A.C.T.S.

Our teen group this week learned about a practical and easy approach to prayer.  My focus was to make prayer a natural behavior for them.  I believe teens tend to think of prayer as something intimidating and complicated whereas in fact it's just like talking to a friend.  A friends who's trustworthy, loyal, loving and unchanging.  So I brought in a worksheet that will hopefully help them in their prayer time.  It focuses on thanking God, asking for prayer for others, things they need to work on, their own requests and answers to their prayers or how God has helped them that day.  I also had them write down the A.C.T.S. format to help them have a better outline for their prayer time:

Adoration is the act of praising God.

Confession is the act of telling God the sins that we are struggling with.

Thanksgiving is giving Him thanks for all of the gifts that we have received.

Supplication is when we come to Him with our wants and our needs and our requests for others.

The kids were really open to this; taking notes and asking questions.  I'm so excited to see this group grow!   

Kirtland Building Project

We are so excited to be starting the process of building our Ministry Center in 2017!  This past week we met with a member of WGM's Men With Vision who will be heading up work teams and promoting the project.  We shot a promotional video and took lots of pictures on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week to help with this portion of the project.  It will be awesome to provide a center focused on reaching our Kirtland community for Christ.

                                 Many games must be played outside and on our uneven ground.

With our house being a regular house, there's a lot of broken up space that makes it difficult to use for Club. Expanding this house will provide the space we need to minister to these kids better.  We'll also be able to even out the land to build a bigger play area.  We plan to provide a community garden that will be not only educational but also relationship building and tasty, of course!  This project will grow our current space to accommodate our growing kids clubs and provide many more ministry opportunities.  By expanding our current house we can provide life skills such as cooking, parenting, Bible Studies and more.

Our Neighborhood Ministry Center will expand our ministry further into building relationships with our kids' families and the Kirtland community.  Providing a multi-purpose building creates spaces not only for sports but also a platform for community meals, get together's, plays, concerts, skill learning nights for crafts and music.

Please pray for this exciting new project! I'm thankful to serve a God who goes before us and has everything in His hand.  Please pray for more full-time workers to help us with these many plans. Also pray for the many work teams that will aid in the building of center.  And pray for Chris and I as we watch and participate in this exciting undertaking.

Create in Me...

Sometimes I'm not very loving.  In fact I'm pretty terrible at it.  I love to be loved, but I don't always love others well.  I've been very convicted lately about this condition of my heart. Sometimes I'm just not in tune with others' needs and sometimes people are just plain unlovable.  During my quiet time with the Lord a few weeks ago Psalm 51:10 came to mind.  David writes, "create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." I paused on the word create so I looked up the meaning. It says "to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes. to evolve from one's own thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention." Anyway you look at it creating takes work and a willingness on our part. Because without the willingness to change there's just no point.  And to love in a way that reflects Christ's love is not natural in our world's standards. 

I started to think about my heart condition and how each day (or hour) it could use other things too, not just cleanliness. I started to fill in the blanks, create in me....

-A forgving heart

-a compassionate heart

-a love-filled heart

-a joy-filled heart

wisdom

discernment

motivated...

Whatever you need for today just ask for it. Love, patience, kindness, motivation...forgiving. Joy. But it starts with you. Are you willing to change?  To be re-imagined? Because God does all things well. Complete. Full. Good.  Therefore we can too. we just need to ask.   

Is anybody out there...

I've really struggled with this post, it's been in my head and heart for the past few weeks.  It's not easy to admit faults and be vulnerable but this needs to be said. Maybe other missionary friends have shared in this struggle or maybe they will eventually, anyway here it is.

This has been a rough road.  I thought everything was going to be different this time around, easier.  I thought that if I had all my ducks in a row everything would fall into place and I'd be back on the field in no time.  If I have faith as small as a mustard seed I'll be back in 6 months.  If I work really hard, pray really hard, cry really hard...whine like a 6 year old.  And there's the comparison, that thief of joy.  I have this awful habit of comparing myself to other missionaries; they do this, let's try it.  They're married, they aren't alone in this or it'd be harder if I had a family...(yes I've said this to myself).  Or the terrible trap of "what are people thinking about me?"  And I struggle even typing this because I know better.  

