Another Week, Another Day

Have I mentioned how cool and how it is such an amazing opportunity to be up here serving with such strong men and women of Christ?! Well it is, it is just fantastic.. anyways on to the good stuff

Who Said Prayer Isn't Powerful

You know the saying “prayer is powerful”? Have you ever doubted that statement itself? I know I have but I also know I have a renewed meaning and understanding of what this saying truly means. Throughout our time being here we have been faced with a minor set back and that is “What are we gonna drive in?” Kelsey and I like to dream big so we said we would start praying for a RV and we did. We also went on to email a few people, which fell through, but still we kept praying God would deliver. Last Thursday Mindy, our boss lady, texted us with a picture saying we had a RV! I truly believe God heard our needs and prayers and is blessing us with such a nice vehicle to travel in!

Food, Everywhere

Every week our team stays the night in Charlottesville, VA and we eat with different people from the office and this week we ate with one of the main guys of this place, Carl. That night he had a full house though because there was 1 Indian couple, another guy from India and Carl’s wife, who is Pilipino.  His wife cooked us an authentic Pilipino meal and it actually tasted really good! We all sat around and fellowshipped afterwards which is also such a blessing to hear peoples stories.

Wednesday we were able to eat food made by a missionary from Ghana and surprisingly that stuff was great tasting! I am pretty sure by the end of this journey I will have eaten more types of food then I can name!

Everything and everyone here is so drenched in God its crazy and I find myself constantly encouraged everyday by the people who all work here. I can’t wait to start traveling with the team! 2 more weeks! 

Good Thing I Came Ready To Learn!

I feel like everyday I am here I learn a little something new about how amazing God and prayer really is. It is truly a blessing to be a part of this internship and ministry and everyday I feel like the office become less of an office but family. Everyone here is so welcoming and friendly, even if you don’t know them, that through talking with someone you have never met before for 10 minutes you will find that you already know everything about them.

Have Faith

The other day at lunch Mindy challenged us to sit down with a missionary so I chose to sit with a guy from Ghana and his wife. This missionary has a ministry overseas where he raises up young workers and through this he can minister to the worker and introduce them to Christ. Both he and his wife are so sold out for Jesus and wise that it is almost unbelievable yet so challenging at the same time. Talking with them, one of the other interns asked him what made them enter into missionary work and boy was he all on top of that answer! His wife simply answered, "He was already there." She is the funniest person and always smiling so for her to answer so straight like that was quite funny. But He told us how he just knew.  He didn't really explain much after that but said through faith he was able to see that is really where God wanted him to be in his life. He then kind of gave us an acrostic to help us understand what he meant when he said faith and it went a little like this:

How Do You Know Your In The Right Work Through Becoming:

F- Faithful

A- Available 

I- Innovative

T- Teachable

H- Humble

He went on to share that nothing can be done if we don’t have faith, we can accomplish any one of these things apart from the other to further God’s kingdom and then said “Its easy just remember have faith!”

Bong

Kelsey, Leah, Raleigh, Bong, Mindy, Kali (The Team)

I love Bong! She is the missionary we will be promoting this summer with our tour. Basically we will be traveling the states with her and her friend Leah this summer and I am so excited! Every time I see her she is so excited and happy and just loves Jesus. She is such a joy to be around, which makes me even more anxious to start this tour and just be! This week we took some team pictures, and as you can see, there is so much fun to be had throughout this summer.

Again, I am so excited to continue to share with you what I am learning and encourage everyone to continue to follow and pray that God teaches me more and more each day and truly blesses me throughout this! 

Well This Is Different

First of all welcome to my blog and thank you for following me and I am excited to see all the plans and teachings that God has set before me!

Introduction

I am starting this summer journey of being an intern for Advancing Native Missions located in Charlottesville, VA. I am here with 2 other interns learning what it is like to work in this non-profit missions organization. This organizations’ main goal is to help the missionaries out in the field with their ministries, and supporting them personally. In the middle of July the other interns and I will be taking off with Mindy, who works here, and a missionary named Bong and exploring/promoting the importance of  supporting the missionaries I am so excited to see what God is going to do through my life spiritually, physically, and emotionally in this experience. As I have started here I have just been welcomed by a million people (or at least it has felt like that) who are all excited to see me, which is different because I don’t know them. Everyone here is so happy and so welcoming and has already told me they are so excited for all of us to be here, as are we! All the people around clearly love God with all their heart as well as their jobs, which in this day and age is hard to come by, but I bet if I asked everyone in this office if they loved their job the would respond with 100% YES!

An Unusual Welcoming Party

My first day here was Tuesday June 5 and it was not what I expected, in a good way. We first arrived here at 9a, like a usual job, and set up everything, because Mindy has made us our own little desks in her office so this feels like a real job. Next we were taken into an open space, next door, to “pray for the nations”. As separate people everyone takes an email sent from overseas with information on it about what is going on in the world. We then pray over the news we are reading and then gather in a group and pray for the nations all together. This was really different for me to experience because most offices would not pray together corporately for those countries all over the world. The day went on with lunch and work, nothing interesting, just office work.

Something is Different About These People

Thursday June 7 was something else, in a good way again. As normal we arrived to the office at 9a and then at 10a there was a staff Bible study. Being as this organization is one, which supports the missionaries, in particular and there was a visiting missionary from Egypt. This personally, I thought was super cool and when I heard he was from Egypt I think I had a minor heart attack because I love meeting people from different parts of the world.

The missionary has visited ANM before but today was the first time he was able to bring his wife and only son, who got to speak to us. It was so cool to hear him speak because he talked about the persecution that goes on over in Egypt towards Christians. He told us how he is unable to say he is Christian or he might be persecuted and he has to go to a public school which taught Muslim teachings in religion. He went on to say how he was kicked out of school for telling the teachers he did not believe what they were teaching on Hinduism and he was offended that they spoke against his God. What makes this story even more amazing is that this is kid is 15! How cool is it that he is able to stand up to his teachers and get expelled for saying anything and he is 15?! I don’t know about you but I can’t get over that fact. He is now moving to the states because it is unsafe for him to continue to live there and is hoping to get a great education but his parents must go back, which stinks but is so awesome to see their dedication to further His Kingdom.

Next we got to hear from his mom, who couldn’t speak much English but he was able to translate. She told us how when she accepted Christ her parents rejected her but that was good compared to what they normally do in that religion. She said she knew friends who told their family and were poisoned by the husbands as well as run over by a car by their husbands. This got me thinking about how awesome it is to know we can tell anyone we want that we love God and they will accept us! I guess you don’t think about theses things until you actually hear the stories from people who have lived it.

What happened next was crazy, somebody mentioned we should pray for the family and almost everybody got up out of their chair to lay hands on this family and I’m pretty sure we prayed for 20 minutes! It was amazing to sit back and see how these people not only talked the talk but they also lived what they spoke. Not only could I see on their faces they loved God but the fact they stood up to comfort and really pray for these people really put actions into their attitudes.

Seeing these people act and smile the way they do is just so amazing. I have already been blessed so much and I can’t wait to share more awesome stories about what goes on in the office! Yes, the office, this all happens in the offices. Something else isn’t it?! In a good way!