Walking By Faith

Many of you know if you read my last blog post, the journey that I am currently on. The magazine and all its excitement and struggles! I love it! Now I can't say I feel this way every day because I will tell you there have been days of this journey where I have been ready to throw in the towel. I see myself getting distracted to the point where I'm not focusing on my family, I see the struggle in my teammates, I wonder if God is really in this as much as we thought....all these struggles and doubts have crept into my mind more than once. However the biggest struggle of all for me is dealing with my anxiety. Now anxiety is a term many people don't take seriously if you've never experienced it full force. However anxiety for me means headaches, stomach aches, muscle soreness and complete and utter exhaustion at the end of everyday but a difficulty sleeping through the night. So how do I deal with this physical reality while living full out for God?  Let me tell you it...

Do you ever wonder what it would have really been like to be Jesus' disciples in Acts? All of that persecution as they are walking in the ways of God. Do you ever try to put yourself in their shoes? Being absolutely honest for me, I don't want to. The thought of being physically, mentally and emotionally beat up sounds horrible. But yet how do we still follow in the will of God knowing that this is a very real possibility for our lives? Their is a real devil that doesn't want us living for God. How do we handle that?  Well for me I've seen and experienced bits and pieces of this struggle throughout my life but nothing like what I've experience recently. Some of you may know that my mom and I have decided to start a magazine for tweens in Mid Missouri! This idea, the process, and the people involved are only explainable by God. I can honestly say he orchestrated everything! And we have had our fair share of bumps in the road but up until recently everything has...

Wow it has been awhile since I have written a blog post and a lot has happened in my life over the last six months!  As many know I am engaged to the love of my life who I will marry in less than 2 months!  I could not be happier but this joy and love has not happened without struggle and heartache.  About six months ago now I wrote this following post but the wound was too fresh at the time to share.  Now I want to share all the struggles and most importantly joys of the guy that changed my life!!! December 16, 2013: “Everyone is broken”...I have heard this phrase several times in the past couple weeks but I really disregarded it until today.  I know everyone is broken, even myself, but I was feeling so great that I didn’t take the time to stop and think on it. So many people have different degrees of hurt and healing. Sometimes we can be going along just fine and that right thing pricks the skin or busts a scab, and it brings about new hurts or reveals ...

Joy pretty much describes my life right now for so many reasons!!!   First of all, I feel so blessed to have made so many new and amazing friends this semester at CCCB.  As the semester comes to an end, I am sad to part ways for the holidays but I will look forward to see everyone's smiling faces when I return!  God has taught me how important friendships are while being here because I am that introverted person that can tend to neglect friendships, especially if I have homework or other things going on, but these girls keep me balanced!  It has been truly wonderful to be around people of faith, especially when I get crazy God-given ideas for the future! My heart continues to be poked and prodded by God in so many ways!  However, my love for Africa still runs the deepest!  Since arriving back in America after my first trip to Burkina Faso I knew I wanted to go back! (Maybe not right away because it was VERY difficult but nonetheless I planned on going...

It's been a while since I have posted and oh so much has happened in the last several months!  God continues to amaze me in all He is doing in my life.  For all who may not know I am currently a Freshman at Central Christian College of the Bible studying Christian Counseling.  It has been amazing semester here and I have met so many wonderful people and continue to expand my knowledge and understanding of God!  Coming to CCCB was far from my plan but God knows best.  God answered so many prayers in my coming here.  After finishing with my Discipleship Training School I had no clue where God would lead me.  I was completely walking by faith!  Going back to college was one of the last things on my mind that is for sure!  However, after searching the internet one day God lead me to CCCB's website.  There were two major reasons I did not want to go back to school...I did not want to take pointless classes and I didn't want to go in debt. Wel...

