Go From....Go To

A lot of people have asked how God has called me to this place in life of going back to Swaziland, so here's the abbreviated version of it.
In October of 2008, I was running one evening after work and God revealed to me at that time that I was going to be stepping down from my full time ministry position. It wasn’t an “if” anymore, but a “when”. During that same run, He led me to think of Genesis 12:1 “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house and go to the land that I will show you.’” Little did I know at the time how God would bring that verse to reality in my life! Over then next 3 years, God led me out of that full time position, brought Swaziland to the forefront of my mind (when before I never knew it was a country), led me to spend time serving Him in there, and even had me spend 3 months of my life helping pack up our family farm to move off the land. And now here I am almost exactly 3 years later, preparing to go over to Africa for several weeks in order to continue praying about what it might look like to serve full time on the mission field.
As I go from my father's land to a land that God has shown me, my trust is in the unchanging One who is sovereign over all times & places.

Long Time, No Blog....But That's Changing

It has been a long time since I have blogged, not because I haven’t had anything to write about, but because it has been so much stuff that has been so close to my heart! Someone once said, “I write while I learn, I learn while I write” and that has been true in my journals and my relationship with God, but for the past 6 months, those things that He has been teaching me have been intense and at times left me too tender to process with anyone except for Him. One of my biggest struggles with blogging is that I don’t want to put out there for all to see some of the things that God has done in my heart that are to stay just between Him & I. Luke 1:66, 2:19, and 2:51 all talk about people laying things up in their hearts, pondering them in their hearts, storing them in their hearts as the miraculous event of God becoming flesh in the baby Jesus was occurring. As God has led me through processing a few specific things in the last 6 months, my heart has been tender because of it and not ready to share. But as I move forward into this next season of life, I want to begin to share through this blog for a few reasons.
~ To give you a glimpse of the ways that God is revealing His faithfulness & character through my life, so that you might praise Him also.
~ To let people know what’s going on in my life and how you can be praying.
~ To tell the story of how God is working out His redemptive love in tangible ways for His glory.

What Am I Doing?

I started this blog focused around sharing what God was doing through my trip to Swaziland, and now that I've finally posted so many that I wrote during and about that trip, it's going to be changing a little to various topics. I have found that I really agree with the quote "I write when I learn, I learn when I write" and God is using this blog to continue that pattern. Some days, I continue to ask myself "What am I doing?" and trying to convince myself that it would be ok to quit blogging since I haven't done that much, but I know that God is challenging me through this process & discipline. Writing and journaling helps me to pray through things, process things, gain perspective on things, give things to God, and so much more. So for this next season, these are some of the themes that are on my heart that you can expect me to be writing about:
~ attempting to live life daily surrendered to God...resting in the reality of the Gospel...trying to comprehend that I am more sinful than I can ever fear, but more loved than I can ever imagine. There have been many things/people/quotes that God has used to spur me on in my relationship with Him, and the best thing I can do is to pass those on!
~ wrestling through the call that God has put on my life as a full time missionary - here in Denver and to the ends of the earth. During this season of in betweens where I haven't found the right fit with what God is calling me to do with missions, I know that He has called me to keep serving Him each and every day.
~ reluctantly letting go of our family farm and all of the lovely emotional baggage & crap that comes with sorting through and packing lots of family items. As I have begun to dig through the attic, there have been so many memories coming already, that I hope to write & share some of them here.

I know that through God's sovereignty, He puts specific topics on my heart for me to write about...for His glory, for my joy, and hopefully for your benefit, so know that I am praying for that as I write & share these blogs!

God is Faithful

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
Lamentations 3:22-23

That verse was fresh on my mind this morning as we were driving to the carepoint, and I prayed for our day. Just a few minutes later as we were driving down a bumpy dirt road - and I was trying not to fall on the person on either side of me, and praying for no flat tires - God illustrated that verse for me in a way that reminded me of His hope and that carried me through the rest of a humbling and hard day...and it will be on my heart and mind as I go to bed in a few minutes.
We were being driven down the dirt road by a friend, who reached over at one point and grabbed Mike's knee, saying "Let me tell you a story about how God is faithful." He proceeded to tell us - in a deep accent - how he and his wife had wanted a baby very badly from early on in their marriage. They prayed for one for a few years, and he said that they felt like Hannah in the Bible...and that they echoed Hannah's promise to the Lord. They told the Lord that when He blessed them with a child, they would offer him up to His service. A few years later they were pregnant, and raised their son to love and fear the Lord, never telling him of the promise they had made over his life.
After he graduated from school, he went on to do business work, planning in the near future to do a year "in Christ's service." All the while, his parents were watching closely, as they knew the plan the Lord had for their son. They watched as that son - and his new wife - served for a year "in Christ's service" that then turned in to two years. This father and son had a conversation soon after that second year where the son told his father that he had found what he was created to do and that he and his wife would be serving the Lord in missions in Swaziland.
This father is now the father of one of the lead missionaries that we are working with this week...in ministries that feed over 3000 children each day all over Swaziland. He and his wife have been faithfully and selflessly serving here in the country for over 4 years, and now this missionaries father comes to celebrate the Lord's faithfulness on the call of his son's life.
Yet as I go to bed tonight, one of the things that stands out to me the most about that story and today is the juxtaposition of God's faithfulness alongside the world's brokenness because of sin. That man who told the story recently lost his wife to an unexpected death, has lived through the apartheid in South Africa, has seen all kinds of poverty and heard all kinds of heartbreaking stories about what is going on in Swaziland...yet the story he told us this morning was about the faithfulness of God.
So as I look back on today with humbling realities, faces, names, and pictures stuck in my mind from the carepoint and a few home visits...I will also always look back on today refreshed by the promise that though the fallen nature of the world can be overwhelming...the Lord's mercies are new every morning....and God is faithful.