It's Official...

I'm quitting xanga because it sucks...but if you want to keep in touch with me, my myspace is

www.myspace.com/carterquinley

seriously, go add me as a friend!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo, Carter

Summer '06 loooveee!

BOO!

Hello all my long, lost, Xanga friends:) It’s been awhile! Two and a half months to be exact! And so, actually I thought about quitting...but I was like, whatever, why not make a post instead??? haha!

Sooo it’s been a great great great summer! I can't even describe it in a post. It was pretty much the best summer of my entire life. No lie. I was in France, Germany, New York City, D.C., and the Virginia Beach area...all of which were very different, but each place made summer even more amazing.

I've been back one week, today. I got in to Bangkok at 10am last week and this week I’ve been *trying* to get over jet-lag and re-adjusting back to normal life here. I have to say, i'm glad to be home, but its a little bittersweet cause I know I will be gone in nine months so I don’t want to get too attached again. It’s a weird place to be.

Weeelll, i'm actually supposed to be studying for SATs right now...either that or working on college apps! OMG, I don’t know how people do college apps! They are sooo annoyingly time consuming and stressful! Like, seriously, my poor lil shoulders need a massage, asap! So let me know if you are offering! haha:)

Alrighty, i'm gonna end this pretty random post now...love to all of you who I haven’t talked to in forever!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo, Carter

Change.

I hate change.

I really do. And this isn't new either. I've always hated change, but I always seem to realize it the most around this time of year.

People leave for summer, the seniors dont come back in September, people change grades, grow up, make new friends, loose old ones, or more so let them slip away, life just changes alot this time of year. And its alot to take in.

I'm a senior.

wow. Thats the first time i've written that! One year left of everything i've ever known to be "normal" in my life. After this year, well, i try not too think too much about that.

I leave in ten days for France. I'm staying with the cutest French family ever, who ive never met, and who dont speak any english! I'm so nervous because i'm such a verbal person--thats how I make friends--so it will be hard not really being able to communicate well. Pray for me k? no, really, pleeeease:)

Last night I went on the Roue De Paris (the ferris wheel from Paris that is in Bangkok right now). It wasnt all it was cracked up to be, but still it was really beautiful...and high!

Its late, and i have a busy busy day tomorow! xoxo, Carter Kae

Here are some pictures...I dont have any from anyone else on the team yet, and we kinda had the worst pics, but whatever:)

The Team!!! John John, Micah, Derek, Mom, Me, and Janel, at Faisal Mosque on Holy Day (friday) in Islamabad, on the day we were stranded there waiting for our flight to Kabul.

The Snake Charmer at the Friday Bazaar in Islamabad--a highlight!!!

Flying over Kabul--dust and desert

Kabul International Airport

A road in Karte Se, the "nice" neighborhood in Kabul--everywhere was so war-torn

Sand homes built into the mountain--you see this all over the city--people who live in these homes must carry their water up thin, winding stairs everyday.

BUBBLES durring childcare--notice my Afghan outfit? Of course we were inside, so I did not have on my chauder

My baby boy, Alexander, taking a nap--this little guy was my FAVORITE!!!

Just a handful of the 57 kids we had at VBS!!! These kids are my heros.

Me in wearing my chauder with a woman in a Burka

My Mom and I in Pakistan...hence the no head covering...yeah, I just thought this one was cute..haha

Pakistan on the left of the river and Kashmir on the right--do you see the tiny little bridge in the distance? Yeah, we crossed that bride and travled into Kashmir to where the earthquake hit in October and killed over 80,000 people.

Muzafarabad--the capital of Kashmir which was one of the cities that was hit by the earthquake--those mountains are the foothills of the Himillas!!!

Joy(an MK who lives in Kabul, who came with us to Pakistan), Janel, and I pretending to be Afghans in this is pic by not smiling!! Yeah, we were having some fun on our eight our car ride from Islamabad to Kashmir and back:)

me....

Well, thats about it:)

xoxo, Carter

The earth is filled with His glory

I'm HOME! Safe and sound.

Wow. I can't even begin to explain it. This trip was more then anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I've had the highest highs, and yet with that, the lowest lows. I've never seen God before like I did this past week and a half. In every little thing we did God was involved and faithful. I've never prayed as much as I prayed this past week and a half, and never felt like I needed prayer more! 

