So I have been praying and thinking a lot... a lot about life and where I see God leading me in the next few years possibly and its kind of scary not going to lie, because where I am seeing Him leading me at this moment, I know it is a really, really big possibility! When I came down here in January I thought that this would be a good place for me to find more of myself, the person, the woman that God wants me to be, and in that finding a deeper relationship with Christ. I wanted to take all that God shows me here back home and apply that to school and work and all of these things that I thought I was going to do when I have to go home in August...
I am a huge day dreamer, something to know about me, so I sit and dream about what my life would look like a few years down the road, married, kids, maybe a great job, you know, "life". For a few months now maybe even before I left home God has been showing me that, yes, those are all possibilities for the life He has for me but what about this as well? And so all the plans that "I" had when coming here to reach the dreams that "I" have all seem to be less important. Since coming here like, almost instantaneously it seems God has put on my heart new dreams and plans for my life and I cant help but "day dream" about what life could be like living here in the DR, or another mission field. Although its not really a dream right now with me living here, it sometimes seems like it. I sit on the couch, like I am doing right now, and look out the front door and think to myself, umm yea I am in a different country right now, crazy! It has defiantly been an eye opening experience so far! God has shown me what life could be like here and the work that I am doing, never would have thought that, and I LOVE it! It has only been a few months, we still have a ways to go!
Going home in August is going to look a lot different than what I thought it would in the beginning. And that’s ok I am good with that because I know that for now that is what God wants me to do. Not that I am already thinking about going home because I defiantly don’t want to think about that, but small steps in the direction of my life are being taken and they are all taken from the moments that He is giving me here and looking at what the future might hold.
So I guess I am just sitting here in amazement at all that He is doing and will continue to do in my life. Yea amazement is the word for my life right now! I will continue to soak it all in and soak Him and what He has yet to show me in too! And as I say this it starts raining! Yep! Gods will is so much bigger than mine, I guess I always knew that but never really saw it and its not just the big things its in all the little things as well!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Lasting Memories!
This week for me kind of started out really slow. Coming off a weekend were I was really being pushed out of my comfort zone and being stretched by God in ways that I really didn’t know before, was new for me and it consumed a lot of my thoughts for the first couple of days of this outreach. I was able to talk to one of the girls from JMU this week while working in the therapy room, and really just share my heart for why I am here now and what could possibly be a future in missions and it was great to connect with her on that because I know she loves it here as well! Let me just say that this whole team was/is amazing!!! They all have such a heart to serve and it really shown through in the work that they all did.
Our group of girls (Hillary, Jenn, Allyssa, Kelsey and Julia, who was from the Jupiter High school group) that came to Genesis were so much fun, there was never a moment where we were not laughing and having fun together at the site unless you count having to watch them say goodbye to the kids at Genesis or watching them drive away in the vans at 2:30 this morning. I really am going to miss these guys but fell like I have made some great new friends in the process! They have inspired me I have a new outlook on being here and it is really exciting. Not that it wasn’t before but they just showed me something different this week, and I think it has to do with having fun and serving God with an open heart, and not to let anything get you down. This team reminded me so much of going through a TEC weekend! Sitting and singing songs, "Devotions" if you are familiar with TEC, and just the fellowship of a Christian community, I have really missed that a lot!
Going forward is a new adventure for me! And even thought every team will not be exactly like JMU, they will all have there own, something, to bring to the DR and the people here just like this team did! God is good and he has reasons for everything, I am defiantly learning to put all of my trust in Him and in the process learning a great deal about myself and the work He still has for me here!
Our group of girls (Hillary, Jenn, Allyssa, Kelsey and Julia, who was from the Jupiter High school group) that came to Genesis were so much fun, there was never a moment where we were not laughing and having fun together at the site unless you count having to watch them say goodbye to the kids at Genesis or watching them drive away in the vans at 2:30 this morning. I really am going to miss these guys but fell like I have made some great new friends in the process! They have inspired me I have a new outlook on being here and it is really exciting. Not that it wasn’t before but they just showed me something different this week, and I think it has to do with having fun and serving God with an open heart, and not to let anything get you down. This team reminded me so much of going through a TEC weekend! Sitting and singing songs, "Devotions" if you are familiar with TEC, and just the fellowship of a Christian community, I have really missed that a lot!
Going forward is a new adventure for me! And even thought every team will not be exactly like JMU, they will all have there own, something, to bring to the DR and the people here just like this team did! God is good and he has reasons for everything, I am defiantly learning to put all of my trust in Him and in the process learning a great deal about myself and the work He still has for me here!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Silence and Solitude...
So today has been an interesting day for me. Really up and down.... In the end though I learned something about myself that God defiantly wanted me to know. Josh asked us to pick a spiritual discipline and write a short summary about it and how we can use it in our lives. At first I thought that I would take the easy way out and pull out "An Invitation to a Journey" and use what it has in there about the disciplines of silence and solitude. Good idea right? I really should have known better because in the last few weeks I cant begin to tell you how much this subject has come up here. So apparently I was meant to get a lot more out of it than I originally thought.
