THREE MORE WEEKS!!!!!

I can't wait!!!!!!

It's getting closer.....

The last two weeks have felt crazy with taxes, school courses/getting ready for fall classes, finishing out work, and preparing for the trip and internship! It's weird.... It's crunch time!! God has been continuing to stir such an excitement in me for this trip! This last Sunday we met with Heidi from Food for Hungry and got a little more information about our trip and what we will be doing. It was good to finally meet with her. While there we will be making house visits where I will get to meet the child I will be sponsoring! I can't wait! I know God's going to completely change me because He already is during this process of waiting... Waiting is hard! Not just waiting for this trip but for God's timing in ALL areas of my life! There is A LOT of waiting happening, but isn't that just how God works most of the time? I'm learning to trust that though I wait for whatever it is He's asked me to wait for, He's working/moving. Sometimes I can tend to view waiting as God's procrastination but it's not! So pray that I do not "lean on my own understanding" right now but trust in God that He knows what he's doing and that He completely loves me (more than I can understand). Even though I don't know His plans, I know His heart and I can trust it!   

Update and Prayer Requests

I have only five weeks till I leave for Haiti! Wow! It is coming soon yet it doesn’t feel even close enough. It’s funny how that can happen. I feel like God has really been doing some good, yet hard stuff, in my heart! He has been working in places that seem so obvious, places I knew I needed Him to touch to prepare me for my trip. But through my preparation God has been doing some healing in places I was unaware really affected my trip! It’s been some hard stuff but I’m so thankful that God revealed those things and is so patient and loving in the process!

The other day I was driving, thinking about the healing process God was starting and I started to cry. Though my healing may seem trivial to some, it felt overwhelming to me, wishing the process could be quick (knowing it may not be). I heard God say, “It’s okay that you're not where you think you “should be”or want to be…I’m going to walk with you through it. I won’t rush you!” and a sense of God’s love, peace, and patience completely just filled my body. I’m ready for God to do some work in these places of my heart, but as I have experienced before, know that the process can be painful. So if you are reading this (not sure who all reads my blogs) I ask for continued prayer for healing and preparation in my heart! Also, a continued realization and awareness that this trip is not about me, though I know God will bless me through it, but about Him and those in Haiti!  

Prayer Requests

Pray that God would give me patience and strength as I wait for my trip to Haiti. I have felt really tired lately and a little stressed with all that needs to be done before I leave (finishing up my classes/finals, training for Haiti, job transition, church). There are just a lot of "transitions" in my life right now. Though these transitions are all for sure "things" there is still a waiting time and necessary steps I need to take before they unfold! I need God's peace, grace, and strength big time!!

I also ask prayer for my relationship with God. I really sensed God wanting me to step back from all my reading on poverty, which is not necessarily bad, and really spend time just being loved by Him. I can really get caught up sometimes in "ministry and serving" and forget to just let God fill me with a love I so desperately need from Him! I met with my friend Heather the other day (who lived in the Dominican Republic) and she told me I was going to fall in love with Haiti. I told her I felt like I already have! I truly believe that God has put that in me even though I haven't met the people of Haiti, but I do believe God wants me to have MORE intimate time with Him...... I want my relationship and intimacy with God to be what pours out and off of me...

Where I fit in...

I just finished watching a program in which two young missionary men share their travel experiences through third world countries. In this episode they visited Rwanda. They were given tours of all the areas where millions were brutally murdered. One young woman, who survived one of the mass killings on church grounds, spoke of how she literally was buried by bodies of those who had been killed or were dying. She and others amazingly escaped the church, but one look in her eyes as she spoke about the experience, showed how real it still was to her. As the two men visited each site, they were shown church rooms full of bones and skulls, dried blood and brain remains on the walls and ceilings, and rooms where militia literally bashed babies’ heads against walls to kill them! My heart sank and I started to weep! I couldn’t even imagine my little nephew being brutally murdered like that! It’s hard to even take in just 30 minutes of hearing the stories of the genocide in Rwanda, but I can’t even imagine the horrors these people endured… and the world turned its eyes for 100 days…what injustice!!

            As I have been thinking, praying, and preparing for my trip to Haiti, I have questioned and wondered why? Why was I born in the United States, in a family where I was taken care of, fed, and always had what I needed? Should I feel guilty because of this? Growing up I remember being reprimanded for enjoying things that I did. “There are many kids and children who don’t have what you have,” people would say as if it was a sin to be happy to live in a country with such resources and freedom. So instead of enjoying the things God had blessed me with, I would feel condemned and shamed!  Our God is not a condemning God! He doesn’t want our actions to come from a heart full of shame. He wants me to be moved by compassion and love! It is God’s loving kindness that leads us to repentance, to a turning back to Him, His ways, and His way of seeing the world and other people! He doesn’t want my shame provoked charity! He wants a heart moved by Him that seeks love, compassion, and justice! When I am helping people who are hurting from war and/or poverty I am serving as an advocate for Jesus; I am being the hands and feet of God’s justice. Bono said it well: “This is not about charity in the end, is it? It’s about justice… I just want to repeat that: This is not about charity, it’s about justice.” I want to see those that I am serving as human beings, created in the image of God, not another number, a charity case to be pitied! I want to know their names and know who they are, their hearts. I want to look at them like they are a brother or sister, like they are my own flesh and blood. Cause in reality… they are!!

These past couple of weeks God has been breaking and breaking (and breaking) my heart. I’m not saying that my heart was never broken or sensitive to those hurting around me but I feel He is taking it to a whole other level. As I write this, Worlds Apart by Jars of Clay is playing… “I pray to love You, take my worlds apart, we need you, I am on my knees, we need you, take my worlds apart, broken on my knees…” God is great at doing that, taking my worlds apart, coming at me from another angle. There are times where I feel like I have had enough! Many times I have felt immobilized, asking myself “What can I even do? I am only one person!” But most of the time, God calms my thinking, and I slow down enough to hear Him. Then the answer comes… and I know why I am here, living in the United States. I not only have the resources to help those in need but I also have had the chance to experience justice! I live in a country where I experience freedom and justice in ways many people only dream about, even despite the imperfections and failures of the government. I have experienced injustice but more than not, I have experienced justice and rights; rights to health and security. What would happen if these rights were taken away? I know that at any second they could be. Yet even if they were taken away, I would still have an overwhelming sense that there was something wrong. In the Gospels, Jesus taught us how to pray. He taught us to pray for Heaven to come to earth, “…thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” There is justice in Heaven, so I pray for justice on earth and ask God to let me be a part of it!