Standing in Awe

It is amazing how quickly our lives can run away with us.  I just realized that it has been over two months sense I have posted!  I apologize.  In my last post I was talking about fall and being back on the ground in the US.  It has been a wild ride so far with a ton of ups and downs.  Sense my last post I have been in one wedding, attended another, run a marathon, and currently I am recovering from getting my wisdom teeth pulled. In the business of life it can be hard to take time to stop and reflect on all God is doing, and simply thank him for his blessings.  As I have been leading a small group and it has been a blessing larger than I could have ever imagined.  God is using the women of the group to grow and encourage me in so many ways.  Their hunger for God has reminded me of how important it is to never forget the fundamental truths of our faith and to constantly be seeking God in order to understand his love more deeply.  I also ha...

What are you afraid of?  The unknown?  Change?  Insecurity?  How others think of you?  Disappointment?  Failing? The list could go on forever.  Logically, as a human being, there are so many things in this world to be afraid of.  However, if you are a Christian we are called to live without fear.  I would like to say up front that I am going to be pretty bold in this post.  I am not suggesting that we make unwise decisions to put ourselves in harm's way.  I read the Proverbs and I value wisdom.  In 1 John 4:18 God tells us that "There is no fear in love , but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."  Earlier in the same book it says that "God is love," so if we are with God there is no fear.  A simple A=B, B=C, so A=C.  Take a minute just to think about that.  How different would your life be if you didn't make any decisions bas...

Something I have dreamt of ever sense I became serious about my faith is a community that lives like the first Chriatians did. In Acts there are stories of people coming together and sharing their resourses so that everyone always had enough. This type of sacrificial love and recognizing that NOTHING really belongs to any human being, but that EVERYTHING belongs to God is a radical but beautiful way of living.  In today's society people may call this socialism or communism or what have you. When people love this way to honor God and to truly love one another the way God calls us to I cal it Christian community. This is what first drew me to El Salvador, and now I would like to try and give you a glimpse of it! Here is a picture of our small group that meets on Sarurday nights. It may not look like much but if you look closely you will see that young and old are together. In the background some women are cooking food for the group, and on the right is Ricardo with his bible preparin...

This is the first of my feature entries I'm going to write. Considering I spend a good chunk of my week at the CDI (or nutrition center in English) I thought it appropriate to write about it first. The basic goals of the CDI are to love children by providing for their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. How do we do this? Each child that we serve in the CDI is sponsored by awesome people like you that have decided to give to help meet their needs. Marielos, our pastor's wife, writes the menu each month according to the budget.  What does this look like for the kids? The majority of the kids arrive around noon. They play for a few minutes and then around 12:30 they form their "filas" to go wash their hands. This is one of my tasks. I distribute soap and manage the mayhem that accompanies 30 children all trying to wash their hands in 4 stalls. I have recently taken to timing them. They then head back to the kitchen where the table is all set up. Soñya and Melanie,...

16  Rejoice always, 17  pray without ceasing, 18  give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.  -1 Thessalonians 5 Writing this post is so hard.  I feel like I could write about a million things, but I have decided to dedicate this one to what God has really been showing me.  The next few posts after this one I am going to do features on different aspects of my job here and help you learn more about where I am, what I do, and the people I work with.  For now though lets talk about prayer. Throughout my support raising experience prayer was something I struggled with pretty frequently.  It felt risky and there were times when I really didn't trust God with my pain and I didn't trust him to lead me through it.  Furthermore, asking him for the deep desires of my heart was not somewhere I wanted to go for fear of being abandoned.  As you can probably tell there were a lot of negative ass...

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This has nothing to do with how my week went, but I would like to tell you all that I slammed a cockroach multiple times just minutes ago with my shoe.  That's all I have to say about that. So this past week has been a whirlwind!  I arrived just one day after a mission team of 21 from Maryland and worked with them most of the week.  A lot of great things were accomplished.  Have a look! Jose and I are reunited! The mission team performed silent dramas in order to share the gospel.  In this picture they are sharing with the parents of the CDI children. Here are some of my girls coloring. Not a great picture, but the team built a house for one of the families that have children in the CDI program! Happy Independence Day!  Pastor Ivo got us some fireworks to help us celebrate! Here are just a few of the awesome fruits that grow in our yard.  Mangos (whole and eaten) and oranges! After a long week with the mission team t...

