Dear Friends & Family!
I am getting very excited as I write to you today! It is only 22 days until I get on a plane and fly to Central Asia for the four months that the Lord is preparing me for! I know it has been quite a while since I sent out an update so I wanted to take a few minutes to bring you up to speed with where the Lord has me right now. With my summer quickly nearing to an end, it is bringing on a flood of mixed and bittersweet emotions as I prepare to step out in faith into a world of many unknowns. I am excited to embrace the unknown and to trust God through each day. This summer I am realizing that I am really learning trust for the first time in my life...what I have thought was trust before was nothing like what I am experiencing now. In the past when I have prayed for direction in my life, I know that God has led me but I also had a dozen different options available to me so that one of them was bound to work out. As soon as August 11 arrives, I will be at the end of all that I know to be normal and the end of all that I have planned...my life from there on out is an open book with pages that God has already written - I am just learning to patiently wait for Him to turn the page and reveal the "next step." It is the scariest, and yet most comforting, place I have ever found myself in. The Lord will make known to me the steps He wants me to take and in that there will be great joy because He is the giver of all true joy!
After graduating from college on May 15 (yay!!!), I spent a couple of days with my family and then came back for the third summer to serve in children's ministry at my home church on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It has been a wonderful summer so far and I am continuously amazed at how the Lord has placed strategic relationships in my life to train me and walk with me and to teach me how to serve. I could sit and write forever about all that I have learned - maybe someday, if the Lord allows, I will get to share that with you. Every day is a new opportunity and I am thankful to have oxygen in my lungs and the ability to learn.
As I am just a few weeks away from leaving, there are a few things that are on my heart that I would like to ask you to join with me in prayer about in preparation for moving to another country and beginning to build new relationships.
- That I would have humility to learn and hold all my plans and expectations with open hands before the Lord - that I would not hold on to anything that I want or desire. Before I leave, I need to learn from people God has placed in my life and when I arrive, I need to lower myself to learn a new culture and build relationships with precious people that God has created.
- That I would learn to feed myself spiritually. Too often I take for granted the fact that I am constantly surrounded by believers and have access to endless resources to assist me in my spiritual growth, but God is really all I need. I need to cling to Him and His Word.
- Pray that God would bring clarity and direction in His timing as to the "next step" that I will take - I recently commented to a friend that these next six months will most likely be the most definitive months of my life as I step out on my own and face countless adventures and make many significant decisions that will likely impact that rest of this life that God has given me. Most of all I need to learn the discipline of going before the Lord and walking throughout the day in a constant conversation with Him.
- Please pray for the precious people that I am about to meet in Central Asia. I cannot wait!!!! I have literally dreamt about arriving and meeting them - I can hardly stand the anticipation that I have at moments of having to wait another 22 days to experience that beautiful moment! But as excited as I am to meet them, I am even more excited to sit and drink chai tea and build relationships with them and share with them about the living water that they can come and drink from.
I look forward to sending many more updates in the near future of what the Lord is doing!
