Hi friends! My team made it safely to Chiang Mai, Thailand last Thursday! This week we are helping do office work, nursery painting, and groundskeeping for one of Adventures in Missions’ local partners here, and wow it’s an honor. I’m getting to use my detail-orientation skills by editing and formatting a 53-page manual AND feeding my love for laminating by laminating SO MANY THINGS! WOO! We also really wanted to get into a habit of working out as a team this month, and God is so intentional, He gave us a ministry where we will be working out with the staff three-four times a week! How sweet it that! And yes, I am very sore haha!
In this blog, I want to share with you my goals for Thailand. Every month on the field I have set goals for myself. They give me a way to focus my attention and motivate me to keep growing and moving forward. And I like reflecting on them at the end of the month to see how I’ve grown!
This month, all of my goals start with the letter “I” which was completely unintentional haha.
Intentionality – specifically with my team. This is our last month together; we have team changes at the end of the month. I want us to finish strong as a community, which requires me taking responsibility for my part in the community and putting in the intentionality needed to finish well. I want to love them well, spend lots of quality time with them, support them in their goals, and set them up well for their next team. This often means putting them before myself, stepping out and giving feedback even when it’s hard, and not checking out when things get hard or I’m tired. I have LOVED this team and I love these women, so it’s not hard to motivate myself to pour into them for this homestretch!
Intimacy – with Jesus! The biggest lesson I’ve learned in the last two months of the Race is that when I am pursuing intimacy with Jesus, focusing all of my attention on my friendship with Him, He does all sorts of incredible stuff in me while I’m not paying attention. My mindset before the Race, and even the first few months of the Race, was that I need to fix things about myself or make myself better to fit some sort of standard of “Good Christian” and that that would get me love and approval. That attitude was fueled by a belief that I couldn’t be loved unless I was perfect. Wow hallelujah I’ve been freed from that! Now, I have a friendship with Jesus and am completely unafraid of His judgement or condemnation and I am unafraid to sit in His presence, ask Him questions, and converse with Him. It’s truly intimate and beautiful. I want to cherish it and fight for it my whole life. I’ve found that when I set my sights on Jesus – when He is my one focus and my one desire – everything else I want for myself or my life fall into place. I’m a better friend, I am more Kingdom-focused, I am more confident in my identity in Christ, I am assured of His character, the future seems less trepidatious and I can trust Him to prepare me for it, and I become the woman He created me to be. It truly is an unfair deal: I get to be BFFs with Jesus and He does the work to make me into the woman I want to be. Wow, guys, you really need to just try it for yourself!
Intercession – is a fancy word meaning, “asking God for something or to do something.” Last month at PenHOP we did a lot of intercession, but 90% of my intercession was for Malaysia and the Muslims living there or their upcoming election or the Church there. This month, God has called me into highly intentional and daily intercession for three categories: my past, my present, and my future. I’m going to be a little vague here on purpose.
My past: I am still harboring unforgiveness and bitterness towards people in my past who have hurt me, and I am praying intentionally this month for those people, for God’s help in living out Jesus’ instructions in Luke 6:27-36 (“love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”), and for God to help me forgive them completely.
My present: I am preparing for two exciting things! The second is team changes, which I mentioned before, and I want to prepare my heart for that new season through prayers. But the first and sooner thing is that MY PARENTS ARE COMING TO THAILAND!!!! They are joining me in Thailand at the end of the month for a week of ministry and I am PUMPED. I am praying daily for travel mercies, their hearts to be prepared for their trip, and for God’s will to be done in the week we are together. I am so excited for this. Please join me in praying for them!
My future: The end of the Race is nearing (but don’t push it; we still have 3.5 months left!), and I am praying for clarity in what God wants for me after the Race, specifically in my relationship with my boyfriend, Jon. I don’t want to start asking God about jobs/living situations/etc until next month, but Jon asked me to be praying this month for what God wants for our future, so it’s on my daily prayer list!
Integrity – being a woman of my word. In Guatemala, sitting in a lounge chair at the edge of Lake Atitlan, I remember chatting about integrity with my then-teammate and now-teammate, Ally. I told her it was a word that God had put on my heart before the Race, but I didn’t fully know what it meant. Before the Race, it looked like paying $100 parking tickets even though there were no consequences if I didn’t. Then in South Africa, God convicted me of a new side of integrity with Proverbs 25:14 – “A person who promises a gift but doesn’t give it is like clouds and wind that bring no rain.” We had to be very cautious in African countries to not make false promises; to them, “maybe” means yes. As a team, we’ve discussed it a couple times and even listened to a podcast together, and we want to be women of our word who follow through on our promises and can be trusted to tell the truth. This sometimes looks like saying “no” when it’s really hard to say no. We laughed ironically at this video by John Crist on how Christians say no, satirically mocking us for not being able to. This month we’re pressing into practical integrity.
In the moment – this one doesn’t fit as eloquently into the “starts with I” trend haha. The goal is to, “express my needs and feelings in the moment.” This is hard for me. Maybe it’s because I’m an ESFJ, so I’m a high-provider type who wants to meet everyone else’s needs and neglects my own in the process. Maybe it’s because I’m a recovering perfectionist and I struggle with a lot of lies about my worth, which makes expressing negative feelings or needs feel like a bad idea. Regardless of the reason behind it, I’ve struggled. My team and I laughed about it because they’ve learned that when I’m not okay or really hurting I won’t say anything, but I will purposefully make myself look as pathetic and miserable as possible until someone notices and asks me what’s wrong. Oh come onnn! And even the other morning during the workout, my right knee was struggling because I couldn’t bend it for a couple weeks last month and I just got full mobility back last week or so, and I didn’t stop doing lunges and squats (even though they were really hard!) until my teammate told me from across the room, “be careful!” I felt like I needed permission to take care of myself! Come onnn! So this month I’m working on expressing my needs and emotions in the moment. I’ve already had a few opportunities to do this, and it’s going well praise Jesus! Let’s see how it goes the rest of the month (:
Those are my goals this month! Please keep me and my team and my squad in your prayers as we aim to finish strong on our current teams.
**ALSO** I have TWO squadmates who are still in need of funding!! They have about $2,500 to raise between the two of them, and that’s less than 1% of our squad’s total funding! Please consider donating ANY amount to one or both of them. Literally every penny counts.
To God be the glory for all these things and all good things!
Jess
