Prayers of friends.

Last Friday Elise made Christine and I a special breakfast.

Christine, Elise and me at the HNGR Commissioning Dinner, 4/21/09

It was special for a variety of reasons. I love Elise and Christine, for starters (see above photo for details). I also love eating and it is an acknowledged fact that Elise makes a freakin' sweet batch of scrambled eggs. And it was also the last real time we'd have together before the blonde chick graduates and the two of us vamos al América del Sur.


I've loved Elise since the first semester of freshman year, starting with the big friendship crush I had on the cool girl who worked at the front desk and went to Amy's church and everyone I knew adored. She came over for hot chocolate and we sat on my bed and bonded. I've loved Christine since the second semester of sophomore year (which freaks me out I've only known her that long), but we were fated to be friends and one night last spring after our second meeting she spontaneously dropped by for tea... and stayed three hours. We bonded too.


Few things could just make any day better than one of those girls. I've learned from them daily about honesty, about friendship, about wanting to see God in hard-to-see-Him places.


Elise returned in December from a six-month HNGR internship in Kolkatta, India. Christine and I leave in less than a month for our six-month HNGR internships in Peru and Bolivia.
We talked about that. We talked about the last year, and the last few months, and the coming summer, and our friends and our families and our God- as well as the Twilight series, language learning, and poetry that MUST be brought on one's internship (Rilke, appparently). We laughed and chatted and sat on her bedroom floor eating and talking for three hours. Because it's what we do.


And THEN, when I thought I was going to make it without crying, Elise is all, "So I hope you guys don't think this is too voodoo but..." and pulls out pieces of paper with our names on them and two small, perfect crystals. She tells us that she got them in Tibet when she was on her internship, and that she wanted to send something with us on HNGR, but wasn't sure what to send. Space is limited, books are heavy... and she said what she really wanted to send with us was her prayers.

"So I held these, and I prayed into them for you."

Um, forget voodoo, try beautiful.

This is what was written on my paper:

"May the blessing of light be on you- light without and light within. May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great and warming fire, so that stranger and friend may warm themselves at it. And may light shine out of your two eyes, like a candle set in the windows of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm.

And may the blessing of rain be upon you, may it beat upon the spirit of you and wash it fair and clean, and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines, and sometimes a star.

And may the blessing of the earth be upon you, soft under your feet as you pass along the roads, soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day.

And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.

I LOVE YOU! And I'm praying this for you."


We talk a LOT in HNGR (slash in life) about how much it will mean to know people are praying for us when we're on our internships (slash living our lives).


But it still overwhelms me sometimes... just how blessed I am.