First Blog:
Hey everyone! I know that I met with most of you and I am so excited to continue on this journey! I just want to reiterate, because I cannot express enough out grateful I am for all of your support. I am growing through this process my trust in God's providence is reinforced and renewed every single day. Thank you to all of you who are apart of that growth process.
For anyone who is following this for the first time. I’m going to outline a summary of why I feel God has called me to go to Hungary.
I don’t know if any of you are new to the idea of following a blog but I am new to blogging so I just want to outline how I intend to use this as a tool!
Your partnership and support are utterly invaluable and important to me! God has revealed to me over the past few months just how important it is to have a team of people faithfully praying, giving, and invested in his work through and in me as I follow His call to Hungary!
Continuing to build and invest in the relationships I have with each of you is as important to my ministry as the relationships I have with my team here!
I intend to post here at least once a month and most months I will post here more often! Please don’t feel that this is a one sided communication like an article! Feel more than free to contact me on email, or facebook and let me know what you want to hear about, how I can improve my communication to each of you as individuals and how I can bless you as you have blessed me!
I’ll keep you updated as I continue to raise support! Please continue to pray that God would center my heart and trust in Him during this season as I ask His beloved to Journey with me!
Here is the story of how God called me and what I’ll be doing!
It all started back in the summer of 2014. One Sunday morning right after worship service finished, as we were coiling up cables and tearing down the equipment, a friend of mine approached me and asked, “how would you like to go on a mission trip?” I had been on mission trips before and I always enjoyed the experiences and relationships God created during those times. Of course, as a recently graduated high school student, having just started college, my heart leapt at the thought of having one last hurrah-experience for the Glory of the King before the monotony of life took over, bringing the adult responsibilities of college followed by the 9:00 to 5:00 work days of never ending boredom. Such was the frequently the mindset of my teenage self. At that point I didn’t even know where Hungary was on a map, but I was excited. We prepared by meeting twice a month to get our hearts and music ready. It was a music-focused mission trip. We partnered with Reach Budapest, Several Schools and several churches in the area and they used us to garner the attention of Hungarian students and passers-by, to introduce them to Jesus. That mission trip changed my life and refocused me on my relationship with my Lord and Savior. It was a completely transforming experience. I left the U.S. selfishly excited to travel to a new place and prideful of my musical abilities, but I returned humbled by the work of God and how His perfect providence guided us to honor Him in spite of ourselves.
After my first two years of college I finished my last sophomore final exam (2016) with very little money and I planned on spending the entire summer working to save for the next year. God had other plans though. I got a facebook message from Hungary asking if I would join them at another english camp over the summer. This time I was a little less enthusiastic. I was afraid that I would not have enough money for the next year if I didn’t work all summer long. I dreaded the thought of spending an entire fall eating peanut butter and Top Ramen. I prayed about it for two months but in the end, I strongly I felt God calling me to go. It was a leap of faith but by the grace of God I took it and amazingly at the end of the summer God ended up giving me even more money then the previous summer (2015), spent working all the way through. Once again this was a transformative experience and I could tell that God was doing something incredible during my time there.
Finally, this last summer, (2017) in spite of my unceasing fears of failing to pay tuition, God, once again drug me back to Hungary for another amazing experience ministering to the english students. I had just graduated with my degree in Music Business from the university of Northern Colorado and by August all of my post-graduation career plans were falling through as quickly as sand through an hourglass. Soon I was left with nothing but closed doors… all except one. In Hungary, just a few weeks earlier I had talked with a girl who was just finishing her two year commitment to . Her name was Anna Carlson. During one of our conversations I had mentioned that I could see myself on the Reach Budapest team but I didn’t think it would be possible Live on a missionary’s budget with student loans. She replied that I should look into Go-corps and that they were very helpful in dealing with freshly graduated missionaries with degrees and loan payments. I contacted Go-core and learned as much as I could. I didn’t want to make a commitment until I knew that God wanted me to. I spent the month of August praying about it. During that time I realized that I had always had a passion for the work that God was doing in Hungary, and that all of the barriers that were keeping me from realizing this before were born of fear and not God’s will for my life. 1 Kings 19:11 sticks out to me. It says (NASB) “So He said, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the lord.” And behold the Lord was passing by, and a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake a fire, but the lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of gentle blowing. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold a voice came to him and said what are you doing here Elijah?”
Through the past four years and three trips to hungary God has been continuing a work in my heart. Using just a few weeks at a time, just a small seemingly insignificant portion of each year, God planted seeds in my heart. Even though I spent nine months out of each year studying music in the most chaotic, secular environment possible and just a few weeks in Hungary, God was in those few weeks preparing me to make a commitment to serve in Budapest. He was not using my 5000 hours, thousands of dollars and immeasurable energy given to college, to point out the direction of my future. Instead he chose to use just a few weeks each summer; just a gentle breeze and a still small voice.
Hopefully that gives everyone just a little taste of where I am at! Please feel free to contact me with any questions or prayer requests! Or Prayer request requests!