Hello friends,

Greetings from Austin!

It’s been almost one month of quarantine, and though Austin feels vacant at times, it’s been nice getting settled into a routine.

I’ve been living off of pasta, frozen veggies and alfredo sauce whilst switching off between paprika marinated chicken drumsticks and paprika marinated pork chops for a week (as you can tell, I love paprika), so I’m glad that our HEB delivery finally arrived today.

Now I can explore more paprika-inspired ideas. (As you can tell, being stuck at home = being adventurous in foods).

The delivery to our house was quite crazy though.

Many service workers are stressed and overwhelmed, having to drive and carry over 3 people’s worth of groceries or order take out food from many locations, surviving on wages and tips to cover the costs of gas and their own living, on top of exposing themselves potentially to COVID-19.

It was no wonder when our delivery driver who gave us our groceries told us we could keep her personal freezer delivery bags and walked away hollering that she was done doing deliveries for good.

(I can only imagine what she had to go through just to get our 10:30 AM delivery at HEB, though apparently she got $800 in a day just from tips 😳)

When I witnessed this, though a part of me feels sad about our circumstances and how it affects other’s lives, another part of me finds myself counting my blessings and being challenged to think about what I can do for others.

The truth is, COVID-19 has made me a homebody. A recluse. A turtle.

Though extroverted by nature, I’ve found myself many times retracting into the comforts of my shell, not only through staying at home, but also in the ways I spend my energy and serve/care for others.

Personally, COVID-19 has allowed me to better understand myself, my boundaries, and my own personal relationship with God with the lack of noise and clutter of responsibilities I need to physically travel and mentally account for.

These insights on myself, though, have made me less prone to action. Being more aware of my limits has made me more hesitant to sacrifice.

In a way, before, many sacrifices I made before were not really sacrifices, because I didn’t recognize I was losing anything (energy, time, focus) through the process.

But now, since I understand what ticks me, what causes me to burn out, and how limited I am in so many capacities, the sacrifice has become more real.

COVID-19 has also made me more passive and have much discomfort with uncertainty.

Though I’ve had friends come to my apartment blessing me with a meal or baked goods that they wanted to share, (thank you, my friends, 😭), I find myself reluctant to go out of my way to take on any such acts of service.

Peeking my head out of my shell, I am quick to hide when I find myself in a seemingly unfamiliar situation.

I want to break out of my shell.

I want to be better in loving and serving - willingly take on sacrifices and challenge myself.

I don’t want to be just satisfied with where I’m at, because I know that there is better, and I can do better.

So to start the process, I have been trying do small things to slowly break out of my comfort zone.

Things like asking how people are doing. Praying for others. Being more proactive in my relationships and doing simple acts of virtual service.

It doesn’t sound like much, and it really isn’t, but I’m not aiming for a once and done thing.

I’m hoping to let what I do build a foundation to have a long sustained change, not only now during COVID-19, but hopefully something to takeaway afterward. I want to have consistency and longevity, especially with this new understanding of myself.

Anyways, I hope that while y’all have been spending time with family or roommates, that y’all will consider how y’all have grown in this time, and how you can be challenged too 🙂

I know it’s not easy, but continue to push forward. Let the current trials we go through help us learn and grow and discover what God is doing in our lives for the future.

Keep up the fight, hope y’all have a blessed Easter Sunday, and catch y'all in the next update! 😊

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Weekly Collections

Faith

• "If we, like Paul, knew the spiritual dangers of pride, we would not despise our thorns like we do:

  • our chronic pain or illness

  • our unfulfilled dreams or expectations,

  • our relational brokenness and strife

  • our besetting temptations

  or whatever else harasses you."

  (Welcome Whatever Keeps You from Pride - DesiringGod)

• “Father, by your Holy Spirit, free us from under-believing the gospel and over-believing our fears, heart-idols, excuses, and shame.

  Grant us a greater, fresh sighting of the beauty and love of Jesus. Restore to us the joy of your salvation for us.

  Because we are dull, but because we are yours, “may [we] have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18–19).

  We pray with renewed gratitude and hope-filled anticipation, in Jesus’s name. Amen.”

  (‘His Desire Is for Me’: The Personal, Pursuing Love of Christ - DesiringGod)

Entrepreneurship

• “This isn’t the first time H-E-B has done a good job of managing a disaster—it played an important role in helping the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricane Harvey in the immediate aftermath of the storm—which led us to ask: How did a regional supermarket chain develop systems that allow it to stay ahead of a crisis as big as this one?”

  (Inside the Story of How H-E-B Planned for the Pandemic - TexasMonthly)

Productivity

• “In the face of a crisis, what is important to us becomes evident when we give ourselves the space to reflect on what is going to get us through the hard times. And so we find renewed commitment to get back to core priorities. What seemed important before falls apart to reveal what really matters: family, love, community, health.

  Change is stressful. But neither stress nor change have to be scary. If you think about it, you undergo moments of change every day because nothing in life is ever static. Our lives are a constant adaptation to a world that is always in motion.

  All change brings opportunity. Some change gives us the opportunity to pause and ask what we can do better.”

  (What You Truly Value - FS Blog)

Verse of the Week

“Bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come”
- 1 Timothy 4:8

Challenging Quote

“It pays to worship. But if you worship because it pays, it won’t pay.”
- Warren Wiersbe