More from my journal...

So, where did I leave off...oh yes. My journal entry.
Ah, thank God we can pray and leave things in God's hands. Then, we don't do things like mail a letter across the Atlantic to a South African man you can call a stranger, know it will take seven to ten days to even arrive there, yet check our own mailbox fifty times within those seven to ten days actually thinking the man of your dreams already responded. Yeah. That was me. What can I say? I even journal'd out a timeline of when I may get a parcel from him.
I began telling close friends about my encounter of the strange kind. Mostly, I only told the Christian ones. I'm sure they prayed. Everyone seemed to accept this strange new friendship.
I read through my entire journal last night. I wrote in that journal from June of 1996 through March of 2009. I'm so glad that I did. What I see sprawled througout that journal is this, "I prayed..." on every single page.
The other thing I wrote was that I couldn't stop thinking about this man from the day we first typed words to one another that night of June 28th.
July 4th 1996 I wrote:
"I felt kind of sick today but had a pretty good day. I want to write what I'm feeling, down. Then, maybe I can get it off my mind. I'm thinking of Ryan. Why I don't know. I wonder if this is from the Lord or not. I dont' feel anxious or obsessed. I'm just thinking-thinking will he write-my letter takes 7-10 days, then his will take 7-10 days, that's about 2-3 weeks from July 1st. Am I learning patience? Or is this not even of Him? I need to pray about it.
Then I did a little math projection of division. I divided 3 into 52 and got 17. Duh. So, I think I was trying to figure out how many times in one year we could write to eachother. (Wow, I am a dork.)
Then I wrote:
?Psalm 37...delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart...
...Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.

At my old church, the one I was attending at the time, we had a visiting speaker who was from South Africa. I knew he was from Durban. That's how I initially got excited about talking with Ryan that first night. Alison had said something like "hey here's this guy from South Africa" and I remember thinking...I just heard that man speak and he's from South Africa. I don't know why it was a big deal, but I made it one. So, I remember telling my friend Donna all about this. Donna was my home fellowship leader and kind of like a second mom to me. She made a comment about seeing if Ryan lived close to where this preacher was from. So, I looked on this map that I had. I was shocked that Pinetown in South Africa was a suburb of Durban. I investigated!
In my journal on July 5th I wrote:
I was shocked when I saw on the atlas that Pinetown is right next to Durban. By the scale it was less than 10 miles . I had prayed last night and just asked God for peace. I asked God to intervene in all of this if His hand wasn't already on it. I know God will work in this situation no matter what. I prayed today that God would speed up the mail and that Ryan would write back a long letter. I don't know why I'm thinking about him so much. It's not like obsessive or anxious, it's more like peaceful thoughts...and also this week was my vacation so I had some free time. It's funny because normally if I meet someone the first thing on my mind is, do they know God, are they saved (that's if I'm interested ha ha) but w/ this I haven't even thoguht it really. It's like hey, if this is of the Lord, He'll take care of Ryan, He'll prepare him.
Just peace.

More to come...