It's Not About How I Feel

This picture and these words may become my trademark for a while.  I have kept my head down and pushing forward since the last break.   I guess I did not realize how tired I was and how hard I had pushed until this last weekend.  I slept about 10 hours on Saturday.  I am very thankful to be finished with French school and I had my last final at MSSU on Friday. 

Since January I have wrestled through the feelings of it is too hard you should just go home, everyone else has a sending agency but you are all alone, and who do you think you are to do this?  Sometimes the sounds of isolation are almost deafening - but I'm still here!

Now it is time to lift my head up for the next couple of weeks before summer school starts and do some evaluating.  I have been asking God the last couple of days if I am still on the path He has designed for me, am I doing what He wants and investing my time wisely.  Through that discussion I have made some adjustments.

I won't be going back to French school for this next session and I will be writing my first book.  I have almost twenty pages written and I am very excited and apprehensive all at the same time.  I have never written a book before so this is a whole other first for me.  There are many things that I want to say and I know that there are more books to come.  So as I am writing I am also studying how to put together and publish a book. 

On another front, God has been unpacking the whole area of finances with me this past couple of months.  He is showing me my trust on some levels and but my lack of trust in others.  He loves that I am willing to blindly go if I think He says go and now He wants to expand on that.   I have always been a person who could take care of herself.  If money was tight I could always find a job - always even when other people could not.  This time I am in France.  I do not have a work visa so I cannot go to work here.  I am completely dependent on God.  In the past I have thought that I was depending on Him, and on a certain level of understanding I was.   I always depended on Him to find me that job and He did.  I feel like now He wants me to go deeper and is really establish some deeper foundations of trust in Him alone.

Having said all that, the reality is I do not have rent money for this month or money to pay for my classes for the last month.  I have never been here before.  I am at a place where I am completely dependent on God.  I know that He is working things out of me in the area of finances and complete trust in Him.  I have such confident trust in Him in so many areas.   I have cried many tears over what He is showing me. I have asked and asked why this one area is so hard. Some of it has to do with how I was brought up and some of it to do with my past, some of it is just my own "stinkin thinkin" as Joyce Meyers says.   I think we all struggle in some areas more than others, but God in His mercy will teach us if we will let Him take us through the hard places of our own wrong thinking.  

There have been weeks when I had no money to buy groceries and He wanted to know if I could be thankful and praise Him anyway. I didn't have money for the bus, could I praise Him anyway.  My feet and legs hurt from walking so much, can I praise Him anyway?  My couch is broken and has a big sink hole in the middle where I sit and sleep - can I praise Him anyway?  Other missionaries got cars and bikes, could I praise Him anyway?  He continues to strip more and more attitudes, opinions, perceptions and strongholds out of me.

A few years ago I had some prophetic words spoken over me several times over a period of about three years.  Each time it was exactly the same words spoken by women from different countries "pack your bags, don't unpack your bags."  I am still not sure what they all mean, but I think now He is stripping more out of me so that I can travel light in the spirit. 

I feel like He keeps telling me not to worry that He's got this.  In my heart there is peace, it is keeping my head out of it that is the problem.  Thank you to my precious family and friends who have prayed for me, encouraged me and sent your finances to help fill in the gaps.  Thanks for letting me share and for all of you who are reading along with me as I continue to journey.  You will be able to read more about the journey in the books that follow.  It will be interesting to see how God works this out as my trust goes even deeper in Him. I am forever thankful that He not only loves me as I am, but that He loves me too much to leave me as I am. 

This was my devotional study this morning and I was reminded that God always knows right where we are and what we are going through. He gives us sweet promises to encourage us to move on with Him.   But the godly will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon.  For they are transplanted into the Lord's own house. They flourish in the courts of our God.  Even in old age they will still produce fruit; they will remain vital and green.  They will declare, "The Lord is just!  He is my rock! There is nothing but goodness in Him!"  Psalm 92:12-15

How to Care for Our Missionaries

http://www.gofundme.com/458dc4

Author: Richard Brindley Category: General, Missions

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We tend to assign missionaries very extraordinary reputations—like “Varsity Christians” or “Gospel-centered Special Forces.” But, of course, they are just ordinary people. And while we may think of them solely as missionaries, they are not missionaries first. They are people first; ordinary believers who just happen to be missionaries.  
Their role in the Great Commission is to go and take the gospel to other nations. For the rest of us, our role is to send them. They go, we send. And as John the Apostle says in 3 John 6-8, we are to “send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.” John continues, “For they have gone out for the sake of the name…Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.”
As fellow workers, there are two key ways we can help send and sustain missionaries: by caring for the person and by supporting their work.

