Well, this past month has been a whirlwind! I had a "going away" party, moved out of my friends apartment I have been staying in all summer, had the honor of speaking at my church, went on vacation to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, got engaged there, moved the last of my stuff back home, and 2 weeks from today I will hop on a plane to Atlanta to launch into the Philippines with my squad….
Okay, we'll rewind for a second to that part I know a lot of you want me to go back to… you know, the part where I got engaged…. Crazy right? How could I get engaged and then leave my fiance for a year? Well, because God told me to that's how. There is really no other way to explain it. God has clearly spoken to both Brad and I that we are supposed to spend the rest of our lives together, but that I first need to go on the World Race. I wish I could tell you the whole story, about how we met, how we started our relationship, and how God has brought us to this point over the last 7 months, but honestly typing it in a blog does it no justice… So our engagement will be spent with me on one side of the world and Brad on another and as much as a challenge as that might sound it is God's plan for us so we are embracing it. God called me to go, God called Brad to stay, it is going to be a time where Brad and I will be learning and growing as individuals, allowing God to transform us more and more to His likeness, before we come together as husband and wife. It's going to be a challenging 11 months, but we will come out of it stronger, stronger in our faith, stronger in our love for Jesus Christ, stronger in our trust in his plan for our lives, and stronger in our relationship with each other. So YAAAYYYY!!!! Between launching in 2 weeks and knowing that I am coming back to my husband to be, I have a LOT to look forward to… and more than that, a LOT to praise Jesus for!! He is SO INCREDIBLY FAITHFUL! And HIS plan for us is so much better than ANYTHING we could ever try and map out for ourselves! When you commit your life to Him and recklessly abandon everything that's expected and ordinary He takes you on a wild, passionate, radical adventure with Him!!!!
So, now that I covered the engaged part of this blog, I can tell you about the leaving part! Our first assignment is in the Philippines, and by "our" I mean my team of 6 beautiful ladies, we named ourselves team L.O.L. (Ladies of Light), and it consists of our team leader, Ashley Edwards, and then myself and 4 other amazing women: Jessica Brimmer, Maggie Lavigne, Wendy Baer and Rachel Martin. So for our first assignment we will be at the Philippine Christian Foundation Community Church! Our mission is to serve the poor communities around Manila!
These are some of the things that we will be doing:
We will mainly be based in Tondo (the main dumpsite). However, we may help out at 2 other sites in Manila too. One is based in a cemetery where there are around 1000 families living and the other is a squatters area. Our duties will be a mish mash of differnt things possibly including:
serving at the feeding programs
teaching in kids church
helping at kids clubs
speaking at youth group
helping at a youth drop in center
prayer walks and house visitations
mural project
general practical help with the buildings
house building/shanty repair
helping in the creative arts programs
community cleaning
We will be staying in a hostel called Friendly's Guest House Manila. You can check out their website atwww.friendlysguesthouse.com. We will be in a dorm style room with 12 beds so there might be other travelers in the room with us which could become a ministry in itself.
The hostel has a small kitchen that we should be able to use to prepare small meals. We can eat with the children during feeding programs. And the rest of the time when we're on the site feeding volunteers, we can eat there but we'll have to let our ministry partners know.
The language spoken is Tagalog.
We will be in this ministry site from September 13th-October 10th.
Aaaaahhhhh YAAAAYYYY hahaha!! God is SO good! Please keep Brad, me, and my amazing teammates in your prayers! We all need it! 🙂 I will blog again soon 😀
