Hello everyone!
It has been quite a long time since I have updated me blog. I can't believe we are already three months through 2011, and that I only have four months left in my trip! This year has flown by. It has been an amazing trip so far and I am trusting that these next four months will be even greater! I have met incredible people, get to hang out with awesome children everyday, get to see God working in His world, have grown in my relationship with God more than ever before and many many other things. I praise God for this oppurtunity! I will never be the same.
These past two months have been up and down. I spent two weeks sick in bed which was not very enjoyable. God has allowed me to learn through my sicknesses, yet it has been tough. At the end of February, after six months of having no non-Ugandan guy here an Australian guy came and we had an awesome three weeks. It was very nice to finally have a guy here!
God has been teaching me a lot. I have struggled at times with ignoring Him, yet He has loved me through it all; just like He always does. If anyone thinks that being on the mission field makes pursuing a relationship with God super easy, it's not true. In some ways, it may even be harder. I believe that Satan really wants to bring down those who serve God and will do anything to make that happen. In my case, it has been making me comfortable. I am relatively comfortable here. I don't worry about being persecuted or where my next meal is coming from. I have gotten into a routine and it doesn't always include God. I am crazy to think that I can do anything without Him. I am here to serve Him, yet for some insane reason I don't always rely on Him or do it all for His glory. I think all of us fall into this, and most of us fall into it alot! Our whole lives are supposed to be about one thing- Him. Yet instead, most of our lives are about everything else but Him. He has called us to be His ambassadors and to spread the gospel and hope of His son to the world. God does the calling, yet He chooses to use us plant and water seeds. We should feel privileged to do so!
I recently read a book called "Revolution in World Missions" by KP Yohanan, and in it he talks a lot about how as Christians and as the Church we have taken our focus off of spreading the Gospel to the world and onto doing social work. While social work is great, the Gospel is so much greater and more important!! Every ministry and organization needs to build on the foundation of the Gospel and then allow that to lead to social work, and not vise versa. I have had to ask myself some hard questions. I believe that God is leading me to one day start an organization. For awhile I thought I had it all figured out. My idea of being the director of an organization was so comfortable and the work that would happen was so safe. Yet, I had to ask myself, "What if God is calling you to some remote place where no one will ever here of you or your work, would you be ok with that? Or even further, what he is calling you to a place where there will be persecution and you will be beaten, imprisoned or even killed for the Gospel." Man, those ideas scared me! In the end, however, I had to give it all up to God. I don't know what the future holds, none of us do, but I do know that God works all things to the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. That's something I can trust in. Jesus promised that following Him in this life wouldn't be easy and I don't expect it to, but I do expect that if I abandon all of me and serve Him, no matter what that means, then one day I will face my God, who I spent my whole life serving, and I will enter into an eternity of no more hardship and into unlimited communion with the God who was worth it all! Hallelujah!
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and forevermore. Amen.