I made it.  The past 4 days have been some of the craziest, most spontaneous, and beautiful 4 days of my life.  Friday was so perfect.  I found out I had reached my support goal and already had plans to grab dinner with a friend, and it was such a blessing.  The entire night felt like a magical gift from God.  I was basking in his unending blessings and could not stop smiling.  Saturday I bought a plane ticket, Sunday I packed, and Monday I left.  Sunday evening I took time to pause amidst the seemingly endless to-do list to celebrate and say a final farewell.  It was great to celebrate and feel loved, but also sad.  On my drive home a ton of emotion came rushing in and it suddenly hit me that, even though a month is not that long, I really do love my friends and I really do miss them.  It's funny how in the face of a void not yet there you realize how essential something is.  I realized how wonderful they all are and what a key ro...

Greetings everyone.  I have so much exciting news and a few prayer requests for you all.  I am devoting a post to it rather than just updating the list to the right! So on Friday I had a Skype conversation with my friend Alex Marks who is living in La Libertad right now with his family from Ohio.  There are some really cool and exciting things going on in the La Libertad community and definitely ways you can contribute! Firstly, they have launched a clothing store out of the upstairs room in the church.  The US Navy has partnered with us and had been such a huge blessing donating a TON of clothes and supplies to sell.  Why sell it, why not just give it to people in need?  This is a great question.  Most of the items in the store are only 25 or 50 cents.  This may seem silly, but the sense of dignity that people get from being able to purchase a needed item for their family is actually very enabling compared to just taking a handout.  In ...

You know when you find a song that you just love and you listen to it on repeat and it never gets old?  Well I have just stumbled upon one of those.  This song feels like a powerful anthem for my life right now.  I am often overcome with sadness when I think about the darkness of the world that we live in and how I long for things to be different.  This song feels like an answer to those feelings.  As verse three says, "the worst thing is never the last thing.  No, the last thing will be the best thing."  This combined with my recent study into Jesus second coming and how truly awesome it promises to be has given me a new sense of hope.  I listen to this song on repeat in my car and shamelessly belt out the anthem, "as long as God is on his throne I am carried by the hope that love will have the final word." When the voice of fear rages in my head Reading down the long list of my regrets When the ruins are all I see Remind me that it ...

Any of you reading that have attended New Life's leadership training program: not THAT last 10%.  I am talking about the last 10% of my support raising that I have left.  It seems crazy that I could be finished really soon and back doing field ministry.  It also seems AMAZING!!  I am so excited to get back to doing the ministry God called me to and that made me want to go through this whole support raising process in the first place.  I go back and forth often feeling really encouraged by the fact that I am so close to finishing, but also fearing that it will drag out and having no idea where it is going to come from.  If you could pray that I can have courage and faith to call the people that are hard to call and that I can trust God to provide this last 10% in his perfect timing that would be awesome. The last few weeks have been a weird mixture of fear, excitement, joy, doubt, mourning and rejoicing.  One of the things I said to a friend recently...

Wow.  What a week it has been.  God has given me so many unforeseen blessings it is unreal.  As you know I have been support raising to be on staff full-time at New Life Church for over a year now.  It has been some of the best but also some of the hardest time of my life.  Each day I have been learning about myself, about God, and choosing to trust that he does indeed have what is best for me in mind in spite of what I am feeling or my reality seems to be telling me.  In the past couple weeks I have been thinking through numbers and talking with a few trusted friends and mentors and we all came to the realization that I can lower my support goal somewhat significantly.  This may not seem like good news, but it is.  It means that I am a lot closer to reaching my goal (assuming GCM approves my new goal).  As I reflect on how I was feeling before this revelation I think I was feeling really hopeless in the process and like there was no end in ...

