So, I figured you all might enjoy seeing some of the links that I travel to most frequently.
The first is the Adventures In Missions website...you can check out upcoming trips, present trips, etc.
Here for the page for the FYM New Zealand trip of 2006: My Trip!
Another one of my favorite websites is the Voice of the Marytrs. It keeps me updated on what's happening in the Christian realm around the world.
For all of you who are interested in a missions trip, you might want to check out the Right Now organization. It is a website that can find any available mission trips that coincide with the criteria you are looking for.
If you have time you should check some of these websites out...they are a great way to stay informed about what's going on in the world and in New Zealand :)
I hate good-byes. Plain and simple, I hate saying good-bye to people who are close to me. My boyfriend always tells me, "it's not good-bye, it's see you soon." Usually he's right, but in regards to leaving New Zealand soon, it is not necessarily true. I may not see some of these faces again until we meet in Heaven.
I was sitting in church this morning taking everything in, trying to come to grasps with the fact that I will soon be leaving this church behind. The realization hit me that by leaving I am following the Lord's will. This fact opens my eyes and my heart to a whole new realization: although it hurts to leave the people and ministries behind, I am following the Lord onto that plane. He's beckoning me to follow Him. He knows that it hurts to leave, but there is something greater that lies ahead - Him!
The beauty of being in the Lord's will, following after Him, is more than I can express. The best part about it though - - it's simple! I just have to say, "Yes." God is my provider, therefore, He will always let me know what my next step is, and all I have to do is say "yes!" God is sooo good! He makes it so simple for me, for you.
Because of how the Lord lead me today, I have made a small jump in my fear of closure and of saying good-bye. I know it is going to hurt to leave, and honestly, I doubt God is going to take that away. The pain I feel will continually remind me of all that occured while I was here. God promises me something besides the pain though; He promises me peace because I am following after Him. That's good news!
This Easter I found myself admist my wonderful girl teammates standing atop a hill in Gisborne, New Zealand watching the sun rise. This sounds beautiful in itself, but there's hidden uniqueness in this experience. Gisborne, New Zealand is known as the town to be the first to see the sunrise in the world. I'm standing, waiting for the sun to come up. It comes first in sun beams arching across another hill. The clouds above slowly turn brighter and brighter shades of pink until the cloud itself has a hot pink lining. This is honestly the most beautiful sun rise I have ever experienced. On top of this hill, as the sun slowly rose above the adjacent hill, our group of girls lifted praises to our God as we sang "our God is an awesome God, He reigns from Heaven above with wisdom, power and might. Our God is an awesome God!"
As the sun washed over me, I could not help but think back to Jesus' resurrection. The morning seemed so lifeless for a small group of followers...they had hid in a room unable to let their mind comprehend the events of that fateful night. Instead of being able to experience a beautiful sunrise on such a signifcant day, they cowered in fear and confusion. How glorious it is that instead of fear and confusion, my heart was filled with hope and joy! Strength and adoration flowed through my entire body. Thankfully, Jesus Christ's death did not result in a life of wasted moments and bad decisions for those who followed after Him; rather, those peoples' eyes were opened to the miracle of their Savior's resurrection. As the sun finally rose over the hill, I had to turn from its brightness and power. I could not help but compare it to the power and glory our Lord radiates.
I do not know if I will ever be a part of a more unique and special Easter, but I praise my heavenly Father that He allowed me such an experience as this. Our God is truly an awesome God, and He reigns as a
living God from Heaven above with wisdom and power and might....OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD!!
At the moment my friend Camron is in Ghana serving as a teacher for a missionary family. He sent an update a few days ago, and I wanted to relay it due to the impact that it had in my own reflections.
"Recently I went with several local missionary kids on a "field trip" to the Accra Zoo. Of all the animals that I saw there, the one that brought me
most anguish was the lion - The King of the Jungle. I watched him for an hour or so, just to see what a day was like for him. He moved from one
end of his 6x6 foot cage to the other. He lay down a few times trying to find a nice, cool spot of concrete to lie on. He would just yawn, go limp,
and fall to the ground. Is this how a KING should act? Is this how a KING should live?
A KING IN A CAGE??
