Romans 15:20

It’s been ten days since I’ve moved home to Parkersburg and four of those days I was in North Carolina celebrating a friends’ birthday. Parkersburg has been pretty mediocre outside of landing one of the greatest jobs ever, babysitting my 3-month-old niece, Lyla. She’s precious and watching over her has been such a great experience. It’s been nice being able to grow/practice in the area of motherhood (though I don’t plan on being a mother for quite some time). My time with Lyla is more important to me than I had imagined it would be. I work 8AM to 5PM and around 7PM every night I start missing her, it’s insane. It’s going to be hard for me to leave her come August, but I just know there are people who are deeply hurting and in desperate need of love in Washington as well, and I plan on going so God can provide that through me.

It’s been hard to adopt to a schedule so far this summer. Lyla isn’t quite on a schedule yet, because she’s so little, so it’s been hard for me to have one too. I’ve been working on my support letter (currently on the third revision) and I’ve addressed a few envelopes. Over the weekend I was inspired and really plan on getting a lot of support letters sent out by the end of the week.

There are been three recent, and awesome, developments since I last posted.

1). I found my sending church, Lubeck Community Baptist Church. Being my sending church basically means that they are taking on the responsibility to send me my paycheck each month. I’ll be raising the support this summer and before I leave I’ll give LCBC the money and they’ll write me the checks at the beginning of every month. It works well for potential supports because they can write the money off their taxes and it helps me because then I won’t have all the money in my account (I would for sure feel overwhelmed if I did).

2). The pastor at LCBC, Mark Houser, has planned a support concert for me. He’s giving me a Sunday night (June 13^th , 6pm) to talk about Washington as much as I want and to play some music. I’m pretty excited and I invite you to pray with me as the day approaches. Pray that I can speak with clarity about what next year will look like for me and for the hearts of the listeners. That they will clearly see the picture I’ve painted for Olympia and decide to support me monthly of $50 - $100.

3). One of my best friends from school got a job in Kennewick, Washington! It’s about 4 hours away from Olympia, but it sure beats the heck out of being 33 hours away. This is a huge blessing to me because now I know that when I get homesick (or he gets homesick) we can meet each other half way to chat and to feel like we’re back home again. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am for him and for his job working with senior citizens. He has such a great heart and I know he’s going to do awesome things there.

My four days in North Carolina this past weekend were unbelievably refreshing. Even though I had only been home for a week it was already beginning to wear me down. It’s tough to leave a tight knit community of believers that spur you on in your faith and return to a somewhat spiritually dead climate. It was good to kick back with fellow believers my age and have a drink and talk about how great God is and all the great things He is doing in our lives.

I’m currently reading a book about church planting called, “Church in the Making” by Ben Arment. This bro is awesome and pretty smart when it comes to starting a church. The second or third chapter is all about cultivation and he makes a point saying cultivation is biblical and from there goes on to site Romans 15:20

“My aim is to evangelize where Christ has not been named, in order that I will not be building on someone else’s foundation.”

-Apostle Paul

I leave you with this because it has been resonating in my heart all weekend long and it just helped remind me that I am so thankful for the calling God has placed on my life. I’m so thankful for Jesus and that He has given me a purpose: to love. I love to love and I hate that people don’t feel loved. I hate that there is such darkness within the Northwest. Maybe there are several North-westerners who believe such darkness doesn’t even exist, but then again, if you’ve been sitting the dark all of your life you don’t really know what light looks like.

I urge you to evangelize where no one is evangelizing. Seriously, just think what it would be like if we all really loved our neighbors more than we loved ourselves, the Northwest, the East Coast, the U.S. and the world, for that matter, would look so different. It would be awesome.