And then a few months ago I sat down with the Lord, I did some fasting and really sought His face. And what He told me made me hold my breath.  I had made raising support an idol in my life.  It had become way more important than anything else, current relationships, relationships with my friends and supporters, my parents ("they don't understand, they've never done this") and my relationship with Jesus. Because this is my job and if you are working on ministry aren't you working alongside God the whole time? (I say this with slight sarcasm).  I'm doing ministry so I'm in God's will!  God, it's what I'm supposed to be doing!  It's what I'm working for right now! It's what my current supporters expect of me, I don't want to be wasting their money!  But how can anything be more important than Jesus?  It's hard work making Him a priority.  And I know this so what happens when things just don't go your way, and weeks go by without a word and you still have a ways to go in support with the hope that you'll go back to the field in July.  What happens when you are made to wait.  And the heavens seem silent and you just can't make yourself open up the pages of the only Book that really matters and that has the answers.  When you don't want to get up in the morning because you feel like a failure and your heart is split in two and no one understands anyway.  When you make yourself be silent because you can't stand your own self pity.  Pride is a terrible thing.

I come across the words in Romans 5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings,because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. He is constantly making me new, building me up, even when it hurts and the results aren't there. Because NOTHING is more important than He who died for us, than Him who first loved us.  Every road is different and I'm thankful that through these times He teaches me something new and makes me a better person.  Even as I re-read over these words in Romans I can feel my heart being mended by Him who made me.  

One of the many things I love about God is that He doesn't MAKE us do anything, it's our choice. Maybe that's what's so difficult for me too because relationships are hard and keeping in touch isn't really a strength of mine.  But I just want, no I feel compelled to keep moving forward, finding joy in all things because everything IS a gift.  Even the hard and silent days.  To write it down these gifts and hold them in my heart. Because I can't make myself do anything but follow Him and so I need to have faith in His faithfulness. Because He is faithful and all things work together for good for those that love God.  And even though I act like a spoiled child all the time sometimes and throw tantrums when things just don't go my way, I love God. And I know that He is faithful and His love never fails. 

Waiting is the Hardest Part

Trusting and waiting.  They go hand in hand don't they?  Well, guess what.  I'm terrible at both.  Oh, I'll encourage others to trust God's timing and wait because He's got a plan, He's in control but don't tell me that.  It's fine for other people but not me, you see, I'm special.  I'm unique.  I'm a glorious one of a kind snowflake...destined to be out there in the forefront paving the way and knowing exactly what's around the corner.  No delay for this girl, nope.  I deserve it!  I've earned it!  I've learned all I need to know.  Send me in coach, I've got it all together.
But it just doesn't happen that way.  I sit and wait, wondering what the next step is.  There's so many levels to trusting Jesus, it's like growing pains.  There are always more things to learn and ways to grow.  And I know this.  It doesn't make it any easier but I know it.  But that doesn't stop me from trying different formulas,  if I do and X and Y I'll get to point A here. If I subtract Z from W goal number 1 will happen.
I'm a missionary, I feel like I should know better by now.....
And I know that God has His plans and He sees them through.  I've seen this, I've experienced it.  And there's a reason for everything, I might not know it now but I know that He loves me.  I don't have anything profound to say other than that there's a reason in the waiting.  And I plan on seeking His face in my impatience and frustration, not to beg or plead ( not today anyway) but to just to seek out what He has to show me today about myself and my circumstances.  Even in the waiting there are blessings, even when I feel like there's nothing more I can do except get on my knees.  That constant laying down of self.   So I will wait because God is sovereign and Jesus loves me.

Psalm 27

I've missed writing.  As a hard core English Major who loved staying up into the wee hours of the morning composing poetry and doing research and working until the last second before I had to turn in a paper, switching gears to ministry has been not hard but I felt a little incomplete.  I know, I'm not supposed to feel like that but there it is.  Once in a while I get that itch to pour out my heart.  And I do that in journals but to publish and share...I miss it.  And thus, I start a blog.  Why has it taken so long you say?  Because of avoidance behavior, a.k.a procrastination and because it's hard to put myself out there, to be vulnerable.  To share my life.  I like being private. To put to shame my English Lit degree by posting grammar mistakes. (It happens). So without further ado but with reservations here it is.

Psalm 27.  It has pretty much become my mantra.  I first drawn to it a year and half ago, almost two.  It's a plea and a piece of poetry but aren't all Psalms?  It's an invitation, to seek His face.  To keep looking for good. As I continue on in this HMA (Homeland Ministry Assignment of support raising) this is my own challenge. To keep seeking His face, to ask God to keep teaching me and leading me and to keep looking for good and not just any good but the goodness of the Lord.  One thing I need to say, I am no theologian.  I never went to seminary.  I'm no scholar.  So I might take things a little literal, I might get things wrong.  But I do know that even though I'm not those things I know where I belong.

This journey has been awesome in every sense of the word; "inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration or fear."  From when I was called 5 and half years ago to now.  It's been a journey.   And I've been afraid.  And I know the journey continues and they'll be more tears and more fears but I know who holds my days in His hands.