Thanksgiving

I meant to update over Thanksgiving Break, but that week just seemed to slip away from me.  Anyway, my last update left off with the end of my Bible Overview Project.  The rest of the week was full of class, homework, internship, costumes, football practice, and fellowship.  Needless to say it was Spirit Week at the Institute with themed costume days, powder puff football tournament, and a hoedown complete with an Institute King and Queen.  Such a blast!  It was definitely a crazy week, but it was all worth it. 

This past week was Thanksgiving Break.  It was so great to spend some time at home, get to go to FBC Collinsville, and to spend time with both college friends and life-long friends.  I loved sharing with people the things that God is teaching me during my time at the Institute.  It’s funny because you can tell when people are asking me about the Institute because they’re truly interested and when they’re asking me to be polite.  Needless to say, for those who really wanted to know, I got to share with them for quite awhile about just how great our God is.  Also a great time of being with the family at our cabins in Arkansas.  I got to enjoy the family that God has blessed me with and his beautiful creation.  Probably one of my favorite parts of break was having my family go to church with me at FBC Forsyth yesterday.  I loved getting to share that part of my Institute experience with them.  As much fun as I had on break and as much as I loved getting to be with my family, it feels so great to be back.  It has just been reinforced to me that I truly am where God wants me to be and I have a peace about where I am and even though I don’t know what the future has in store for me, I know that God is in control.  I’m so thankful for my time here at the Institute and the things that God is teaching me and the friendships that are forming and just being surrounded by people who are seeking to know Christ more.  I know that I have so much more to learn and God has so much more in store for my life and that excites me so much.  I’m also so thankful for everyone who has played a role in my life to help me get to where I am today.  I’m thankful for the support of family and friends that are making my time here possible.  I’m thankful for the salvation I’ve been given and the fact that I am a new creation in Christ.  I cannot get over how good God is! 

Anyway, we have two weeks until Christmas break.  Only two more weeks in the semester, weird.  I’m having a hard time imagining leaving my friends here and my kiddos at Forsyth again, and this time for 3 weeks!  These two weeks are going to be awesome though!  Please be praying for Winter Retreat for FBC Collinsville’s youth group this coming weekend which I’m so excited to get to be a part of.  Pray that God will work in mighty ways so that we have no choice but to give Him glory for what happens.  Please also continue praying for my financial situation and that I will continue to trust God that He will provide when and how He sees fit.  Also be praying for everyone that we will all remember the true reason for the season and that we will be willing to show Christ’s love to all those around us.  So thankful for you and your continued prayers! 

Great is Thy Faithfulness

Another week down.  Not even a whole week to go before it’s time to head home and then to our cabins in Arkansas for Thanksgiving.  Where has this semester gone?  I am absolutely loving each and every moment of my time at the Institute.  God is stretching me and teaching me thing beyond what I ever would have imagined.  I love the people that I’m here with and the friendships that I’m forming.  As much as I love it here, I’m excited to spend a week with my family and to get a chance to see some old friends and church family.  It will be so weird not being surrounded by 56 other people though.  Anyway…

This past week was a trying yet great week.  It is so cool to see how God provides and how His power is made perfect in my weakness.  I had my student speaker on Tuesday, it went pretty well but I was absolutely terrified, the fact that I was able to get through it at all was completely God.  Wednesday night I got to teach the 3^rd and 4^th grade girls at AWANA the song that I learned to memorize the books of the New Testament and just walk through with them what some of the different books are about.  It was a fun time.  It’s also been really fun just to see the relationships that I’m forming with these girls, even some that aren’t in my group.  It’s also really cool to see some of my girls memorizing God’s Word like crazy!  I had two girls say over 8 verses on Wednesday!  I am so proud of them!  Sunday was yet another adventure.  Pastor Jeramie is on a much deserved vacation so he wasn’t there and Jessica was spending some much deserved time with her family that was in town so she wasn’t there either and in case you are wondering, deer season is HUGE in Forsyth so many of our normal helpers were not there, so that left Abigail and I and a couple of helpers in charge of everything.  So again I say, Sunday was an adventure.  It went really well though, just another example of how God is good!  I taught the lesson this Sunday, yet another time of stretching, but God pulled through once again (like that is a surprise).  While some of the kids were a little crazy since Jeramie wasn’t there, there are always a few kids who are just such a blessing to me, in that they are hungry to hear God’s Word.  These kids are the ones that remind me that as long as there is at least one kid getting something out of it, then I’m up there for a purpose and I just have to let God speak through me.  God has used my internship as a great blessing for me, between the kids and the people that I get to work alongside I am blessed beyond my comprehension.  I could go on about how great my internship is for hours, but for the purpose of this update I won’t.

