Update on the journey

It's time to update all my friends and family and those whom I love who love me in return on what God is doing in and through me in order to bring glory to His name. But gosh, where do you start? Well as I sit back and think of one word that has taken my thoughts, prayers, and life right now it would be missions.

As many, if not all, of you know God has lead me to All God's Children (AGCI). When I started there I was doing random orphan care/data entry/support work. When I got the call to be hired on full time I told them that I was leaving the following month for a couple weeks to Uganda with my church. That trip was of the Lord, he had a purpose for me to go then to Uganda with an evangelist, even though I tried to get out of it- because "I was not an evangelist". The Lord, like He always does changed my heart towards Him and gave me an excitement about this trip.

When I came back to work I had this continued desire to GO; to visit more countries, to see the world, to meet God's people, to love God's people, to experience the differences/similarities of each culture, to enjoy the complexities of traveling, to grow in understand regarding culture/people/traveling, the list goes on. I kept asking my friend/coworker, Erica, if I could go on a mission trip with AGCI. She said that she wanted the staff to go on the trips that were available. Well I prayed about it, put the request in to my boss to go, and applied for the Taiwan trip that next May. I wanted the opportunity to learn more about AGCI and what they were doing cross culturally. The team ended up being all AGCI staff except a couple who were interested in adoption. This trip was a work trip, we set up our adoption transition home- Hannah's Hope. I view that trip as a privilege to serve with my coworkers and work hard painting a 10,000 sq. foot home in 5 days. It was a lot of work, but such a blast. And now these babies have an amazing home to stay in while they wait for their adoption to be completed. I see Taiwan a part of God's hand and work in my life, ultimately to bring Glory to His name in all that I do.

A couple months later I transitioned to the mission department, Embrace Missions, at AGCI as the Mission Coordinator. I was thrilled to do this job, cause it was so aligned with my heart, which was to learn more and more about God's heart for mission. When I got there I saw how hard this job actually was, sure it seemed like an awesome job, but not at the cost of completely surrender and crying out to the Lord for wisdom beyond our years and discernment, and direction, and vision, and the list goes on.

I traveled with Erica Fall 2010 to Africa; Rwanda and Ethiopia, on two different mission trips in order to be trained how to lead in country and get a full view as to what Embrace Missions was and how to coordinate teams and possible lead a team by myself. It was one of the hardest, yet purposeful experiences ever. Things about me came out during my time in Africa; weaknesses, insecurities, lonliness, shortcomings, fear, and the list goes on. During my time there my really good friend who God has put in my life to bring His wisdom to me through her sent me a word of encouragement... 

"You have made the choice daily to believe in who Christ is, and because of that you will see his handy work in your day to day.  I encourage you to stay at the feet of Jesus, minute by minute.  HE WILL be faithful to lead you.  When Satan wants to tempt you and distract you by showing your inadequacies, FIGHT back.  In your weakness, HE is made perfect... I encourage you to not believe the lies of satan.  He know exactly how to distract you.  Surrender your fears, concerns and expectations of this trip to Jesus.  Once you give them up to him, you will be fully dependent on him."


God is in control. I want to be his servant, whatever that means. I'm praying for His kingdom to come!