As I sat down to write some notes about the subject this morning I could not concentrate. I had a lot of things on my mind and some issues that I needed to work out and as much as I really wanted to research this and get it done, I couldn’t. So I decided that I needed to get out of the house and find a quiet place to do it. So with "An Invitation to a Journey", my Bible, and a notebook off I went to the gazebo. When I got there I was completely overwhelmed with the view of Jarabacoa, (never having been to this spot since I got here), that all I could do was sit there and look out on in. All I needed to take really was my Bible…
I did this for and hour and a half, just sitting up there praying and thinking about my time here and all the stuff that I had on my mind, all the stuff that had been the original reason for getting out of the house. Again I should have known better. I really learned up there what silence and solitude is all about. I am not the type of person who likes to be by myself. I would much rather be in a room full of people just so that I have someone around me. Being silent on the other hand is not one of my many problems. Most people would say that I am a relatively quiet person. But together these two disciplines can have the effect that only God can bring upon. And I learned that today sitting up in that gazebo...
Well after all of that intenseness up there I really needed some girl talk and so I enlisted Beth to help me out with this and it was perfect. We were able to really talk, something that I really haven’t had since I got here and something that it turns out that we both really needed. God had been putting it on both of our hearts today which just shows how awesome He really is.
Silence and Solitude, although they can really mean a lot for a lot of different people I found mine today. And even though I still have a long way to making it truly my own I think that that is the whole purposes God intended for these disciplines. Lamentations 3:25-28 says "The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him." Sit alone in silence...
So in solitude, which I now understand better, we are being forced to let go and let God. I was reading in "An Invitation to a Journey" and found this about silence, "Silence is bringing ourselves to a point of relinquishing to God our control for our relationship with God. Silence is a reversal of the whole possessing, controlling, grasping dynamic of trying to maintain control for our own existence. Silence is the inner act of letting go." Reading this again today put a whole new aspect on the subject, and reminds me that I need to continue to let God be in control of my life. Because when I take control nothing ever goes right and it gets all bottled up inside to where I cant function anymore, which is exactly what happened today. Put together Silence and Solitude are really all about letting God take control of every aspect of your life and letting Him be there for us in our brokenness, and being a light in our darkness. For everyone it is different and we all have to find what it means for us to be silent before God and find solitude in Him.
So in a matter of speaking I did get my assignment done today but I learned so much more in the process. On another note, we have a new team here after being without one for a couple weeks. They seem really cool. There is a high school group here form Florida and coming latter tonight is a college group from James Madison University. Not going to lie I really do like it when there are no teams here only because I get a lot of down time to reflect and just be in Gods presents, but I think this is going to be good for me this week just to get back in the grove of things. So once again, here we go!
As I sat down to write some notes about the subject this morning I could not concentrate. I had a lot of things on my mind and some issues that I needed to work out and as much as I really wanted to research this and get it done, I couldn’t. So I decided that I needed to get out of the house and find a quiet place to do it. So with "An Invitation to a Journey", my Bible, and a notebook off I went to the gazebo. When I got there I was completely overwhelmed with the view of Jarabacoa, (never having been to this spot since I got here), that all I could do was sit there and look out on in. All I needed to take really was my Bible…
I did this for and hour and a half, just sitting up there praying and thinking about my time here and all the stuff that I had on my mind, all the stuff that had been the original reason for getting out of the house. Again I should have known better. I really learned up there what silence and solitude is all about. I am not the type of person who likes to be by myself. I would much rather be in a room full of people just so that I have someone around me. Being silent on the other hand is not one of my many problems. Most people would say that I am a relatively quiet person. But together these two disciplines can have the effect that only God can bring upon. And I learned that today sitting up in that gazebo...
Well after all of that intenseness up there I really needed some girl talk and so I enlisted Beth to help me out with this and it was perfect. We were able to really talk, something that I really haven’t had since I got here and something that it turns out that we both really needed. God had been putting it on both of our hearts today which just shows how awesome He really is.
Silence and Solitude, although they can really mean a lot for a lot of different people I found mine today. And even though I still have a long way to making it truly my own I think that that is the whole purposes God intended for these disciplines. Lamentations 3:25-28 says "The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him." Sit alone in silence...
So in solitude, which I now understand better, we are being forced to let go and let God. I was reading in "An Invitation to a Journey" and found this about silence, "Silence is bringing ourselves to a point of relinquishing to God our control for our relationship with God. Silence is a reversal of the whole possessing, controlling, grasping dynamic of trying to maintain control for our own existence. Silence is the inner act of letting go." Reading this again today put a whole new aspect on the subject, and reminds me that I need to continue to let God be in control of my life. Because when I take control nothing ever goes right and it gets all bottled up inside to where I cant function anymore, which is exactly what happened today. Put together Silence and Solitude are really all about letting God take control of every aspect of your life and letting Him be there for us in our brokenness, and being a light in our darkness. For everyone it is different and we all have to find what it means for us to be silent before God and find solitude in Him.
So in a matter of speaking I did get my assignment done today but I learned so much more in the process. On another note, we have a new team here after being without one for a couple weeks. They seem really cool. There is a high school group here form Florida and coming latter tonight is a college group from James Madison University. Not going to lie I really do like it when there are no teams here only because I get a lot of down time to reflect and just be in Gods presents, but I think this is going to be good for me this week just to get back in the grove of things. So once again, here we go!
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