On mission...

I remember clearly one late night, Kevin and I were talking while children were sleeping (it does happen occasionally) and he told me, "I just wanna have a job where all I do is tell people about Jesus." I couldn't have agreed more and started praying right away for God's guidance in what I thought was a calling to the mission field. I did a little research, only to run into bumps in the road. Kevin had a meeting with our pastor and they talked at length about what would be the best road to take, International or North American. Then I felt like we hit a brick wall and the soul searching and urgency to "go" came to a dead stop. Kevin decided he wanted to go on a mission trip before actually jumping feet first into the field to make sure this is what God was calling us to do. I wanted to support any decision he made and we waited. Not long after that, God called our new youth pastor to HRBC. His first announcement was a desire to take our kids on a mission trip. The Lord answers prayers, does he not?! We made sure to let Jeremy know we were interested in helping out in any way. This trip was a World Changers trip to Puerto Rico. World Changers is an organization seeking to spread the gospel through mission efforts around the world with Baptist churches and members. We were thrilled!
God immediately began providing us teams to serve with during a week of service in Puerto Rico. I want to be honest here, and say my desire was to fulfill some role in construction, do NOT ask me why because there's hardly any way I could do much being 9 weeks preggers on the trip but for some reason I just really wanted to work on a construction project. Well, God's plan and purpose are always better than our own. He assigned me, through a coordinator, to be on a community project team offering VBS during the morning and neighborhood services in the afternoon. Kevin and I were paired together which is odd, since the goal of World Changers is to split groups up and your teams are people you do not know. We also had two of our students on our team! We felt really excited to be a part of what God was showing in their lives as well. So our team and jobs were already planned but God had more up his sleeve.
In my years as a young college student, I began a study of Spanish that would include 30 days of intense study in Spain, 2 more classes back home in the states which would complete a minor in Spanish. I initially went to Spain because I really and truly thought this would be a "fun" trip and I'd get three courses of study knocked out in one month. God had bigger plans. So I went to Spain, learned alot of Spanish, got a minor, and put that gift of language on the shelf. Maybe I'd pull it out when I started teaching. I did a little when I had a student who spoke very little English in my classroom but the goal for her learning was to be immersed in English. We only spoke Spanish when the English just didn't make sense. 9 years after graduation with a minor in Spanish, God put those rusty skills to work in Puerto Rico. As I mentioned before, our teams were assigned before we arrived. We had two youth on our team that were from Puerto Rico and were "supposed" to serve as translators and work with the VBS groups. Wouldn't you know it, our translators knew very little English. They were very nervous about speaking the language and often times, just didn't. We, stateside peeps, were on our own. We did have a chaperone in our team who was going to school majoring in Spanish and she helped tremendously but her services were needed everywhere so when it came to providing instruction for arts and crafts, I relied heavily on those rusty Spanish skills God instilled so many years ago. He went right to work bringing the language back to mind and I was able to communicate, which was awesome! I was able to tell one of the students attending how much I loved Jesus, that he was my best friend and I wanted her to have him as a friend too. I gave her a bible and copied Philippians 1:3 in the front from a Spanish Bible. We were able to bring in scripture for our crafts and I pray that some seeds fell on good soil.
God used this meager servant who really didn't want to do VBS to do a mighty work that week and what is the best part is how much I truly enjoyed every day. Even though we had scorching heat, we worked outside, we were sweaty and gross, he showed up. In Bible Study alone, 12 decisions were made for Christ! It's amazing what God will do when we just LET him do what he wants to do through us anyway and that's shine. So now our prayer is to continue to shine for Him here, until he calls us again. We pray nightly for guidance and can't wait to see how God is going to move next. It's simply a blessing to be on mission...