So another year in La Libertad, another group of students using their college spring break to serve and grow, and another time of deep thought and questions. As I said in my last post, God showed me a lot just in my first few days about humility and servitude.  In the first few days that I was there alone I had such a great time taking in the sun, reconnecting with old friends, and feeling part of the community.  I had the opportunity to attend a church service where pastor Ivo spoke and to see what it was like to be part of the church down there under "normal" circumstances.  Claudia, my "sister" in El Salvador, and I joked that I was like a celebrity for the first few days because everyone was calling wanting to spend time with me! When the team arrived on Sunday, after missing their connecting flight on Saturday and having to stay the night in Houston, we got right down to business.  Since they had lost a day, we did not want to waste anymore time a...

Well as you probably know by now I made it. After my plane out of Detroit got delayed and I was forced to run through the Atlanta airport in order to make my connecting flight I had a loomin feeling. Normally I keep my backpack (full of all my clothes and necessities) with me, but trying to be the nice, compliant customer I allowed them to put it below the plans at their request. BAD CHOICE. with only about 30 minutes between flights I knew the bags were not going to make it. Upon landing in San Salvador me fears came true. A group of us were left waiting in line to file a missing baggage report and leave with only the clothes on our backs.  In spite of all of this I was in good spirits just because I made it. I figured one day is no big deal. However if you know me, you know I'm not very good at receiving gifts. That first day a friend bought me lunch, another friend bought me dinner, and the family that I'm staying with insisted upon me sleeping in the room with air condition...

....to me.  That's right Valentine's day was my one year anniversary of support raising.  What a year it has been.  Just by simply reading the side panels titled "Prayers" and "Praises" I think it is pretty easy to see the ups and downs of the last year.  I have gone through some serious heart break, disappointment, frustration, wondered if God even cared about me, and had a melt down or two.  However, I have also experienced immeasurable growth. God has led me down a path that I never could have imagined in the last year.  I have had the opportunity to take the biggest steps of faith that I have ever taken.  He has shown me time and time again that he is here, he is present, and that he sees my every need and want, no matter how petty.  I have had the privilege of reconnecting with old friends and and gaining new ones.  I have been humbled and seen God provide for me in ways I never even knew I needed him.  In this last year what I a...

Good morning everyone!  Many people have been asking about when I will be returning to La Libertad.  Well today I am happy to inform you that I will be going down next month!  Ya know what that means???  It's time to round up those clothes you don't wear, those toys you want to give away, and any other donations you would like to send with me!  Things that would be a great to donate include, but are not limited to: New/gently used clothes (only warm weather clothes please!) Kids vitamins Toys (coloring books, crayons, little toys, etc.) Home goods (curtains, pillow covers, sheets, wash clothes, etc.) Books (kids picture books, YA novels) Jewelry Baby clothes Tooth brushes and tooth paste (consider asking your dentist!) Bath soap, shampoo, conditioner Monetary donations (we will use this to help purchase things that are too large to bring with us, or a said need once we arrive) *I will gladly come to you to pick things up.  For the readers not ...

With Valentines Day approaching this topic only seems fitting.  However, it is not the reason I have been thinking about love.  Although I am not currently leading a small group I still receive the small group study on a weekly basis.  I'd like to say that I even open the email every week let alone read the study, but I don't.  However, I have been looking at them sense the start of the year.  In the first study it challenged the reader to write a six word mission statement for their life.  Easy right?  It was a really cool thing to think about though.  I sat for a while and just thought, "What do I want my life to be about?"  I thought a lot about my desire to serve the poor, my heart for social justice, my longing to see people come to know Christ, and it all boiled down to one thing: love.  So this is what my mission statement said: Risk everything in faith to show true love. I don't know if this seems obvious, simple, or insane to...

I know most bloggers, missionaries, and people in general would do some kind of "year in review" type post this time of year, but I simply don't want to.  Also, you can always go back and read the last year's worth of posts if you want to.  So instead I am just going to talk about the last month and the future a bit. Christmas As many of you know, I. Love. Christmas.  To the point of listening to Christmas music from November 1st all the way to Valentines day.  However this year I was not in the Christmas spirit.  A lot of things have changed in the last year, and not having a designated vacation time, as it was my first time not being a student over the holidays, combined with Satan's attacks of loneliness and isolation really hindered my happiness.  Despite these circumstances, I had the most perfect Christmas day.  I started the morning reading the story of Jesus coming to earth as a vulnerable infant by the light of the tree as I sipped my mo...