Getting real about myself

                                 
   Ｉwant to start my post off by asking, " What keeps you motivated? What drives you to be better every day?" And I think for most people, they would say " Someone who cares about me and encourages me. Someone who doesn't judge me and accepts me for who I am." That my friends is: LOVE <3  Everyone wants to be loved and shown love to. I do hope that all my readers are encouraged by this post and can understand a little bit about myself and how far I have come to be who I am today.
 One of my favorite things to learn is about people and relationships. It has been by my goal to learn how to form strong, trustworthy, long-lasting relationships, wherever I am. I , for one, am a very enthusiastic, warm,  friendly and people-loving woman, that I find myself sometimes scaring people off first impression! ( which is not my goal at all) However, I was not always this friendly, out-going, enthusiastic person that most people know. It took me years to learn how to accept myself for who I am and not compare myself to everyone around me. There was a time in my life where I was so shy, that you wouldn't find me in a group of friends or chatting up a storm with a stranger. I wouldn't dare be the first to speak up in a group or raise my hand to ask questions/answer questions in a public setting. I always felt left-out and unneeded. I would look up to my older siblings and say " If only I was like them. If only I could be exactly like them and have what they have." But reality said " Yanna, you are not them, or ever will get the chance to be them, so be yourself and concentrate on yourself and be your own person."
   For the longest time, I hated who I was and wished myself away to being more like so-and-so instead of focusing on my own self. It wasn't until I had gone to In The Gap at 18 years old. ( for those of you who don't know, In The Gap is a non-profit organization, which focuses on bringing Character into the inner city public schools, as well as have after-school Bible clubs in Oklahoma City.( https://www.inthegap.org/  ) where I had found my real passion: Being an encouragement to hurting people and helping them learn to become better and successful in daily life. I had found my "calling" and knew that this is what I wanted to be doing with my life. Every day I was surrounded by children whose daily needs were never met and whose parents have either been in and out of jail, on drugs, or in some type of witness protection program. I would come back to my dorm room in tears every day, listening to these innocent children tell me how they would get beat by their own parents. I would have kids, as young as 5-6 years old, who have never seen their birth father, because he was in jail for abuse/drugs/etc. It hurt me to see these children be treated like this at such a young age!! Every day, our team of about 30-40 would go into these broken, inner city schools, where the test average was below 60 and try to teach these children that change started with themselves. I would tutor several 5'th and 6'th graders who didn't even know how to read, because their classroom focused so much on discipline and behavior problems. I witnessed a teacher being pushed to the wall and yelled at in her face by her own 5'th grade student. This broke my heart so much that I was determined to stop focusing on myself and my selfishness and shift the focus to those around me.
  I went from every day, throwing pity parties, to speaking about Forgiveness and Gratefulness to classrooms filled with hurting children. I went from being shy/scared of everyone, to being filled with courage and boldness and proclaiming truth to a hurting younger generation. My eyes were opened and my heart full of gratitude for my parents, and how much they have sacrificed to bring me and my biological sister and my 5 other adopted siblings out of the orphanage/ foster care, and into the free country: AMERICA ( for those who don't know, I was adopted from Russia at the age of 4 with my sister).  So what changed? What happened to me that now, takes me half-way across the world to serve/minister children in Taiwan? One word : Truth

My passion has lead me to travel to Asia 

   For the first time, I was seeing firsthand, what people were dealing with on a daily basis. I began to also really invest and work on myself and my insecurities and learn how to effectively become better. I learned to be disciplined and follow a tight schedule. I learned how to sacrifice my time/energy for someone else. My time was being filled with giving love and encouragement to hurting children around me. Yes, it was draining, exhausting but it was the best decision I made as a teenager. The best year I had ever spent, was serving with In The Gap and Chad Christiansen and his team in the OKC inner city public schools, being the light and truth to people around us.    With all that to say, I have seen truth and know what reality is really like outside of the bubble that I was put in growing up, and decided that I didn't like what I saw. I decided that this was my passion. This is what keeps me going every day. This is what I love doing! I love seeing people become better and successful because someone had spent their time investing into their life. Someone had shown them love and support, something that was foreign to them. This my friends, is what keeps me motivated. This is what takes up my time. This is what drives me to become a better me everyday! Hope this has inspired you to get out of your comfort zone, and get into something that you are passionate about. You never know what that might be, until you take that leap of faith and act on that. Everything else will follow.