BOLIVIA 2013!!!

Thank you so much for watching the video.  If you can please support us through prayer - praying for our team as we travel and work together.  If you are able to support me financially on the trip, that would be a wonderful blessing too.  Please make your checks payable to Matthews UMC and in the “memo” section indicate "July 2013 - Bolivia - Autumn."  Gifts to the church, with an expression of a preference for trip expenses, are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.  If for some reason I an unable to participate in the trip, your gifts will be used to support this mission program.

Please know your support is very much appreciated.   You can send the check to the church office:

Matthews United Methodist Church
801 South Trade Street
Matthews, NC  28105

Attn:  Becky Stegall

Thank you so much for all your past support and your prayers as we continue we share the light into this darkened part of the world.
May God continue to bless you and your family now and always.

A huge thank you to Mr. Joshua Marshman for helping me make this video for support. You are amazing! 

calling

I can honestly say for the first time in my life that I love my job.  It is ministry and it's wonderful, i work with amazing, talented people and i feel incredibly blessed to be there.  I literally got everything I prayed for.  


What most people don't know is a deeper longing that God has placed uniquely on my heart, and burdened me to the point of hurting.  My love is children and youth - to see them learning about God, to see families come together and watch them grow.  It makes me smile!  I love watching moms and dads teach the classes and to watch the children grasp the lessons.  I love the children and the youth that I work with - to see them becoming disciples and growing in their faith.  It's an extra bonus when I see the older children guiding the younger.  Eeeeeeeee!  :o)


In the middle of this love for them.... my heart breaks for orphans.  I have a burden for orphans that makes me weep.  I want to help, to provide for them, to take care of them somehow, and to help them know Christ and be disciples, for them to know they are loved!  I want them to know they are loved!  They are not abandoned, God cherishes them and loves them more than anything!  It breaks my heart to know they have no mom and dad because of war, disease, and starvation.  I hate it.... it is heartbreaking to hear their stories of watching their mom raped and killed by soldiers.  I just can't... it breaks my heart.


My heart is anxious to see what God has planned.  I don't know the "how"or the "where" and as I feel this constant need to be in control.... it bothers me immensely.  I don't feel called to be a full-time missionary, I love working here and I feel like the work I do here will be taken outside the church... hopefully across the world.  I just don't know where.  I already feel Uganda calling me and feel like I will be there within the next few years. Maybe Kenya too?  Dominican again?  Brazil?  Local children's homes in NC?


I'm trying to let go, to trust that God has a plan and he is at work even now.  At my job, I write/edit curriculum for Sunday school, plan VBS along-side some amazing volunteers, I act like a fool on stage during a family worship time for the kids to learn a Bible lesson, I organize presentations, meetings and newsletters and I am constantly editing!  And i love it all.  It will all be worth it when it's taken across the world one day.


I am anxious to see how all this will pan out.  I also worry about other random things.... these desires I have to get married and start my own family.  What happens to that?  Should I forget it?  How can I when it's so deep?  What happens to these desires?  Part of God's plan or only mine?  How does all that fit together?


I am human.  I am a woman.  I am 31 years old.  I am broken.  I am willing.


So... I just have to wait.