Caring for the Person

Because missionaries are ordinary people, we can care for them just like we do any other person. We can encourage them, love them, pray for them, spend time with them, contribute to their needs, celebrate with them and weep with them.
But, while their identity may be ordinary, the context of their life is not. The extraordinary call on their life to leave the comforts and close community of home and move to a spiritually neutral or even spiritually unwelcoming people for the sake of the gospel means their ordinary day is not like any ordinary day in the Metroplex. This means we’ll be extending very ordinary care to people in very extraordinary environments. We will constantly need to ask, “How do we love and support someone in a high-pressure environment 10,000 miles away?” 
Here are a few suggestions:

• Get acquainted. Use Skype or Google Hangouts to get to know them. If you’re caring for a missionary as a Home Group, have each member of your group make a short video introducing themselves, quickly sharing about their life and praying for the missionary. Share the videos with them through Dropbox or send them with the next care package.
• Ask. Ask them how you can best care for them. Sometimes what we think would be helpful may not fit their context.
• Communicate often. Typically, two or three quick texts or emails a week are much better than one long email each month. These can be a quick prayer or a quick hello. Consistent little gestures of care and love tend to be much better than one rare, big one.
• Respond to their newsletters. It’s tremendously encouraging. Your response doesn’t have to be long, just respond.
• Pray with them and encourage them. Pray for their strength, for their affections and for fearless love for those they’re ministering to. Pray for God to move mightily. If you’re among their closest community, give them the opportunity to join your group in grace-filled confession and repentance and then Spirit-filled worship. Encourage them in the Word. Remind them of God’s faithfulness.
• Remember security. Check with the missionary or church to be sure your communication doesn’t endanger missionaries working in countries actively opposed to Christianity.
• Send care packages. Send some encouragement and some fun. Send things that would bless them based on your interactions with them.
• Visit. Few things are more loving and encouraging than face-to-face. Consider a short-term mission trip to see and support their ministry firsthand.
• Get creative. Do you write? Scrapbook? Make videos? Consider collecting pictures, prayers and stories of God’s movement in their life and ministry and recording them. On key anniversaries or during difficult seasons for your missionary, pull out the stories and remember with them God’s faithfulness (Ps. 66).

Supporting Their Work

We can support the work of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances by two essential practices: praying and giving. Prayer is essential, as only God can bring people from death to life (Ezek. 36:26-27). Finances are essential, as sending a missionary to live in another country and providing for their ministry costs money. And while both the provision for the work and fruit of it belong to God, God tells us to ask Him to provide it (John 15:16).

• Support them with prayer. Pray for the missionary. Pray for their people. Get to know the people they’re ministering to by name. Consider assigning each one to a member of your Home Group to intentionally pray for that person’s salvation and sanctification (John 15:16; Jas. 5:13-18).
• Support them with finances. Search your budget. Give monthly. Sacrifice. Give prayerfully. Ask God to use your money to make disciples. When bigger needs or projects arise for your missionary, consider fundraising for it as a group.

Final Thoughts

John the Apostle goes so far as to call missionary supporters “fellow workers in the truth” (3 John 6-8). The apostle Paul calls them, “partners in the gospel” (Phil. 1:5, 4:15-20). Be encouraged that your role among the nations as a missionary supporter is never second-class. Support your missionary well, in a manner worthy of God. Finally, remember that a happy, healthy missionary is not the only goal of missionary care. A well-cared for and fully supplied missionary is our hope, but our greater hope is that by partnering with our missionaries as fellow workers, we will make more disciples together than either of us could on our own. May God use our ordinary efforts to build an extraordinary partnership between those who send and those who go.


I copied this because it has been hard for me to make the mind shift that I am a "missionary".  I have always had a heart for  Africa and now for France as I have lived here the past year.  I hope that if you have missionaries that your church supports that you get behind them 100%.  Leaving your home, people you love and moving across the globe is not easy.  For those of us learning a foreign language adds another layer of difficulty. If you don't support a missionary and you would like to there is a link below.  I am studying French in order to be able to work in the French speaking countries of Africa, beginning with DR Congo.  Thank you for your prayers and support. Love and blessings - Karen