It doesn't seem right or natural, yet there he was. And as I studied him, I realized that we as "Christians" do the same thing to our KING. We have
put bars around Him. We keep Him in a cage. We allow ourselves to be able to look at Him through the bars and even speak to Him when we need
to, but from a safe distance. We feed Him at our convenience with our prayers of need. We show Him off to others as they pass by in our selfish
pride. But we often don't get too close to Him. That might be too dangerous. We seldom let Him out to roam, what would other think? And we dare
not climb in with Him. Think of how He would rip us apart and expose the real us to the world. But the truth is, He will do that and we fear Him for it
because He is wild. But regardless of a cage or the open range - He is WILD. And that is what makes His love so dangerous, yet so appealing
and satisfying. Yet we often open cages to lovers less wild to control our lives.
So, I leave you each with a specific question for your lives. If you were caged what would you want people that visit you see? That you and your
faith are safe and tame or that you are wildly in love with the KING of KINGS?"
His question taunts me...what would I want people to see? Well, I know what I would WANT : for the radically wild love of my Lord Jesus Christ to fill and overflow from me, enabling people to see whatever they want. When the love of Jesus overflows from me, I don't think it will matter what people will see because I know it will be the Lord. Even though I want that, it doesn't mean I'm necessarily allowing that to occur. I care too much about pleasing people or others' good opinions of me.
Maybe "what do you want people to see" isn't the best question; rather, what are you ALLOWING God to show other people? Are you allowing Him to show the ripped out reality of His wild, radical love?? Thankfully, we have a God who wants us to wait upon Him and let Him work! I may not have that radical love flowing from me, but I
am willing to wait for whatever God wants to do in me!
PRAISE HIM that He desires to work in our lives rather than watching by idly as we do it alone.
This semester the Lord has provided in every way for the Upper Room. I have not had to ask a single person to provide food; rather, the Lord lays it on certain peoples' hearts to ask if they can give us something. One of these people is a man named Shane. He has become a close friend of the teams and is always willing to help. Shane offered to cook a big stew for us this past Thursday. We hadn't heard from him in a couple of days, which was very unusual, so when Thursday rolled around I realized that we needed a back up plan to feed 50 people (just in case Shane didn't show up).
Here is where the greatness of the Lord comes into play: As I said, God has provided in every way for the Upper Room, most noticeably through food provision. This Thursday was a little different though. Each week someone comes up to me and asks if they can fix something for us for the next week. This was the case for Thursday but God knew it wasn't going to work out; therefore, He provided in a different way. He provided the food we would need before we even knew we needed it! Two of my teammates attend Manukau New Life and this past Sunday their church gave us a heap of sausages (about 100). We had them in our freezer without a clue of how to use them. The Upper Room turned out to be our answer!
Along with the sausages was a small pot of curry and rice (given by a lady who wanted to fix something). At the end of the day do you know how much food we had left? One sausage...yes,
just one! God knew
EXACTLY how much we would need and He provided an abundance! We actually had something to discard. HOW AWESOME IS OUR GOD?!
I wanted to write about this experience to testify to the Lord's goodness, His activity in our personal lives at this moment as well as showing the LOVE God has for His creations. He cares for us so much that He will provide food before we even know we need it!
OUR GOD IS GREAT! I honestly have not been able to stop singing His praises since! Please join with me in singing praises to His name for all the good He does right now in our lives.
I was talking to my leader this morning about my future plans. I told her how I know that my plans after this trip, which will be moving to Ashland, Ohio, is the most glorifying next step for the Lord. I know this because He has directed my steps and revealed to me that moving to Ashland is the next piece to my future. I am having trouble telling everyone this though for the mere fact that I feel as though they will believe I am taking the easy way out. Why would my teammates' opinions matter that much to me? Because I find my significance in other people.
Oh how glorious it would be to stand before the Lord and be fully satisfied by Him. I have a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe, but I continually find myself seeking the acceptance of my peers. Why? It's so ridiculous when you think rationally upon it...I seek the acceptance of finite beings when I have the unconditional love of God.
Slowly but surely my heavenly Father is working in me and bringing me into a more intimate relationship with Him day after day, and with that intimacy comes security and trust. I trust where the Lord is leading me is the most radical, sold-out action I can participate in because I am following after my Jesus...that is radical no matter who agrees with me. Following Jesus wherever He goes is the most glorifying thing I can do for my God. I
WILL find my signifance in obeying Jesus and His will. I
WILL continue to trust in His unfailing love and grace even as I go back to seeking the signifance of the people around me.
It brings up the question though: where do you find your significance? Is it in a job? a person? Essentially, is it in anything besides the Lord who sent His only Son to die for
you? Today allow Him to be your signifance...
On Thursday afternoons our team holds a soup kitchen entitled The Upper Room. This past Thursday the Lord opened my eyes to something I had never experienced before: someone who hated Jesus Christ.
I've met lots of people who don't believe in Him, and I've met lots of people who are mad at Him (because of something they've experienced in life), but I've never in my entire life met someone who literally hated Christ. She even hated me saying His name. Even though I have met people who are mad at Him a part of their heart still recognizes His authority and are mad because He didn't do anything to stop whatever happened you know? This lady, no...she hated Him for who He was.
I won't go into a lot of detail (if you want more just let me know), but the Lord allowed me to experience a couple things from this situation that I want to expound upon. First, the pain of hearing this lady speak hateful acccusations against the God I have given my life to, the God I love, tore my heart to pieces. She called Him a thief, a molestor, a dumb-dumb among other things. She told me about the "dumb cross" and how she didn't need Christ's blood because she had the blood of another. I praise the Lord for letting my heart break because now I know just an inkling of the way God feels when we are spoken badly of, when people attack us but mostly, the pain He felt when Jesus Himself was beaten, accused and spat upon thousands of years ago. Because of the pain I felt I know God's love.
Secondly, the Lord allowed me to see the spiritual battle in the world. I know there is a devil, I know he is only looking to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10),
but I don't see his influence in such bold ways...what I know of satan is subtle and crafty. In this lady though, he was neither...only satan can hate something so good, only he can speak so horribly of something so pure. You know the scary thing? She actually worshipped him in flesh. She told me that he came to her house to teach them of his ways.
As Christians, do we realize the truth of satan? I know he exists, and I thought I had a clear understanding of how he worked in the world. I was so wrong. God opened my eyes to see the truth of the spiritual battle that is waging even as I type these words. Do
you realize the power of satan in this world? I pray that you seek to understand the reality of the spiritual realm because regardless of if you acknowledge it, God does and the war continues to rage on. Praise God He has equipped up and given us weapons to protect ourselves!! (click here to read about our God-given weapons) I will never again question the power of putting on my armor each day.
Do you know how silver is refined? The Bible talks about God as our refiner and refining us as silver (Malachi 3:3), but what does that mean exactly??
Thankfully the First Year Missionary program I am involved in enables me to soak up a lot of other people's knowledge, and as is the case a few weeks ago, I was able to learn what it means exactly to be refined as silver. Since then, God has enabled me to also get my hands on some other information (click here for that website) that explains what a refiner of sliver (a.k.a. a silversmith) does as well...here is what I've found!
The process of refining silver is a very meticulous and precise art. A silversmith begins by taking the article of silver and holding it over a fire to allow the silver to heat up. For the purest silver, the metal MUST be held in the middle of the fire where the flames are the hottest. This is where the meticulous nature of refinement comes in. The silversmith has to hold the silver the entire time it is being heated up/refined. If the silversmith takes his eyes off of the silver, even for a second, the silver could be destroyed!
Doesn't this show the love of God? He wants to cleanse us, He wants to purify us, but first He must hold us over the hottest part of the flame, yet He won't go anywhere. He watches over us carefully, and only leaves us in the flames until all of our impurities are burned away. He is holding us there...watching us...making sure we are being taken care of! How great is our God?!
But here is the best part of the process of refinement (and I must thank my teammate Daniel for this piece of knowledge). Do you know how a silversmith can tell when silver is perfectly refined? He only has to hold it in front of his face to see his image in it.
God refines us so that when He looks upon us, He sees Himself! He sees His glory, His holiness, His purity...all the goodness in Himself He can now see in us! This idea of God as our refiner and us as His silver blows me away! How awesome is our God? In all honestly, God never makes mistakes in His word! There was a perfect reason God used the analogy between a silversmith and silver to help us understand the way God purifies His children.
Recently the Lord has brought a new ministry into my life: teaching a teenage discussion class on Sunday mornings. The first day I didn't need to prepare anything...the teacher introduced me, and I talked a little bit about what I was doing in New Zealand. The second time (last sunday) I prepared a lesson discussing the Bible's inherent truthfulness. The discussion class turned into a "stare at Mandy" class. So, the third class time (today) I was a bit nervous. (I shouldn't be though because I should fully trust that the Lord would take care of it as He always does.) As I walked into the classrom there were only boys. Okay, not a terrible thing, but with all of them being teenagers I was a bit nervous, but I felt okay because I knew Marilynn would be there to tame them down. Right as I thought that, Marilynn came in to tell me that she had to go teach a little kids class so it would just be me. Whew! Okay...here goes nothing Lord!
