A Slower Thought....

I really should have thought about this when I put up my last post, not even ten minutes ago.

I was talking with Matt last night, when I was reminded of something. I was reminded of the very first Bible verse I ever memorized which is:

Isaiah 6:8
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then said, "Here am I. Send me!"

It's incredible how God sets up things in our heads. I would have never thought when I was in the 6th Grade Girls Vacation Bible School Class (with one other student and Darlene Pickens as my teacher) that this would essentially become a life verse for me.

After I went to Mexico in high school on a missions trip I began to feel the tug toward missions for a career. I never told anyone though because I thought no one would ever believe me. I discussed it with God for quite a while, and then passed it off as just a phase. Truth is, it wasn't a phase; God was preparing me for something. At that time, I had totally neglected the calling because I thought that God would never want me for something like that. Boy was I wrong.

I guess I was just hit with the revelation that God really does set up things very intricately for us. The irony and the blessing in the situation can only be explained by God's grace and love.

Life Long Learner

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

This is one of the many verses that has spoken to me recently. It’s amazing how God will show us many different verses that are all about the same kind of thing, or we will hear repeated messages in sermons, or a combination of the two.

Patience is not a lesson that anyone really wants to learn, although it is a lesson that most of us need.

God has really been showing me a lot lately about patience and how that correlates with His timing. He has shown me that if we are patient, then the blessings and rewards that we receive are so much more than what the “blessings” would be from living in the moment.

His plan is perfect, and it will be done. We have the choice to either faithfully follow it or to rebel against it. What I’ve learned though, is even though we may rebel, God will still get us to where He wants us; the journey may just not be as smooth.

I have also recently been amazed at just how awesome God really is. The fact that He rewards repentance from stupidity still leaves me awestruck. His love is amazing, steady, and unchanging. Praise the Lord for his loving and forgiving heart. Praise the Lord for an empty cross and a risin Savior!

Return from Oz? Oh, Thailand...

There are so many things that happened in Thailand that I don’t even know where to start. Telling everything that God did on the trip would literally take days to explain.

First I would like to say “Thank you” to everyone who donated money so I could afford to go on the trip and donated toward the building fund.

We left Songtan at 5am on Saturday morning (4/8) and got to our hotel in Mae Tang, Thailand around 9pm-ish. When we arrived in Thailand we met up with Belinda, Able and Carol and their family. They hosted us all week. Belinda and her family that were visiting are Australian; Able, Carol and their family are Canadian – mostly. What I mean by that is Able is Filipino who grew up in Canada. He and Carol have two kids of their own and the youngest two they adopted from China (and they are adorable!). Basically, we got to listen to really cool accents all week.



The next day, Sunday, we attended a very small service attended all by Thai’s with the exception of us. The preaching was done by an Australian and translated for the Thai’s.

After church that morning we went to a Buddhist temple. It was beautiful and yet very disturbing at the same time. Thailand is beautiful, yet the people blatantly deny God. They go to temples like the one we went to (which are ever where – just think about how spaced out McDonald’s restaurants are in the states and you’ve got the temples in Thailand) and there are so many different things they believe they must do out of worship. It’s such a spiritual battle zone there. There were signs cautioning the slippery floors when it rains when there really needed to be signs warning people that they are walking into a spiritual war.

After the temple we went to another church service. This one was actually in English. Attendees in the service were mainly Brits and Aussies, with the sprinkle of Canadians and Germans. It was amazing to be in a church service where there were literally people from ALL over the world attending. The preacher was British, so I got to listen to a Brit accent for the service. :0)

Monday we began work at the Mae Tang Tribal Children’s Home. We worked with Thai workers for two and a half days building a wall on the parameter of the property. We were told that we built more wall in the two and a half days than the Thai workers usually do in three weeks.

At the Children’s Home we also built a patio/ walkway in front of the house where the missionaries live. The team we took last school year leveled the area out, but during the rainy season it becomes one giant mud puddle. We also built a garden in front of the window on one side of the house to prevent children from climbing on the bars looking in at the missionary. We also cleaned a little in the Bible College on property as well as moved the library and reshelved it.

On Friday we went to a village. We got to spend time in fellowship with the people and the students pretty much conducted the Good Friday church service. The students performed one skit and played and sang numerous songs. We had three guitars, a violin, and a harmonica. The villagers loved the violin so much; many of them had probably never seen one before.


God was really showing people things on the trip; especially me. Through the events that happened before, especially during, and after the trip, He really showed me the importance of His timing.

There was a certain issue that I had been praying about since January that the Lord really revealed Himself through on the trip. I was shown/ reminded the importance of God’s timing and waiting on Him, also the importance of patience (which I possess oh so well…). God showed me through the things that happened that if I would have been impatient, my usual, then I would have missed out on amazing blessings. He really can bless the stubborn person who finally breaks and prays for something they know they need to, like patience.

The Lord’s grace, mercy, majesty, comfort, and loving-kindness were really revealed to me through this trip.

Again, I would like to say “Thank you” to the amazing people whom the Lord led to donate money for me and for the trip. It was a true, genuine blessing.

More pictures are to come...