One April day, I texted my daughter who was away for college; "How are you?" Her reply had three negative words: unmotivated, sad and irritated. Knowing that she had big reports and finals coming up, I told her not to be buried in today but to be excited about what good things will be ahead in summer. She was not very thrilled by my response, but everything started that way.

If you dream about something, just do it big time. I texted her, “what about going to Israel?” She texted back “yeah.” I remembered this one organization in Israel called Sheet Achim that left an impression in my heart when I was skimming through volunteer opportunities a year ago. “What about here?,” I texted the link. She said “nice.”

I was totally aware that I was only dreaming at this point and also doing this for my daughter, but I somehow started filling out the volunteer application form I found online. Oh well, it is just an application. You probably would not hear back so soon. There were a couple of short essay questions about your faith, your walk with the Lord, and the motivation for the service, which I only found after I started filing it up and scrolled down. Oh well, I need to finish what I started, right?

“Hey, I submitted the application!”, I texted her. She texted back, “Me too.” We are both in shock (in a good way). That was around 1:00 pm on April 12th.

Now that the applications are in, we might possibly probably maybe really go to Israel, so I asked my husband when he came home with a less than 50% of reality, “What would you say if Momo and I go to Israel to volunteer.. like for 6 weeks this summer?” I was really stunned when he said, “Well it sounds nice.”

“Are you sure? We are talking about Israel, not Texas… and I said one month and half.” He said yes, maybe it was due to my campaigning over the past years about a trip to Israel, when I kept sharing with him over the dinner table about the history of Israel, the grandeur plan of God and the depth of the Bible wisdom with lots of excitement (he usually rolled his eyes with an oh-well- she-started-again expression). Or it could be that his close colleague, a Jew who goes back and forth between the US and Israel, shared realistic information about the life in Israel. Or it could be the fact that Momo did not have a particular plan like volunteering, internship or parttime job etc. for the summer.

Anyway, there was no plan as of the morning of April 12th, but it started around noon to become pretty realistic by the night of that day. Is this God’s plan? We need to pray.