Hello everyone! Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog. My hope is that God speaks to you through what I have to say, and that you are able to get a real sense of what my life is like in the Middle East and what God is doing there.
Along with traveling and languages, my interests include sports (like soccer and Ultimate Frisbee) and reading (poetry and prose, both). I'm super excited for the chance to use my interests to connect with the people I'll come to meet. An interest in soccer comes in handy anywhere I go, as it IS the world's favorite sport, after all. Poetry and the beauty of Arabic are extremely dear to the hearts of many people in the Middle East, and so I hope to connect with people through that, as well!
I'm really looking forward to see the things God brings about in the next two years. Thanks again for reading and praying, and I hope my posts are interesting and edifying for you!
I just got home from six weeks of training in the mountains of North Carolina. It was a beautiful time of getting to know lots of other people with similar callings, going all over the world, and I think I learned as much about myself as I did about the people I met. God revealed to me how much I need him, how there are so many things that I still struggle with even as I depart that only He could ever help me overcome.
As I was driving back home (it seems God always hits me with these profound encounters with Him when it's just him and me in the car), I was on a four-lane highway, in…
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It does not seem so long ago that even getting halfway to the support I needed felt like a nigh-impossible task.
Now, by the grace of God, I am well over halfway and getting close to having the support pledged that I need to go. God has provided in so many beautiful little moments, constantly reminding me of His faithfulness when I am a little too quick to forget. That is not to say it has been easy; I've had to push myself and try to be faithful in the process, and He has been more than faithful in the provision.
I can already see through the process of partnership that my relationships are…
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I pride myself on being a pretty independent person. I can explore a new city and not get lost, and live away from my friends and family without missing them too badly.
I'm realizing, though, that independence is not so great as our American culture makes it out to be. As I'm working through the support-raising process, I'm seeing how much I need the people around me as they commit to walk with me in this amazing thing God has called me to do. I'm constantly reminded of my insufficiency in and of myself. The books I've been reading in preparation for the Middle East have been reinforcing this…
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I think I've known for a while, at least theoretically, that being a missionary requires a lot of flexibility. Things happen that you just can't explain, and you have to work around them and do the best you can to not get frustrated. I hadn't had a ton of experience with that kind of thing prior to GoWeek, but I knew that I probably would as I really entered my life as a missionary.
Of course, then, it makes sense that my car would break down near the beginning of GoWeek. As I was accelerating into an intersection, in the middle of Minneapolis, with people in my car when we needed to be…
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As I begin this journey that I feel God is calling me to, I can already sense the beauty and the difficulty that so often intertwine in His work. It has been very much a process for me to get to this point, but everything about it feels right. The work that I will be doing in the Middle East with learning Arabic and volunteering wherever I can as I learn seems to be like an answer to prayers and a strange longing I've felt towards that region for years. I am expectant and hopeful as I anticipate God's revealing to me just why He has placed that desire in my heart.
Along with the hope, I…
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