First Support Meeting

I am excited to announce another productive moment in the journey of support raising! I have now had my first dinner meeting with some good family friends to practice my support presentation. It was so encouraging. These familes are great friends who gave encouragement and helpful feedback to make my presentation better in the future. Thanks to you all for your patience to listen and help me! In August I will be trying to be in touch with more people and hopefully have many more of these types of meetings.

Spanish learning tool #47, the label maker. You have no idea the many uses for a label maker, and though it went unused for a year in Gary's closet, it has now labeled my entire kitchen and living room from la lampara to la taza. I'm hoping vocab will sink in through observation... right now I can talk about food items, my family, and that's about it... so I really need some vocabulary expansion. Also I watched Sesame street in Spanish the other day... sad when you can't understand a show written for preschoolers.

I am feeling really encouraged right now in pursuing this calling on my life. I know the Lord is faithful even when plans change and at times things seem overwhelming. One of the biggest things is that I feel like in the midst of my crazy summer life the Lord is still giving me much needed times of rest. I'm so thankful for those!

Marathon Preperation

What a week this is turning out to be... and yet the Lord remains so faithful to give me times of rest and productivity in the midst of it all.

We decided on Monday not to take our youth group kids on our short-term trip to Honduras. I know that they are devestated... and I'm not sure that I'm much better except that I was better prepared for the bad news. It was such a tough decision... but in the end we are trusting that the Lord led us to the right decision for our group at this time. Sometimes you just have to trust. Sunday night we sang the song, "Blessed Be Your Name". In it there is a line that says... "You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be Your name.". I was reminded that the Lord is always purposeful in all that He does. He was purposeful to give us the chance for this trip and to allow us to learn in our preperation. He grew our hearts for Honduras and led me to serve there more full-time as a result. He was not purposeless by any means. Now we just have to be open to what He has to teach us in the new plan.

"Many are the plans of a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." Pr. 19:21

As for me personally... today was a marathon prep session for support raising. I really do feel like I got a lot done. I'm again thankful for Megan who takes the time to sit down with me and we keep each other on task and get excited over the little things. I made an info sheet today that took me 4 hours... when you see it you will wonder how that could be? It will look like it should have taken 30 minutes. Oh contraire. For the perfectionist using technology, nothing is as it seems...

And... great news... my prayer card has been sent to the printer... things are happening! One day this will become a reality!

Good news, bad news, and pictures!

Good news...

I have my first two supporters! Thank you for supporting me even before I have a fancy presentation ready to give! Honestly, I am blown away by the Lord's provision before I have even asked anyone.

Bad news...

I was supposed to travel to La Ceiba in about 2 1/2 weeks with the youth from church. Due to the instability of the government there, it looks like we won't be able to go. That's not certain yet, but looking that way. Please pray for us to have wisdom and discernment to make this decision.
Pictures...

Thanks Taylor! One of these will end of being my prayer card picture.

Thanks to Taylor...

I will soon have a picture for my prayer card! This morning Taylor and I went to the park to get a good picture for my prayer card. We were informed at training not to put our favorite pet (not a problem) or stuffed animal in our prayer card picture and beware of things accidently growing out of our heads in pictures. So... hopefully we got one that will work:)

Every little thing that gets done feels like a victory. I think that is the Lord's encouragement to me in all the little things so that I don't get too overwhelmed. Today I'm just excited for what's to come. Scared because change is hard, but really excited. I am daily thankful to the Lord for Megan. For those of your who don't know, Megan is a dear friend of mine who is headed to London with MTW for 11 months. In the Lord's timing, we are going through this whole process together of raising support, preparing to leave our families, and praying for the ministry of church planting that the Lord has provided. It is such a blessing to have her to walk through this time of my life with me. We are going to try to get together for a couple hours a week to work on things together and encourage each other.

I am sure that you have heard about the situation in Honduras right now. For more information from a missionaries point of view, read my team leader's blog at http://www.pettengillmissionaries.com/. It's good insight. We are praying for the country and the Lord's hand in their government situation right now. Also, we are praying for things to settle down so that our short-term team of 16 high schoolers and 4 adults from church will be able to go and serve on July 25th as planned. I'm not worried... God has everything under control and already knows what needs to happen for His Word to go out as He has planned.