Yesterday we presented on the eras that we drew, bringing our Bible Overview Project to a close.  What a great assignment - developing a plan for teaching the Bible all the way through.  I presented on the Judges Era.  I can honestly say that I felt really good after my presentation, yet another God thing because I was so nervous going into it.  Keith and Jack were the ones that I presented to and they were such a blessing to me.  They just really encouraged me and how neat that I was sharing about how God used people we wouldn’t necessarily expect to be a Judge for Israel and got to tie it back in to how I felt so unworthy and incapable of teaching, yet God gave me the ability to do it.  I think God is just going to continuing beating that into me until I finally, truly get it and who knows how long that will take, but it’s been so cool to see Him working it out in my life and in the lives of those around me. 

The rest of this week is going to be busy, full of homework but also full of great fellowship.  Please pray that I will be able to find the balance between the two.  Please also pray for safe travels for everyone who will be traveling over this Thanksgiving holiday.  Also, Ben and Jennifer, two people from this Institute are getting married this Saturday, so great, but please be praying for their relationship because they will be the first to tell you that they want their marriage covered in prayer.  Also just be praying that we take every opportunity that God gives us to share the amazing things that God is doing in our lives.  Thank you all for your continued prayer and support!

Continuing to be stretched...

Another two weeks of the Institute done.  I cannot believe how fast time is flying!  Two weeks ago was Evangelism week.  Can you please say convicting and stretching?!  Evangelism is something that I have always been nervous about.  I am not a naturally outgoing person, I’m afraid of rejection, I’m afraid of not being good enough, and so many other things.  I know that God is in control and I know that I in myself cannot “save” anyone, but that its Christ working through me, and while I know all of these things, it doesn’t necessarily make sharing my faith much easier.  I think that is where some of my greatest frustration came, knowing the Truth but not having the Truth ease my anxiousness.  In fact I had a complete emotional breakdown Wednesday after class because I was so anxious about going out into the community in order to share the Gospel on Thursday.  But God is so good!  I’ve always been a firm believer in wanting to live my life in a way that is pleasing to God and through that hopefully people will notice there is something different about me and then ask me about it and then I am more than thrilled to share what God has done in my life, but I want people to approach me not the other way around.  Well Thursday I headed to the Branson Landing to talk to people and hopefully share the Gospel with them.  I had talked to a couple different people but those conversations hadn’t really gone anywhere so I decided that I wanted to buy one of the kiosk workers hot chocolate as a way to break the ice, I was going to take some to a guy that I had been talking to earlier but then I saw this girl at a scarf kiosk and God just told me that she was the one that I was to take the hot chocolate to.  So I took it over there and we talked for a little bit but not too much came of it so I went on to find more people to talk to.  Then as I walked past her later that morning she called me over to thank me for the hot chocolate and she told me that it completely made her day and that it was so good to know that there are people who still care in this world.  I just told her that I know how much God has blessed me and so I just wanted to be a blessing to someone else and then I got to share with her about the Institute and what I’m doing in Branson and it was just such a neat time that we spent together.  I found it amazing what God can do with something that only cost me $1.50.  I’m so excited because God really laid it on my heart to start passing out hot chocolate to the kiosk workers on a regular basis and so me and a couple of other girls went this morning.  It was such a great morning of just being a blessing and being blessed by the new people we met.  I cannot wait to go back and hopefully continuing to build relationships with the people there.  I have so much to learn from other people! 

This past Monday we talked about Spiritual Gifts and Personality.  Such a neat time!  It’s so neat to see how different everyone is, yet we are all made in the image of God and that each and every one of us plays a vital role in the Church.  I think that is a hard thing for me to remember at times.  I so often see the fun, outgoing people and I so wish I was one of them, but that is not the way God made me.  Yes, sometimes He is going to call me to be that person and He will give me the power to do that, but that is not me and that’s ok.  He made me just the way that I am for a reason.

Tuesday through Thursday Chad came and taught Church history.  Not a favorite subject of all, but I loved it.  I think everyone also got to see the importance of knowing Church history, plus everyone was excited to hear from Chad, especially on a topic he is passionate about.  Looking at what the Church as a whole has done right and wrong since the Destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and seeing where the Church is right now and where it might be headed. 

Bible Overview Project is almost done.  We had our last checkpoint on Thursday, we will draw which era we are going to teach on this coming Thursday, and then we will teach them on the Monday after.  A little nervous about getting up and teaching, but I know it will be a good thing for me.  I also have my student speaker this Tuesday, I’m nervous about that, but I know that God will use me to speak Truth.  Please be praying for me as I prepare for my student speaker, that I will let God lead what I say and that He will speak through me.  Please continue to be praying for my finances, I know God will provide, the waiting is just hard sometimes.  I was so blessed and humbled this week by a donation that I received that I was not expecting at all, God is so good!  It was a reminder for me that God will provide even though I don’t necessarily know how and I cannot limit God and the way that He works.  Thank you for your continued prayers!  Please let me know how I can be praying for you, it’s the least I can do when I know how much you guys are doing for me.  Love you all!

God is so good!

It has been too long since my last update, but things have started to pick up here at the Institute.  So I’ll do my best to share all the things that God has taught me these past few weeks.  Two weeks ago Mitch Maher came and finished up our Bible Overview class.  It is so awesome to continue learning about how the Bible all fits together and to see how God fulfills the Old Testament promises in the New Testament.  We also started Precepts; we are doing a study on Abraham.  The first week of Precepts was especially neat for me because God really used the example of Abraham to teach me to trust Him.  Abraham was called by God to leave the land of his father and to go to the land that God would show him.  Abraham didn’t know where he was going; just that God was going to show him the way.  He went in faith.  That struck me because we had been working on our vision statements at the beginning of that week and I realized that I know what God has called me to and why He has called me to it but I have no idea what fulfilling my vision looks like, but that doesn’t matter.  I know what God has called me to do and I just need to follow His calling and trust that He will show me where He wants me in His timing.  God has given me a peace that I haven’t felt in a long time.  I know that I’m where God wants me to be and that while I have no idea what exactly my life will look like after this year, God knows and He will reveal it to me when the time is right.  Karen was talking about how we think it would be easier if we knew God’s whole plan for our lives but really, if Abraham would have known everything that God was going to have him go through, he probably wouldn’t have gone and aren’t we the same way?  So I will just trust that God’s timing is perfect and His will is better than my own. 

Last week we worked through the Truth Project.  I’m still working on wrapping my mind around that one.  But what amazes me is the fact that people cannot define truth or what is right.  The Word of God is truth and if we really believe that then why are we not sharing it with others.  One of the biggest questions was, “Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?”  That really hit home with me.  So often I feel like that which I know in my heart doesn’t transfer to my thoughts and vice versa.  But if we really believe that the Word of God is truth then why do we not live more radically?  Truth is not relative, it has sides, you either believe the truth or you believe a lie.  Another thing that hit me while doing the Truth Project is when we looked at Science.  Now if you know me at all, you know I do not like science, but I do love nature.  I love Psalm 19:1-4 where it talks about how the heavens declare the glory of God and Romans 1:18-20 where it says that God has made it plain to us since the creation of the world.  Whenever I see nature, especially the stars, I cannot even fathom that there isn’t a creator.  There is so much more that we talked about with the Truth Project, but again, I haven’t even wrapped my mind around half of it and I have like 7 pages of notes from it so yeah. 

This past week we’ve been learning about marriage and relationships.  It’s been a really neat week of learning but also hard in some ways.  I’ve realized lately that I need to get better at guarding my heart and it has been a little hard for me to do that this week while talking about one of my greatest desires in life.  But again, I know that God’s timing is perfect and His will is better than my own.  I will be faithful where I am in whatever state He has me.  God is all I need and is the only thing that completes me.  I have learned some awesome things though; things that I can put into practice now in order to become more like Christ.  Some things that I need to work on is not believing the lies of the devil, to work on taking every thought captive and replacing it with God’s Truth, to not fear confrontation but to learn to handle it correctly.  There is so much more but I don’t want to ramble or bore you guys. 

This Sunday I’m teaching at Kid’s World for the first time, so if you could pray for me that would be awesome!  Also continued prayers in the financial aspect and that I will continue to trust God no matter what the circumstances.  I want to be able to praise God even in the pain and to know the peace and joy that He offers.  God is so good and I never want to forget that!  Thank you for your prayers and support, it means so much to me.  Please let me know if there is anything that I can be praying about for you!  Love you all and thank God for you!

What is your vision?

Today has been a crazy, emotional day, but such a good one!  Today in class we talked about having a vision for our lives and we got a chance to work on our vision statements.  What a challenge!  My vision statement is far from being complete, but I feel like God showed me some awesome things.  My desire has always been to be a mother, ever since I was a little girl, that's all I've really wanted, so I was struggling with what my life would look like without being a mother or in the time period before I get to be a mother.  That's when God showed me that I can achieve the goals that I want to in raising children without actually being a mother.  The specifics of how to achieve my goals and desires is still so fuzzy, but I just realized that I have to be faithful where I am, whatever that looks like.  The purpose behind my vision is the clearest thing for me though.  We live in a lost and corrupt world that is producing lost and corrupt children.  My heart breaks when I see the things that children go through and it seems like their struggles just keep coming at younger and younger ages.  We, as Christ followers, are called to make disciples and it is my hope that by doing so, that instead of getting caught up in the ways of the world, children will find the joy offered in Christ.  Children need to know that God has called them to a higher purpose and to be trained in a way that will help them be a light in this dark world. 
Cat is going to look over my vision statement for me and help me find more of a direction.  I'm also excited to see how God is going to change my vision in this next year and even through out my life.  All I know is that if I'm continually seeking God's will for my life, then the Lord will bless that. 
I loved that as I'm sitting in class, figuring out my vision for my life, Colleen is in labor fulfilling a part of my dream.  Ethan Clyde Taylor was born at 1:33 and weighed in at 7lbs 4 oz.  He is absolutely beautiful.  I am so excited for this journey that Josh and Colleen are going through and I know that they are going to be absolutely amazing parents.  I am so excited to be an aunt and to get to walk along them in their journey!  It has taken everything in me to not just get in my car and drive home so that I can see that precious little boy in person and to hold him, but this weekend will come soon enough.  This week is going to be hectic, but I know I am going to learn so much.  Excited for what this week has in store for me. 

Lord, I want to know you more!

It is the end of week three or the beginning of week four depending on how you want to look at it and all I can say is, God is good!  Tuesday through Thursday Karen Chancey came and taught us the overview of the Bible, how the Old Testament fits with the New Testament, and the history of the Intertestamental period.  Amazing!  It is so cool to see the timeline of the events of the Bible and the way that it all fits together.  Something that is taken for granted so often.  I feel like so often we learn the Bible stories as kids, but once we get older, we focus so much on the New Testament that we miss out on all the great things God has to say in the Old Testament.  The events, promises, and theology in the Bible are so much cooler when you see how it fits with the rest of the Bible.  This coming week Mitch Maher is coming and continuing to teach us the overview of the Bible.  Karen says that Mitch is coming to put meat on the bones of the Bible that she gave us.  I am so excited to see the things that God is going to teach me this next week.
Friday we had Timothy group and Cat invited us over to her house for breakfast.  It was a great time of just being honest and vulnerable with eachother and just sharing our lives, whether the events be good or bad, with eachother.  It was an opportunity to come together, to speak Truth into eachother's lives, and to join together in praying for eachother.  Absolutely amazing!
Today (Sunday) was another day of church and my internship, such a blessing.  The more I'm at FBC Forsyth, the more excited I get.  I'm excited for the relationships that I'm forming with the kids, for how welcoming everyone is, and for the things that I'm learning through the church services.  It was different today because I was the only intern there today because the other two were both out of town, but it was a great opportunity to get to know some of the kids better.  It has been really neat to see how the relationships that I form at AWANA carry over to Sunday mornings and vice versa.  I'm both excited and nervous because next Sunday will be the first week that I take more of a leadership role, so please be praying for that, that I will have the confidence and that God will reveal to me what I need to do in order for Him to use me to reach these kids. 
Please also be praying that I will continue to be open to the things that God wants me to learn and that I will be willing to be stretched in ways that I know that it is only by God that these things are happening.  Continued prayers for my finance situation would also be awesome.  So good to know that the prayer is powerful!

Who would have thought this is where I'd be?

For those of you who don’t already know, I am currently living in Branson doing something called the Kanakuk Institute.  In short, I’m being equipped for a lifetime of ministry.  To expand on that a little, I’m going to class Monday through Thursday, 8-12:30 and learning all sorts of amazing things and then Friday mornings we have Precept Bible Study and then Timothy groups (small groups).  I’m so excited to have the opportunity to take a year out of my life to study God’s Word, but what really excites me is that we aren’t just learning but we’re putting into practice the things we learn through different internships with churches or other ministries.  We’ve talked a lot about how knowledge without action means nothing, so I’m excited to be a part of something where we have to practice what we preach and to get to do it with a ministry that has already played a major role in helping me be the person I am today.
                Today started the first day of the third week of being here.  The first week was a lot of orientation and fellowshipping and getting to know those in the community with whom we will be spending the next 8 months or so.  I am thrilled to have the opportunity to be in this community where we all have the same priorities in that we want to seek God first and foremost.  It was also really cool to see God answer so many prayers in that first week.  I like to be in control and so I was nervous going into the Institute where there were so many things that were out of my control, but God has provided continually since I’ve been here.  He has provided my host family, my campus job, my internship, my Timothy group leader, and so many other things. 
                Last Monday was our first day of real classes and we were honored to have David Llawson come and teach us how to inductively study our Bible.  It is so cool to see the way that the Bible connects and how the Old Testament is the foundation for the New Testament.  So often I feel like the study of the Old Testament is overlooked so I cannot wait to get to do a study of Abraham for our Precepts study.  Then Thursday and Friday we had Bob Cornuke come and he told us of all his adventures of searching for Paul’s shipwreck, Mt. Sinai, Noah’s Ark, and the Ark of the Covenant.  Not only did he share all these things with us, but he taught us the important of not believing tradition for tradition’s sake but making sure they line up with the Word of God.  If you’re interested in that type of stuff, I strongly suggest you look him up, he never claims to be 100% right but he has some pretty interesting theories that will make you think and if you’re like me, want to travel. 
                Last week also was the start of campus jobs and this Sunday was the official start of our internships although many of us started our internships on Wednesday of last week.  I am doing my internship with the Children’s Ministry at First Baptist Church Forsyth.  I love my internship already.  I am helping with Children’s church at two different times on Sunday mornings and will even be getting to teach some at the first service of children’s church.  Wednesday nights I am helping out with AWANA where I am with 3^rd and 4^th graders.  Plus, FBC Forsyth really seems to be doing things right and I’m excited to be a part of church here that really puts God first and is reaching out to the community around them.  My campus job is to babysit kids whose moms lead a Timothy group so that the moms can spend one-on-one time with their girls without having to worry about their kids.  This is really exciting for me because some of the kids I will be watching are the Hampsch kids who I babysat at kamp this summer and I love them like they are my own.  Last week also was the first time that a lot of us got to hang out with our host families.  We are blessed by families in the community taking us in and giving us a home away from home and I’m excited to say that the Hampsch family is my host family.  I feel so truly blessed to be a part of their family for a little bit longer because they are absolutely amazing and I have already learned so much from the time I spent with them this summer. 
                So today was the beginning of week three, hard to believe.  Today we were absolutely blessed to have Todd Wagner who is the pastor at Watermark Church in Dallas come and teach us.  Oh my word, God used Todd to absolutely rock my world this morning, never mind that I was in tears for at least half of class because I was so convicted but also because of how amazing God is.  There are so many things that Todd talked about that I’m not even sure where to begin, but what he wanted more than anything was for us to desire to fall in love with God’s Word.  He said that the greatest Bible teachers aren’t the ones that make you think, they’re the ones that inspire you to love the God that they love.  He also talked about how God is not looking for someone who knows theology, but someone who loves God and loves others.  We did this really cool thing in class where we went to Psalm 19 and looked at the different titles for the Word of God, descriptions of the Word of God, and the benefits of the Word of God.  Please just let me share with you some of the descriptions of the Word of God:  perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, righteous altogether, more desirable than gold, and sweeter than honey.  As cool as that is, the benefits of the Word of God may be even cooler:  restoring the soul, making wise the simple, bringing joy to the heart, enlightening the eyes, enduring forever, warning servants, and there is great reward in keeping it.  Why in the world would you not want to fall in love with that?  Every day we are at war, we are in a spiritual battle but we need to be radical because we have the greatest Truth!  Being radical is getting back to the root, believing that the Bible is true and living it out.  Todd claims that the greatest evil in America is the dead and compromised church and I have to agree with him.  We are called to love others, yes, but we are also called to stand for Truth.  We have Truth and we need to share it, how selfish is it for us to keep it to ourselves?!  We talk a lot about how everything in this world is to bring God glory, but I think that can often be misrepresented.  Todd explained that God is not trying to establish His glory, but to reveal it, because if we know Him we will want nothing but Him and love must share itself!   We don’t need more “Christian” leaders in the world, we need leaders are pursuing God wholeheartedly.  Deuteronomy 17:14-20 talks about how the law is king, not the other way around.  Proverbs 13:13 talks about how there is a law and we are required to follow it.  We are not called to make more “Christians”, we are called to make disciples, people who follow God’s word because they love Him and people who are then going out and making more disciples. 
                I know I probably just rambled a lot, but I am just so excited about the things that I was convicted of today and in the previous two weeks.  God has shown me my shortcomings, I know where I stumble often, and I know where my weaknesses are that the devil is so prone to use against me, but since I know these, I can ask God to help me fight them.  God is my everything.  Psalm 84:11 talks about how God is the sun and shield, our provider and protector.  Yes, God has given me desires, but I can take heart in knowing that if I don’t have something, I don’t need it, because God is all I need.  I had a good talk with my roommate last night about one of my greatest struggles and she was able to speak truth to my heart and challenge me and then she prayed with me.  I want to be the person that God created me to be.  I want to love His word the way that I once did and even more.   I want to be faithful where I’m at.  I want to be willing to let God use me to change the world for the cause of Christ.  Please pray that God will help me to be those things and that He will continue to rock my world.  Pray that I will not fall victim to the lies of the devil, but that I will take every thought captive.  Pray that I will trust God to provide, despite my want to be in control.  Pray that the financial support will come through.  I know that this is where God has called me to and so I know He will provide.  Thank you to all that have been praying for me and to those who have already supported me financially.  Also if you’re interested in supporting me financially, just let me know and we can talk more about it.  Please let me know how I can be praying for you and how I can support you where you are.