"Happy Last Retreat"

Silly string, a blue dress, lots of tears and lots of prayers made up my surprise "Happy Last Retreat" party this weekend. I was at the beach with 26 of my favorite people in the whole world (the Peace Church youth group girls) for my last girls retreat. It was an awesome weekend full of sermons, prayers, discussion, volleyball, PICTURES, temporary tattoos (I have a sharpie bird on my foot), walks on the beach, and so much more. I just love the girls retreat. But my favorite part was Sunday afternoon after Tyler conned me with a fake heart-to-heart so they could surprise me :) (Our heart-to-heart was still good!) I was just blown away by the goodness of the Lord to me through these girls. As we stood in a circle these girls who hate praying out loud, and I should know b/c I make them do it and its like doing a tooth extraction, voluntarily prayed for me as I move on to the Lord's new calling on my life. Obviously, I was crying. Okay, we all were. It was just such a sweet and precious time. I am thankful that the Lord chose to use me in this place for this time. He has allowed me to watch and be a part as He has grown these girls up into women who love Him and want to follow Him with their whole hearts. The Lord is doing a mighty work in the girls at Peace and I am praying that they are going to blown away by what He is going to do in and through them this summer. I love you girls and I'm going to be devestated to leave you. It is only because I am confident that the Lord has called me to Honduras and is working for His glory and my good that I can leave being confident that He has a good and perfect plan for each of your lives as well!

Back by popular demand...

The Tree Update! Praise the Lord I am at 89% of my monthly support! Still praying to be at 100% by the end of April... please lift up this request with me.

Also, this morning I read a sermon that a good friend sent my way. It's John Piper preaching on the the Lord giving grace for each day. http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1994/867_Todays_Mercies_for_Todays_Troubles/

What a great reminder as I raise support, finish my time at church, leave my friends and family, and have so many plates spinning at one time. The Lord has all of my tomorrows in HIS hands and the grace that I need to face them will come exactly when I need it. I don't have to worry and fear for the future... part of my grace for today is being able to trust HIM for tomorrow.

Sweetest prayer

Last night I did a presentation at the home of some good friends. When asked if they could pray for me afterwards, I of course said yes! The sweetest time came when their elementary school daughter prayed for me and for the people of Honduras. She hadn't missed a beat of the things that I was saying in my presentation and prayed for the Lord to meet the people's needs. She prayed for me to enjoy my time there and to be safe. It was so sincere and heartfelt and I loved it. Afterwards she kept asking me all the "why" questions... why can't we just take plane loads of food there for them? Why can't we just pay for them to move up here and get jobs? Why can't we send lots of doctors there to help them?

I just really loved and appreciated her passion and fervency to see change happen for the little community that she had seen in the video. I want to have that... in a more realistic way probably :) But still, I want to have that heart for the people of La Ceiba... that I would pray for physical and Spiritual relief for them and that I would be constantly asking the Lord for wisdom and discernment to see that happen.

Dear blog readers, if you exist

Dear blog readers,

I think you are all going to be as excited as I am when I finally get to 100% of my support. I am sure you are as tired of all this money talk as I am. I feel like I've become an obsessive support account checker within the last two weeks. I think it's because I know that I'm getting close and I actually have a deadline. The good news is, my obsessive new habit show me today that I need only $550/month more or $16,500 in one-time gifts to cover the months! So... PLEASE be praying that new pledges will come in over the next 6 weeks so that I will be done support raising by the end of April!

In other news, nope, I just posted twice yesterday so I don't have any other news :)

Thanks for reading,
Shannon

going newsletter crazy

Two posts in one day... this hasn't happened since Belgium. I got excited that I figured out how to get my newsletter to show on my blog, so I'm also going to share with you another newsletter. I just found out today that I will be attending Disaster Response Training with MTW in May of this year. Also, my dad and Rick Chapman are coming... how fun is that? And my friend Kelly is helping with the training... all fun things. So, what is disaster response? Great question. In answer, you can read this newsletter... click here. MTW just sent a couple of teams to Haiti. Two of the articles are written by my teammates, Erin and Mike Pettengill, who have both been trained to go with the disaster response teams.

In other news... this week I have been dying to learn Spanish. Seriously. I was at the post office yesterday, to mail my taxes of course and renew my passport, yay! This couple came in and didn't speak much English at all. The post office lady was trying to be helpful but just kept saying "donde" over and over again, which wasn't helpful if you didn't figure that out for yourself. And I wanted to help translate, but honestly, I couldn't figure out exactly how to say, "when do you want your package to arrive at its destination and do you want insurance?" in Spanish and I was kind of afraid that if I pretended like I knew something and then couldn't understand them it would only be more frustrating. Three years from now... I will be able to help random strangers at the post office... and that makes me happy.

Try #2 with posting my March newsletter

click here

Newsletter March 2010

I'm trying to figure out how to post my newsletter updates online, so we'll see if this works... :)

click here