Recently I have been asked the question many times, "In which country are you most excited about serving?". Which country? good question, but I don't have an answer. In a previous blog, How Did This Happen? I mentioned how the Lord has spoken different areas of the world and has broken my heart for these different places. However, for some reason my heart is now latched on to all eleven of these countries.
It was not always this way. I remember in high school, I felt a call to Germany. I do not remember exactly what the confirmations were, I remember it initially and I remember there were confirmations, but I can't remember how it was confirmed. Yet I do remember thinking 'Germany is the LAST place I want to go'. I still was a little biased because I immeditially thought of the Holocaust. Things have changed. But while all of that was happening, I felt the Lord teaching me that it was His children He cared about and His children are in Germany.
This past Sunday I had the opportunity to speak at my seventh church this summer and while I was speaking I shared what I was passionate about. While I was speaking, I kept adding more and more. I use to only be passionate about orphans. I wanted to work in an orphange. And the last thing I was passionate about were elderly people. Breaking me heart for the elderly was definitely a miracle in itself. It happened when I was at the Dream Center and placed with senior care after telling them the elderly were my population I was not comfortable working with. The Lord had other things in mind and I'm glad! So my passions expanded. In fact the vision I recieved while in Los Angeles was of elderly and children in Guatemala. But that was two summers ago, there are more.
I read a vital book called When Helping Hurts by Steven Corbett and Brian Fikkert, I highly recommend it. It is all about going into a community and helping the community to sustain itself and the difficulties it may arise. It offers teaching of when to bring aid or support. This book along with other things grew my passion for the community as a whole, asking what does the community need. This coming semester I will be doing my internship with Daymark Recovery Services working with Intensive In Home which is with the whole family. I am sure my passions again will be grown.
I remember being asked in high school if I wanted to plant churches. Planting churches was not what I was primarily passionate about, but now looking at it, that's really what I want to do. I am a carrier of life and will bring that life with me whereever I go. I want to share life in Jesus, so all people will come to know him and that may be shared by caring for the orphan defending the weak, pleading for the widow, encouraging the single mom, sheltering the homeless, speaking life into the abused….
All of those things break the Lord's heart and they are all over the world. When I prayed for the Lord to break my heart for what breaks His, He did and still is, because my heart is breaking for more and more.
