Trust

So I asked the Lord this morning, "What specifically do you desire my trust in?"  I should not have been surprised by the answer, "EVERYTHING. TRUST Me in EVERYTHING."  

Trust Me as I lead and direct your husband, trust Me with the team I have brought together to go, trust Me with the finances you will need, trust Me with selling your car, trust Me with leaving your family, trust Me with your health, trust Me with your basic provision in Haiti, trust Me with your marriage, trust me as you live with 13 other people (big one!), trust Me as Ryan quits his job, trust Me with the long term plans for ministry, TRUST ME IN EVERYTHING...

"TRUST in the Lord with all your heart, and LEAN NOT ON YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and HE shall direct your paths.


Thank you JESUS that YOU are trustworthy. 

Mayco

I remember pulling up to the orphanage.  I had been there the year before, June 2010 and still remember little Mayco’s lifeless face.  When I lifted him into my arms he was as stiff as a board.  He had never been held.  I had to pry his legs open to wrap around my waist. He slept for an hour in my arms. Today, over a year later, I could not wait to see him again.

As we unloaded the bus I searched the sea of smiling orphans looking for him. I was dumbfounded when I saw him.  He had walked straight up to Ryan and slipped right into his arms.  Of all the people he could have gone to, he walked right up to Ryan. I watched for the next 4 hours as Ryan lovingly spend time with him, walked with him, and brought comfort to his little pain filled heart. 

They spent the day together and Ryan's heart was changed.

As I held Mayco this same day God spoke to my heart, "This is why you lost your two children.  So that the love you were ready to give to your own children could now be given to the motherless."  


Through Mayco our hearts were each captured on the same day. How amazing that of all the hundreds of children in Jeremie, God used the same child for each of us.

We are grateful for the honor of this opportunity God has given us.  That through our pain God would do something glorious in the lives of other children.

A Calling to Jeremie, Haiti

When we first starting walking on this journey we thought we were moving to Mali, Africa.   At the time Ryan was helping send a team there.  Then, an opportunity came to go to India and train nationals on how to reach the unreached people groups in their own country.  Exciting!


However as we continued to pray we had a lingering sense that we still were missing something.


One night at dinner we were talking.  Haiti came up.  There was a group of Impact 195 graduates that wanted to be sent there.   Ryan had been praying for a leader to be willing to go.


As we reflected back on the past year, how God allowed Ryan to go immediately after the earthquake, and then leading 3 group trips throughout the course of the year, it became clear that WE were the ones that God was calling to lead the team.


It  was easy to accept realities of moving to Africa or India because we had never been there .  The hardships of the culture and environment were more ideas than circumstances we had experienced.


Haiti on the other hand..... We knew the inescapable heat, we knew the difficulties of the culture, we knew the living conditions, we knew that there were more non-profit organizations there than anywhere else in the world!  We had from our short trips a glimpse of how hard it would be to actually live there.

Poor neighborhood.

Spaghetti for breakfast every day.

However as we began to accept this reality God began changing our hearts from the difficulties of the location, to the hearts of the people.


The people, that is why we are going.  To love the abandoned.  To teach the eager children who have been left to themselves.  And to not just share the gospel, but to make the love of God tangible and real in people's lives.

This is why we are going.

 Marco a sweet orphan boy we have seen transformed over the past year.  This is the first day we meet him.

Marco this April, one year later.  Transformed by love.

 Reading to children at orphanage.

 Ryan with street kid.  

Our desire is to equip the next generation through discipleship and teaching while empowering them to reach their God-given potential.


"Those from among you shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called a the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell in."

How it All Started

After the miscarriage of our second child in December 2010 we were devastated.  We had decided that we would wait the necessary two months and then consider trying to start a family. While Ryan was settling into his job, I was having a major shift in my ministry role, all things seemed to be lining up for a good time to start a family.


Well two months passed, and change did come, but not in the way that we expected it to!


One night Ryan was at work when a friend asked him, "Have you considered going onto the mission's field yourself?"  You see, Ryan's job was to help others be sent, and here the question was back at him.  He had been asked it a hundred times, yet this night it was different.


As he proceeded to explain to her that for now he knows he is supposed to stay focused on sending the Holy Spirit spoke to his heart, "Why don't you go?"


After this eye opening inner dialogue he know that the next hurdle would be me! 


I picked him up from work that night I took one look at him and knew!  As we sat on the couch and he explained the night, I too began to explain how God had been preparing my heart through a handful of conversations and experiences the past month.


At this point we didn't know where we would be going, but we were both in agreement that God was clearly calling us out of our comfortable and somewhat predictable life.


The next day we called our landlord and put in our 30 day notice because we knew that the journey ahead of us was one that did not require stuff!


Bye Bye House...

Actually leaving this house was a big deal for us, in the regard that we chose this home because I was pregnant, so to let it go was really to let go of all our dreams and hopes that we thought would take place in this home.


Needless to say we have been learning as Paul says,


"Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ."