Hello friends,
I would like to ask your prayers and wisdom for the mission trip I will be going on this summer.  God has made it pretty clear that I am to go on a trip this summer, but He has not given me much direction as to where to go.  I spoke to the missions director at my school this afternoon, and we determined that unless things on other trips change drastically, my only option with the school is Albania.  But she recommended to me to go with a mission agency she knows to work with the Kurds in Northern Iraq.  So I would like your prayers and if God dawns any wisdom on you, please let me know.
Some information about the trips:
Cost: I had $1700 roll over from the canceled trip to China last summer, which could be applied to either trip.  Going to Albania with the school would cost $3200; I believe the cost of Iraq would be a bit more.
Length: Albania is six weeks that would have me back home the beginning of July.  This is good because I'm going to start working on my teaching credential in early August and this would give me the opportunity to work some odd jobs so I can pay my living expenses and prepare for the semester.  Iraq is a commitment from May 24-August 4; I'd be spending a couple weeks with the Kurdish community in DC doing language learning and culture before actually going to Kurdistan from June 12 to August 4.  This is good because I would have a couple weeks longer to build relationships with the people and more of a chance at culture shock, as well as more experience with skills that will be useful when I finally go long-term.  On the other hand, it would give me only two days to a week to get over jet lag, pack for school, and get back up here to be ready to credential, which will make it very hard to be faithful in the beginning of my semester.
Agency:  Albania would be with my school.  I know the process, I love our missions director and her advice and training.  I know they take care of logistics in a way that's easy for me to handle.  Christar is primarily a long-term agency that has some short-term trips to encourage people to come long-term and help out their long-term missionaries.  My school's missions director says it is within her top three recommended missions agencies, and if she could take the summer off, she would join the team to Kurdistan herself.  They have great training for their short-term teams, and it would give me familiarity with a "real" missions agency.
Team:  Albania, I know and like and trust the team leaders; some people who are applying for the team are my close friends.  With some of the health issues I have, this feels way more comfortable to me because I know there will be people I can inform when I'm having issues who will help me and not judge me.  Iraq, I would get a couple weeks with my team before we took off, but I wouldn't know any of them before that.  It would be difficult making sure a few people know what to do if I have a problem without becoming "the team hypochondriac".  However, teams with this agency are multi-generational and would add a more "real missions" dynamic to the team.
Location:  Albania... um... we'd be working with "the Lincoln Center", a ministry that my school has a connection with.  Teaching English as a Second Language.  Primarily adults.  I've never been terribly interested in Europe, but maybe God wants to teach me to care about the whole world, not just the parts I'm interested in?  Iraq - it's northern Iraq, and according to the missions director, there is no safety risk, even though the sound of Iraq scares people.  I've begun lately to think that God is calling me long-term to Africa, perhaps northern Africa, so ministering in a Muslim context would be useful experience and certainly help me to judge whether such is part of God's long-term calling for me, but on the other hand, having an Albania stamp in my passport is less likely to become a problem for future entry somewhere else.
Those are some of the factors I am considering.  What you can also pray for is the fact that Iraq terrifies me, and I don't really want to go.  Which means nothing for the decision, because I'll do what God wants me to do.  But please pray that if He does guide me to Iraq, that He would replace my fear with love and joy and a desire to be there.
Thank you all for your prayers and advice.

I've been blessed in that every job I've had I've absolutely loved.

#1 In 2004, I helped my best friend's dad rebuild a house on his property that had burned down.  As fifteen-year-old tomboy, working construction was the most fun way to spend a summer imaginable.  And since he had not yet invested in the nail guns used in job #6, I can use a hammer more efficiently than most men I know.  One week when everybody else was on vacation, my mom and I ran the wires for the whole house... and then I did all the electrical boxes.  Every. single. one.  I can predict the route a circuit takes by the location of the outlets... I've had a 100% accuracy ever since that week.

#2 Off and on since my junior year of high school, I've worked as a tutor.  I LOVE helping people to understand things.  Meeting great kids and discovering the ways in which they're smart and showing them how to apply that smartness to whatever they're studying... My favorite moment is always when it dawns on them "I'm really NOT stupid! I can DO this!" That makes my day.

#3 Paid gigs with violin or viola.  I get to make music AND get paid for it?  I'd do it for free! But don't tell the people who hire me that, or my Christmas gift budget would vanish.

#4 Teaching violin and viola.  See #2 and #3.  Plus, my current students' moms all feed me home cooked meals.  Yay perks!

#5  Between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I worked as a secretary for my uncle's underwater camera business. I learned lots of cool things to do with various computer programs.  And whenever there was a lull in office work, I headed back to the workshop, where my Grandpa is in charge, and got to help build the cameras.. Yay for cool tools and intriguing electronic inner workings and getting paid to listen to my Grandpa tell stories of when he was young.

#6 This past summer, I worked for my "brothers'" dad doing construction again.  More wiring, painting, drywall, and there's this really cool flooring thing where you use acid to stain the foundation directly, and that's your floor and that was so fun to help with.  Besides, getting paid $15 an hour to hang out with my best friends?  Unbeatable.

I'm so blessed in the jobs I've had... and when I graduate and credential, I'm going to have the best job in the world - teaching. :)

So it’s been a couple weeks since my last post on this – life has been a bit crazy.  I talked for two posts about how I don’t find the idea in the Bible that God loves everyone.  But at the same time, I am floored by the intensity of the love that He has for those in Christ.  If you are in Christ, God loves you because Christ is the Beloved One of God.  It is a love that cannot bear to sit on the sidelines – an active love that does something.  It is most highly evidenced in Christ’s incarnation and death.

It is a demonstrated love.

“By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:9-10

“Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:5-8

It is an effective love.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.”  Ephesians 2:4

It is a love, that once applied to us, promises to bring us all the way home.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31-39

If this is the love of God, it seems like you would have to weaken it to say that He loves everyone.  If God loves everyone, then everyone would be saved.

Just as a tying-up-loose-ends thing, several people mentioned Matthew 5:44-45: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  Note that the text does not say He loves them; it simply describes what theologians call common grace, described in Romans 9:  “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.”  God waits to destroy those He does not love for the sake for the sake of those He does; and in the process He keeps the world going round to eliminate any excuse they may have.  Loving our enemies is our extension of the common grace of God. How the character of God is applied in our lives is often slightly different from the actual actions and motivations of God.  This is even more evident in the related passage of Romans 12:18-21. (“Vengeance is Mine”.)

This feels like a really abrupt ending to the blog, but I need a nap too much to figure out an eloquent conclusion.