I felt God literally with our team at every moment, from the minute we took off from Bangkok and I had no idea at all what to expect, to the moment when we were told at 10,000 feet in the air as we were flying over Afghanistan that we must turn around and go back to Islamabad, Pakistan, because of "bad weather" (more like the U.S. air force telling the flight to turn around because someone was on the plane who they didn’t want on the flight!), to finally arriving in dry, dusty, deserty Kabul two days later and crying as the wheels touched the ground while thanking God for his faithfulness to us, to meeting so many incredibly inspiring people who made me feel like I am doing nothing at all with my life, to taking care of precious children who give up and sacrifice everything to be with their families in Afghanistan for the sole purpose of serving God and doing his will, to feeling intimidated and almost hated by some Afghan men, but then having to accept that feeling because I am a girl(women are completely looked down on in that culture), to submitting to the culture by wearing the chauder(head covering) and long tunic and pants, and feeling at the same time both oppressed by the chauder but also finding the beauty in it, and because of it finding a burden to pray for the woman who are forced by their husbands to wear the even more covering blue Burkas because their husbands think their wives are so beautiful they don’t want anyone else to see them, to meeting hilarious and hospitable Afghan woman while visiting their home one night and listening to them say how happy they are that the Taliban are gone, to spending 24/7 for a week and a half with five other incredible people who I just love so much and who I have now experienced sunny and bustling Pakistan, gorgeous and mountainous Kashmir, and captivating, war-torn, heart-wrenching Afghanistan with--because of you five, I’ll never forget it!

I think the moment that I actually realized that I was in Afghanistan was the second afternoon when I was in a van with some kids driving back to the church where the kids would be picked up by their parents, and this Finish boy who was sitting next to me, Daniel, who is probably 9 or10, says to me matter-of-factly, "Carter, we are about the pass the Pizzeria that was burned down on Monday. I'll point it out to you" and then at the same time we were passing that obviously burned-to-the-ground, western symbolizing pizza place, two U.S. marine humvees passed by our van with U.S. marine soldiers standing at the top with their M-16s in hand, waving to us in the van, and all the while a huge dust storm (very common in Kabul) is pounding against the windows and making the woman outside clutch their chauders to stay on. I just sat their holding back tears because it had just hit me that I was really in Kabul, Afghanistan. I realized that those marines are the guys you seen on CNN! They are the guys who are making people angry at President Bush for having them there and whose mothers want them home safe. But the very reason that they need to be there is because of incidents like the burning of the pizza place, and the violence that broke out just three days before we left for Afghanistan. Without those brave incredible men who have given their lives fighting, there would be no music playing in Afghan homes, no children flying kites in the streets, no little girls going to school everyday in their black and white uniforms, no woman choosing to unveil themselves and just wear the chauder instead of the burka--there would be no freedom.

So I admit that I had a very difficult time in Kabul because of culture shock--the dust covering everything, the dry dry DRY weather that made my lips completely chapped, not being allowed to look Afghan guys in the eyes without being very inappropriate, feeling like anyone around me could be anti-US or anti the West and because of which feeling very uncomfortable, never...ever feeling completly safe, the bucket baths that I had to boil my own hot water for because of the 55 degrees weather at night, feeling my freedom taken away from me because of the chauder--BUT, because of these things, and feeling God just completely helping through those struggles, I have realized that there is so so SO much more to LIFE!!!! There is more to life than our everday little blessings. And what is it?? It’s the unfailing and indescribable, faithfulness, sovereignty, beauty, peace, holiness, and love of God. Yes, you have heard it thousands of times before. I know that before this trip I was immune to it, and it didn’t mean anything much to me anymore. But how could I now ever deny the all-powerful faithfulness and unfailing love of God??? And it seems weird, and even wrong, that I had to travel all the way to Afghanistan to realize this OBVIOUS fact that stares each of us in the face everyday. But I did, and it has made all the difference.

I love you all, Carter

Oh, just to add this, the song “Blessed Be Your Name” has never ment so much to me before this trip. Our team had a few times when we were able to have worship together in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and this song really touched me:

Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name
And blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name