One of the first exciting things I want to share with you is that I officially have all of my support raised!!!  Thank you SOOO much to all of you who have contributed and joined me in prayer.   Raising money was the one thing that was going to prevent me from coming on the Race, and I am so thankful that so many of you helped me achieve this goal!  It is amazing to daily watch how the Lord is using that money.  Praise him!

Since we were on a technology fast last month, I was not really able to update much.  Also unfortunately, we have been in the Middle East for 2 months, so we were not able to post much about God, ministry or Christianity.   This is mostly for our contacts protection because they live in very volatile areas that could turn dangerous if certain groups found out that they are Christians.  So I will try to summarize our time in Israel with as much discretion as I can.

Me, Martha, Lindsay and Ashley spent much of our days watching 5 wonderful children for an amazing woman named Tirza.  This woman taught us so much about trusting God and about serving others.  From the moment we entered TIrza’s house, we knew it was a divine appointment.  Israel was a month filled with much prayer, many smiles, great worship and tons of joy.  I loved the ministry we had that month.

Christmas came, and with it brought much homesickness, but also much joy because I was surrounded by the most incredible girl friends ever.  I am so blessed to have the friends that I have here on the field.  Sadly, our time in Israel had to come to an end, and the infamous 52-hour travel day began.  Yes, you heard me right, 52 hours.  But God knew that we would need some sort of incentive to travel that much, so he gave us a tour of the pyramids!   We drove all night to get to Egypt, toured Cairo all day, and then flew overnight into Nairobi. Ironically, it was cheaper to stay the day i

This week in Israel has been really wonderful for me.  We got to tour Galilee and I watched two of my sisters rededicate their lives to the Lord and be baptized in the Jordan River.  I love baptisms.  It is such a beautiful moment and it always reminds me that the Lord’s grace and forgiveness are available all the time.  We spent the rest of the week watching the five children that have become our ministry for this month.  The children have had a hard life, but are so blessed to have a loving mother who takes such good care of them.  It is our wonderful privilege to get to show them love each day.   Since I don’t have much news to share since my last post, I thought I would focus this post on finances. 

 I am so very blessed to have such amazing supporter that I do.  I seriously want to thank all of you who have sacrificed to help me get on the field.  Every time I watch someone new come to the Lord, or enter into worship with new brothers and sisters, I pray that you all will know how much you have made those moments possible.  These God-moments are all of ours to share.  I seriously love posting stories from the field because you all get to see exactly how God has been using your prayers and contributions.  I love that God is all about connecting things and that no sacrifice is ever small in His Kingdom.  

I am so happy to tell you all that my account is only $3100 away from the goal required for the World Race!  Again I want to thank everyone so much who has supported me thus far.  I know some of my readers have expressed wanting to become a supporter, but not knowing how much is needed, or how to contribute.  I did the math and I think it would only take 25 people contributing $20 a month for the next 6 months to keep me on the field.  That averages out to about one cup of coffee a week until June.  If you, or anyone you know is interested in supporting this next year of ministry, you can click the link below.  Will you please join me in praying that the Lord will provide the necessary funds required allow me to finish this race?

If you are interested in supporting me, you can click here.

When I was in Romania, I felt the Lord give me a bigger vision for my photography.  He gave me some very clear visions of where it would go in the future, and I am really excited about it!  I believe that photography is going to be a big part of supporting my missions work in the future and I am really looking forward to that.  I have been reading in Thessalonians how Paul encourages the believers there to work, just has he and his friends worked as they preached.  One of my fears in going into full-time missions work has always been raising support and balancing missions work and a job.  I believe this photography dream is the Lord’s answer to that fear of mine.  One of my goals when I get back to the states will be establishing some sort of non-profit with photography that will provide the funds necessary for missions work all around the world.  I am VERY excited about this dream and would love your prayers on this new venture as well. 

 I really want to thank everyone who has prayed for this trip.  Know that your prayers are being answered daily and I know that the amazing things God has done would not have been possible if they were not first bathed in prayer.   Thank you also to everyone who has been supporting me and encouraging me as I have been gone.  Your prayers, emails and facebook messages are a wonderful glimpse of home, and I treasure them all so much.

I love that phrase – Reckless Abandonment.  I can just feel the freedom saturating those words.  In order to abandon things, truly abandon them, there is a wild passion behind it.  It is the type of passion that drives crazy people to do the impossible.  It is the type of passion that makes people believe that dreams are possible, and that Kingdom can truly come.  I have been learning this month, that to truly go to the deeper places of God, we must because people of Reckless Abandonment.  There are so many things in this world that are holding us back from the dynamic things of God.  How tightly do I hold on to things, and am I willing to break everything at Jesus’ feet in order to follow him.  As much as I don’t want to admit it, abandonment is the message of the Gospels.  Every person that Jesus called to follow him had to completely abandon their old life.  They didn’t just have to leave their past mistakes behind, they were even called to abandon the good, God-given things.  This is the place that God has been calling me to this month.  A few days ago, I felt God calling me to abandon even more than I already have.  At first I was resistant.  I kept praying, “God I’ve given up my family, my home, my bed, what else do you want me to give up?”  And yet he called me deeper.  I began breaking the things that he was asking me at his feet in a sign of submission and abandonment.  Even though it is hard to break the things that you love, it is also the most freeing thing in the world.

Today I was brought to another level of abandonment.  Our squad leaders have been praying for a while what the next step for our squad was.  They felt like the Lord was calling us all to a level of abandonment.  They heard the Lord asking us to fast all technology as we spend December in Israel.  This means that we will not have any Internet access, and will not use our computers, iPods, or anything else electronic. So this month, I will not be able to communicate with all of you who I love so much.  But please know that you are in my prayers constantly and that I miss you more than I can describe over the internet.   Even though I am very sad that I will not be able to talk to my family on Christmas, I am excited that God loves us enough to challenge us.  I am really looking forward to spending more time with Him and just sitting at the Lord’s feet in worship.  We are leaving for Israel in less than 8 hours and I could not be more excited!!  It is the perfect place for me to get still before the Lord, and show Jesus’ love to those who have not experienced it yet.  That’s the thing about abandonment, God doesn’t just call us to hard places so that we can suffer – it’s because he has so much more good for us!  He wants to shower us with his love, his blessings and his anointing. Sometimes those things can only come when we are at a place of complete brokenness.  And the quickest was to brokenness is through abandonment, reckless abandonment.  Is God calling you to lay some things down at his feet?  Are you ready to respond in reckless abandonment and completely break the jar instead?  You see, I just keep getting this whisper in my ear that abandonment is the key to blessing.   It’s the key to a deeper relationship with Jesus.  It the start of a different kind of life – a world changing kind of life.

So may we have the strength to take our most precious alabaster jar and use it to anoint the precious Lamb of God.

May we have the courage to hear the Lord’s voice as he calls us to deeper places with him.  And may we have the obedience to walk down that path.

May we truly be people of reckless abandonment.