Trust

The Lord has been teaching me a lot over the past few weeks as I have been trying to raise support for this trip. I have to raise a total of $3,884, not including the plane ticket. When I first saw that amount my jaw literally dropped, and I thought that there was no way I could ever raise that much money. Here comes the problem: I had no choice but to try and raise it. It has been more freeing than I thought just to send out letters and know that it is completely out of my control; it is totally in God's hands now, there is nothing I can do to make it work better or to mess it up. Though it has been nice to give it up, I have to constantly remind myself that God is in control and has called me to go to Africa. A good friend showed me a verse out of 1 Thessalonians 5:24: "Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass." That has been my mantra, if you will, for the past few weeks. And man, has the Lord been faithful. I've only been raising support for about 2 1/2 weeks and I'm almost at 20% percent support raised. Praise God!
The idea of trust is not new for me either. God is really pushing it on me now. Last summer I actually got a tattoo of the Biblical word for TRUST on my foot (pietho). It comes from a verse in 1 Corinthians that claims that we should not trust in ourselves, but trust in God. He is faithful. So I am learning that idea again, knowing that God will prove Himself faithful!

My Story

So now that I have fallen into the trend and made a blog, I realize that it is time to share my story with you all. I currently go to Presbyterian College and never thought that the Lord would call me into missions. It was by happenstance that I first learned the atrocities that are happening in Africa. It was late winter my freshman year at PC when a friend invited me to view a documentary, Invisible Children, at his home church. I agreed curious as to what it would be about. Little did I know that I would come out completely changed.

The video was about child soldiers struggling in Uganda. Rebel soldiers (LRA) would take children from their villages and force them to be in their army, so to escape abduction, the children would gather in a city called Gulu. The video showed them sleeping in the streets and in cold, wet, concrete buildings, huddled together like goods or livestock. It was shocking and appalling, I had never seen anything like it in the sheltered world that I live in. From that point on the Lord has been working on my heart and slowly...well quickly tendering it towards Africa and the nations. My heart began to feel the pain that these children felt and I could do nothing but weep for them...I knew that something had to be done. We HAD to do something.

The Lord presented me with an opportunity to go to Africa this summer with an organization called Cross-Cultural Solutions. It is an organization that will allow me to volunteer in Ghana, working either with children or women (I haven't been sent the assignment yet). So I am taking a HUGE leap of faith and am going...on my own...by myself. I have to completely trust in the Lord for this one because I know that there is no way that I can do this all on my own, but I know that I have to do it. There is no other choice for me...my heart desires nothing else but to go there and learn from the people. To see how the function, to see their hope, and to be changed. So, here begins the adventure...lets see where it goes.