Obviously by the title something good came from our discussion time. As a class we are reading through Proverbs together. I discussed Provers 12 for a bit and then verses 31 & 32. It talks about envying people who do evil and how those types of people are an abomination to the Lord. Being from New Zealand the youth idolize American trends anyway, but then being from South Auckland they idolize America's ghetto (because South Auckland is New Zealand's ghetto). They envy rappers such as Eminem, 50 Cent, etc. They envy those who live in Compton, the Bronx, etc. Obviously, they do not know the true stories of the poeple who live there, nor the true stories behind the lives of those they envy. Regardless, the Lord blessed our time by allowing the boys to be fully open with me about why they would want to have a certain person's life and why that life seemed so attractive. I did most of the talking, but this time there was almost as much discussion! And the best part about it was that the discussion was not immature. Sure they joked around and poked fun at a lot of things, but they're teenage boys...it's to be expected.
I praise the Lord for the discussion that did occur and any difference it made in the boys' lives today. I am continually amazed at the fact that when I allow the Lord to lead He will and with power and effectiveness! God's faithfulness abounds in my life, and I am so blessed I get to be a part of His story! How great is our God?!
I was writing this article and my heart became very heavy, so I prayed to the Lord to see if I was doing something wrong. I felt as though I wasn't supposed to write about the subject I had chosen so I asked the Lord if there was something else He wanted me to write about. The first thing that came to my mind was "the throne of grace." I am learning how to hear God's voice and although I am by no means a master, I am trying and learning. I continued to ask the Lord if His throne was what He wanted me to speak on, and I did not hear anythig else...thus, here I am writing about His throne of grace.
The best thing about the Lord's throne is that it is always accessible. There is no line, no waiting, no take-a-number, nothing...it's accessible to anyone at any time. Another great aspect of God's throne of grace is just that: it's filled with grace! I have begun to realize how many times a day I approach Him for forgiveness, for reconciilation, for help and He is always blessing me with His beauty of grace.
Also, His love shines from on the throne. He so desires to give us His love. He wants us to humble ourselves before Him and just accept that love. I mean, in all honstey, where else can you get a love like the one the Creator of the Universe gives you? He seeks for us to understand Him, which happens when we humble ourselves before Him.
I don't know if this has helped anyone or hit home in some of the questions you may have been asking about God, but if you would like to talk more just let me know! God's throne is so beautiful and inviting. There is no other place I would rather kneel before than at the feet of my heavenly Father.
Today in New Zealand it is March 15 - half time for my second leg of the trip. I only have two more months here in New Zealand, ever...whew! September seemed so long ago when this trip began. How does 9 months go by so fast?!
As I stand at the middle of this trip I am reminded of the many half time speeches I have heard from my days in sports. I feel as though one of those speeches would be appropriate now. When I look ahead to the rest of this trip, do I need to shape up and try harder, or am I doing good so I just need to keep my focus and not let up because the end is almost near. Probably a little bit of both.
Although I joke a bit, it seems that when the end is in sight the tendency to slack off is more prevalent. I can see that in certain areas of ministry that I may not necessarily enjoy as much as others. But when I leave this trip will I look back and wish I had stayed focused? Praise the Lord for Half Times! It gives me a great opportunity for reflection and (if needed) correction. I praise the Lord that He has given me the wisdom to know what areas I do need to change and leaders to help me along the way. God is so good!
This Easter I found myself admist my wonderful girl teammates standing atop a hill in Gisborne, New Zealand watching the sun rise. This sounds beautiful in itself, but there's hidden uniqueness in this experience. Gisborne, New Zealand is known as the town to be the first to see the sunrise in the world. I'm standing, waiting for the sun to come up. It comes first in sun beams arching across another hill. The clouds above slowly turn brighter and brighter shades of pink until the cloud itself has a hot pink lining. This is honestly the most beautiful sun rise I have ever experienced. On top of this hill, as the sun slowly rose above the adjacent hill, our group of girls lifted praises to our God as we sang "our God is an awesome God, He reigns from Heaven above with wisdom, power and might. Our God is an awesome God!" .jpg)
Do you know how silver is refined? The Bible talks about God as our refiner and refining us as silver (