How I got here (part 2)

Well, we survived the moving trip to Georgia, and the first person we met was the principal. I was impressed right away with his kindness when my little sister (who was about 5 at the time) introduced herself by saying, "I'm Anna Elizabeth Nething" and he replied, "Well, I'm Timotheus Lee!" Most everyone was kind, but that first year was pretty rough. 7th grade can be a trying time to begin with, but having just moved and knowing no one made it worse. I remember sitting in class the first few days thinking "I should be starting jr high with Reylan, Demarcus, Shannon, the other Sarah, the Jennifers, and the Nicoles (there were 2 of each of those in my class)." I joined the track team in 7th grade, and I think that helped a lot. When I was in 9th grade, the youth pastor announced a missions trip to Mexico. I didn't really know any Spanish, but as I had said many years before, any chance to go on a missions trip I would take. I don't remember how much money we had to come up with, but it was somewhere around $300. After all the interviews and meetings and stuff, the team was made up of 7 girls. Rachel, Leila, Kristy,Valerie, Helena, me, and Tiffany Stokes. Mrs Jones had not been planning on going, but with the team made up entirely of girls, she and Pastor Mike both came with us. We took the trip with Oremex , an organization that among other things helps churches take missions trips in to Mexico. Often, more than one church is involved in the trip, and that was the case with our trip. Another church from Georgia, about and hour and a half south of us went the same week. During the week we helped a small church with VBS. The things we could do were pretty limited because of the language barrier, but it was a good time. We also helped build offices on the roof for the pastor who had given up his office to build bathrooms for visiting teams. I learned a lot that week in Mexico, and the Lord used one of the missionaries we were working with to challenge me about some things.In tenth grade, I started Spanish class, which I mostly enjoyed. Mrs. Pittman drilled the vocab and verbs into our heads, and I was very thankful for that when I started college Spanish. Eleventh grade was my second and last year of high school Spanish.All this time, pretty much since the same time I felt the Lord wanted me to be a missionary, I also had wanted to be a doctor. More specifically I wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon. I can see now that the Lord probably used an uncontrollable shaking in my hands (which would be disastrous in brain surgery) to steer me in a different direction. I'm not sure where the desire came from, but I have always been (and still am) fascinated with anything medical. Part of it, I'm sure, was that my dad is a science teacher. Because of that we were always being exposed to one thing or another whether it was being woken up at 2 AM to see a comet crash into Jupiter (at least I think that's what it was-everything's foggy at at that hour), helping dad practice for his dissections in class, or tagging along on a field trip to Johnson Space Center in Houston as a prize for one of dad's students. I remember times in highschool when one of my brothers or sisters injured themselves, and there was so much blood that mom and dad made me look at it (because the blood didn't bother me) and tell them what it was so they could describe it to the doctor over the phone. I remember telling my mom that she needed stitches in her finger after she cut it on a can-she didn't really want to look at it. I also had the amazing opportunity to be present for the birth of my brother who is now in second grade. (wow, I feel old!) Needless to say, in high school I fit every possible science into my schedule, even taking Physics and Chemistry in the same year in back to back hours in my dad's classroom. However, through all this, the Lord had other plans for me.