Living Water

Providing a cup of water in Jesus' name is the most powerful event to occur in my life.

I traveled to Nairobi, Kenya in March 2005 with my parents and a group of 20 individuals that were on a vision trip for Living Water International. My mom had been to Kenya with her dear friend and one of the founding members several years prior and wanted to return since the day she left!

The reason my family went to Kenya was to dedicate a water well at St. Mary's School (outside of Nairobi) in honor and memory of my grandparents on my mom and dad's side of the family. While in Kenya, our team designated 2 additional wells from US sponsors and meet with the US Ambassador in Kenya and President Kabaki and his staff and the State House in Kenya to discuss Senator Bill Frist's Clean Water Act for sub-Saharan Africa.

During the meeting with the President of Kenya, several Board members challenged the President to select a location for a peace well in his country. Many wars are fought in African countries over water, between tribes, and across borders. The reason: water is a scarce resource in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the art of drilling water wells is very difficult. Some wells are over 2000 feet deep in order to reach a water source, where as wells that we drilled in Nicaragua are only 200 feet deep.

During our time in Kenya, we visited orphanages, hospitals, and refugee camps. I met several friends that are still pen-pals from St. Mary's school which is extra special since my grandparents names are on their water well. The girls from this school had to walk 11 kilometers one way to bring a bucket of water back to the school. Women and children bear the brunt of responsibility for gathering water for the family and walk for miles in order to reach a water source that may or may not be clean.

The need is great, and water is the most essential element to sustain life.

At the very end of our trip we flew to the Great Rift Valley and had an opportunity to go on safari in the Masai Mara - one of the greatest life experiences I believe I will ever be blessed with.

I hope to go back to Kenya one day - the people we met exemplify what being a servant to the Lord is all about.

Thoughts on a rainy day

This evening, I waded to my car in the expansive Lockheed parking lot under my umbrella that nearly snapped in two with the wind gusts. I believe it was like this all day, but there are no windows in our secured area at work, so I'm really not sure. :)

I stopped at the barn to be sure Scout had his warm blanket on and closed his stall windows in preparation for the possible snow tomorrow. For one reason or another, I began to reflect upon the fact that my horse has much more than thousands of people in Haiti right now. He has a roof over his head, 2 buckets full of water, a warm blanket, a heat lamp, and 2 flakes of freshly cut coastal hay. I occasionally question the amount of time and money that goes into hobbies...

I learned about an organization 6 months ago called Women for Women International. The non-profit received lots of attention since Oprah began to highlight their efforts last year. I encourage you to take a look at their website:
Women For Women


After completing my due diligence about the organization, I felt compelled to sponsor a woman and confident that I could put money towards something meaningful that would truly help someone else. The organization allows you to pick your top 4 country preferences. There is a special place in my heart for Africa. I spent 2 weeks in Kenya in 2005 with Living Water International Living Water International and wish that Oprah would highlight LWI this year!! :) Therefore, I selected Rwanda, Sudan, Congo, and Nigeria as my top choices. I received a letter in the mail last week (after 4 months of waiting) with a picture, name, and brief biography of a woman in Sudan who I hope will benefit from our donations and prayers.

Her name is Alak Nguee Ayol and she is 22 years old. I look forward to sitting down with a hot cup of chai tea (in memory of all our Kenyan friends) to write her a note tonight. I may or may not hear back from Alak, but regardless, I am excited with the hope of a better life for her.

Writing Accesories

Question: Does everyone use a laptop as their preferred writing tool?

I can't seem to sit still at our desktop and am really interested in some of the new light weight smart books or net books. That way I can be a mobile writer (in theory...).

Any thoughts?

Favorite Books

I thank my mom for teaching me the joy of reading. I truly love to read and believe I could live without TV if my husband didn't enjoy football so much. I will admit that we are 24 fans, and look forward to Jack Bauer's adventures after work each Monday in January - May.

This weekend I started to read the book "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein. Based upon the cover, I was a little concerned it would be a second attempt at Marley & Me (which I thought was a good book, but didn't necessarily want to read another dog destroys house, dog becomes part of family, and dog dies book). I'm only 10 chapters into "The Art of Racing.." The story is told by Enzo the dog, and he is an incredibly witty, and descriptive narrator. I truly enjoy the writing style, and have worked to pay more attention to the technicalities in each book I read since I am SLOWLY working on my own story.




This led me to reflect upon my favorite books of 2009. I'm in a book club that begun this summer, but haven't really enjoyed any of the books we've read so far (bleh). I'm sure I left a few off the list, but these are the primary books that come to mind.

Light of the Moon
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Water for Elephants
Three Cups of Tea
The Shack (I think I actually read this in 2008, but I'll put it on the list)
Same Kind of Different as Me (also think this was a 2008 ...)

2008 Recap

The horse show season in most breed organizations runs Jan 1 - Dec 31. With that said, the APHA is still in progress of tabulating all final points for 2009, so my plan is to wait until all results are official before I post our 2009 achievements.

I purchased Scout in 2007, so 2008 was our first full show year. For 2008 we accomplished the following as a new team:

Texas Reserve State Champion – Novice Amateur Reining
TPHC (Texas Paint Horse Club) – Reserve Champion Novice Amateur Reining
APHA Honor Roll #7 in Nation: Novice Amateur Reining
APHA World Show Novice Amateur Reining Finalist

I am working on setting a schedule and game plan for 2010. I've been practicing new events, such as trail and want to improve our working cow work this year. My goal is to move from the Limited event, where you only box the cow, to the full up working cow horse where you run down the fence. Our goal is to return to the Pinto World Show in June. We disqualified in the reining in 2008 due to 1 extra step in a back up between spins (big disappointment - but we've since moved on from that issue!) :)

Here's a picture from the 2008 Pinto World Championship.

Snow Days

The 2009 Fort Worth winter brought several different occasions for snow/sleet, which did not happen very often during my childhood/adolescence in Houston. Between my TCU days and now, I've enjoyed seeing snow pile up to a large enough quantity (by Texas standards) to actually build a snowman. I did pass on the opportunity this year due to my growing dislike of the cold.

Photography is a second passion of mine, and I thought it was odd that I didn't have the desire to capture our White Christmas on my Nikon. However, I have great pictures from Easter weekend 2007 in Callahan County, TX and thought I'd share a few photos in memory of this years White Christmas.

First Blog...Ever

I know blogging has been around for a while, but I see myself as a more private person and was rather skeptical of sharing every though and activity with the general public. However, I have a new friend that is a writer who recommended blogging to build writing stamina, and to practice putting thoughts into words.

I'm struggling with several book ideas, so my New Year's Resolution is to force myself to get back into writing and get these book ideas onto paper.

However, I suppose the primary reason to start a blog is because I toyed with the idea of setting up a horse related website to document some of the stats of my competitions for interested parties (and for a record for myself), but this is free! Easy choice. Goal, is not to be a brag book but to document some of our accomplishments, because it's hard to remember everything each year and am rather proud of my Paint gelding, Scout.

Horse & Rider magazine recently noted a popular blog by a AQHA competitor that shares the woes of trying to compete on large show circuits and work full time, thus supporting that lifestyle. I thought it was a great blog, but somehow lost the link so I suppose that was an inspiration as well.

And lastly, my friend of the longest tenure has an excellent blog that I like to read just to see what wonderful things she is baking and to keep up with her (I promise I'm not stalking you Lauren...)