different times and as much as I tried to get into it I really couldn't. Not a shocker for me though, I've never really had an "aha" moment or anything like that at these things. After the service, we went up to one of the hotel rooms and her small group met and people shared what they wanted. I sat quietly. I am pretty awesome at sitting quietly. Then, the small group leader, my friend, and a couple of other girls came up and asked if they could pray for me. My friend had given me a heads up so it wasn't completely out of the blue but still, open prayer, especially hands on each other prayer, not my forte. But, I said sure.

It started out with some blanket kind of prayer, like thanking Him that I could come and all that. Then some of the other girls started to pray and they started to pray for things that I had never told them about. I really met all of those girls that night, and had barely talked to any one of them for more than five minutes, but the things they started praying about, specifically to and for me, were amazing. Definitely things they could not have known about, and could not have been applied to any random person.

Afterwards, I asked Alyssa (yep, best friend, no big) if she had told them anything about me, and she promised she hadn't. This last week I've been thinking a lot about it, and trying to explain it in any other way than the whole "God told them what to pray" thing. And, so far... I haven't exactly been able to.

Luckily, I got to talk about this with Cerrita and well, basically she said "I told you so." In a lot nicer way of course, because she's my older, much kinder cousin (and I'm her favorite cousin). But, for the first time in my whole entire life I feel like this whole relationship with God thing is actually possible. I still haven't felt it, and I'm not sure when it'll be clear enough for me to just trust in but, I am definitely more excited to try than I ever have been.

One of the ways I've always felt closer to God is worship music (yeah, that really cheesy contemporary kind). I sang this song at my cousin's wedding this past fall, and the more I practiced it, the more I really liked it, even though it's simple and blah blah blah.

Anyway.

This could be a great time to start looking up.