God is truly incredible and I can't say that enough!  I love Sundays because I enjoy going to church and worshiping the Lord as a body and hearing a message about the Lord!  Today was no exception.  Worship today was so great!  The songs were moving and on top of that my pastor spoke a wonderful sermon today on focusing on the end times.  I would really suggest listening to the sermon at http://www.christianfellowship.com/resources/sermons/ when it gets up!  It really changes your way of thinking!  But also something exciting today my family and I went up to Anchorfest to see the Sidewalk Prophets concert!  They are a really remarkable band!  However it wasn't just the music that captivated me... I couldn't help but smile as I sat there at the concert even though I didn't know the first thing about any of the people around me, nothing about their past, present or future.  There were so many different types of people there.  People...

I have now been back home from Atlanta for about two months!  It has been good to be back and spend this time with my family.  Since I have been back I have just been kind of walking through the motions not exactly sure where I was going.  It wasn't until a few weeks ago that God really surprised me again!  My mom, grandma and I went into town one morning to do a few errands.  While waiting for my mom at the Chiropractor my grandma got to talking to me about my future (a topic I avoided mostly because I hadn't a clue what my future held).  Anyways it got me thinking.  That afternoon I was on my laptop, bored so I was just searching different things, when I felt lead to look up the Bible school that I knew was in Moberly.   I had been on their website a while back during my DTS but for some reason (aka God) different things on their site caught my eye this time.  And you must know I really was against going back to college for a couple reasons...

All dressed and ready to bring in the New Year! So as many of you know we made it back safely from Argentina and I have now been back in Columbia for a couple weeks now!  It is great to be back!  My whole DTS experience completely changed my life that's for sure!  I wouldn't change it for anything.  I made some amazing friends, had some great character building experiences and most importantly built an incredible relationship with the Lord! I will be having a get together soon to share my pictures and experiences while in Argentina but I will give you all a little over view of what we did while there. We landed in Buenos Aires on New Years Eve and brought in 2013 with a lot of fun and dancing!  It was an awesome way to bring in the year!  Our ministry work here was working with a local Day Center for children.  It was summer time while we were there so kids were not coming on a regular basis like they would during the school year.  The ch...

Dear friends and family, After three months of lectures and fundraising, and weeks of preparation, today our Atlanta DTS is off to Argentina for our two-month outreach! Please pray today for our travels, safety and team unity. Our thirteen member team is currently split up. Three members left on a separate flight this morning, and the other 10 of us will meet up with them in the Mexico City airport  this evening. From there, we will all fly together to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We should arrive  at 11am  on New Year's Eve and local YWAM staff will meet us at the airport.  We look forward to celebrating the New Year with the YWAM base that will be hosting us there! I cannot emphasize enough how valuable your prayer support is to our team. Thank you for blessing us so! We are so excited for what God is doing on this trip. We look forward to sharing the journey with you. Many many thanks from all of us!

Fun illustration for sharing your faith!  It is hard to believe just 3 months ago I was sitting here in my living room getting ready to start a whole new adventure.  And what an amazing 3 months it has been!  Last week we had a guy named Bob Felder come speak to us on evangelism.  This was such a refreshing week because many people (including myself) think of it in a negative light but he brought a whole new perspective to it.  Evangelism is all about sharing the good news!  We as Christians have the best news ever to share so evangelism just means us as Christians sharing the good news!  Our good news is priceless and God's plan!  The best part of all is God goes with us and He wants people saved more than we do!  People don't share their faith because of fear! However we tend to think fear is bad but in reality it is good.  Fear is an emotion that can be overcame!  It gives us the opportunity to be courageous!  We were ta...

 I know it has been a while since I posted last and so much has happened since then!   Things have been very crazy as we are trying to prepare for our two-month outreach to Argentina.   We are in our last week of lecture phase and we will be all heading home for Christmas and then returning to head out to Argentina.   Since I last posted we had a week of teaching on Inductive Bible Study... Highly Recommend! In this week we learned all about how to get the most we can out of our Bibles.   The lady teaching on it was a South African lady named Retha.   It was so amazing to hear her read and talk about the Bible because she truly made it come alive.   She told stories from it as if they were from personal experience.   I know for me sometimes I forget that the Bible is a book of history about people just like you and me.   The people who wrote it were just like you and me.   This is something kind of hard for m...