A new era with 1,000 relationships

Welcome, if you are coming from my newsletter stream. If you didn’t already know, I am no longer posting via newsletters but have transitioned back to my blog site for all updates.

I thought I wouldn’t write anymore because I wasn’t sure what there would be left to say, regarding missions or what God would be doing in and around me. It’s not that I doubted that God would speak to me and use me, it’s that I doubted that I’d actually have anything new to say that you’d want to read.

It’s never the best to write only with an audience in mind, it can give you a writer’s block.

I am a creative and so in writing this piece, though it’s more of an update article than a blog or newsletter in a normal sense, I am giving myself permission to be vulnerable and to not fear people’s opinions or try to fight for many eyes to read these words.

So let the words be read by who may; for me, to write, is therapy, and so I am happy to share that God is still speaking, moving, and that missions is all around me and you if we just open our eyes.

So I’ve left the “mission field” as I knew it with YWAM.

I’ve been home for the past two weeks and one day now and it has truly been some of the sweetest days as well as some of the hardest.

Since coming home, I was embraced by who I needed the most to unconditionally love me, God via my family. I am so blessed to have a very supportive and kind, spiritually fit and available group in Louisiana. These are mainly my immediate family but I am looking forward to reconnecting with the young adult community and gems of my region once again.

Today I watched two very different things teach me a very similar lesson about where I currently find myself physically and spiritually speaking. I adopted a 2 month old kitten recently and named her Toulouse. She and I are at my sister’s house and as I left her in the sunroom without me for a moment, the normal chill-to be playing with toys-kitten suddenly lost her hope and joy and began to cry. She wasn’t just bored, she was lonely. She could sense my presence had left and she had no reason to play with the toys that had amused her before.

Next, I went into the baby room, and spent some time with my 5 month old nephew lying on a comfy mat with baby dangling toys above him. I went into his room because just as his dad placed him on the mat and walked away into the next room, he began to cry. We could see him through the door and knew he was fine but the sheer fact that he was alone in a room, again with toys, but with no one to play them with made him upset. Just my presence alone, as I entered the room changed his demeanor and he began to curl up to me in excitement for another face to share life with.

I said these past few weeks were hard. They have been. I believe with today marking the first day of the new year, I feel like something lifted and is shifting, but I think it’s been hard because I can relate to my kitten and nephew as described above.

I was living in community with likeminded missional people/ mainly young adults and often void of consistent children and pets. I’ve lived the past two years with a clear job title and lots of things set up for my success on the field. I sold everything I owned in Louisiana to embrace a life of trusting and praying, and waiting and seeking and God provided. I gave a vehicle one year and sold another a different year because where I was, transportation was easier in some sense. I had instruments at my leisure in various prayer rooms, boutiques to find free clothes and items, cooking schedules and meals prepped-all prices included in the rent price. It was, the life, so I am thinking now, but believe me it wasn’t easy.

The grass wasn’t greener there nor here/ life just isn’t easy. No matter where we find ourself son this side of the river or there, every place will have it challenge, trials, and we will all go through valleys and winters, no matter if the weather of our region seems to always be in summer.

I grew so much while in YWAM and I loved YWAM, I still do.

But the most challenging part of YWAM for me has now become what I miss the most about it. More difficult than asking folks for money or interceding for what you can’t see, the relationships were what has been the most difficult and yet the most life giving.

Being in YWAM grew me so much to not only understand, value, and appreciate who I am but also who so many others are. I tell people living missional was like being in a relationship with 1,000 people. I don’t know why the exaggeration just hits the mark but for me it helps me paint the picture.

Think about the dynamics at play that were my past two years:

Family back at home

New friends and peers

Old friends

Staff peers and those over you

Students, on my team and those to one on one

Heads of staff

Heads of base

Heads of ministries

Neighbors locally

Students of English school, church schools, local schools

Supporters back home

Old church family in America

New church family in Cambodia

Non English speaker visitors

English speakers you meet along the way

Cambodian roommates

Foreigner roommates

Worship team members with various skill and training and of many different languages

Congregation to lead worship with/ for

Friends of the mission

Parents of teammates

Friends of my friends coming visit

My dad coming do missions

Janea coming do missions

Pastoral visits with YWAM heads

Team dynamics 14-7

Teams constantly forming, storming, norming and performing

Counselor in Malaysia

New nephew born (FaceTime adventures)

And so on.

Needless to say, over the past two years there were so many emotional layers that I am just beginning to unpack that made missions difficult but now has become what, in this season of wait, that I truly miss.

I just miss the presence of people.

In the east and on the mission field, the intentionality and the fact that there is nothing else but people for entertainment, therapy, worship, intercession, bible study, work outs, market runs, nap times, music jams...it feels pretty quiet and lonely on the west.

While in India, a wise woman told me, “we need a means to meet people”.

Because I am like my kitty Toulouse and my new nephew, I am joining the means in my neck of the woods to do just that.

I may not be going “out” right now, but if Cambodia taught me anything it’s that as humans we have a lot to give and can love more people than we ever imagined if we are just willing.

So I came back home, willing, and I originally had all of these dreams and plans and hopes and reasons why I ‘left’ missions to embrace my hometown mission field once again.

I didn’t however realize how difficult it would be to start from scratch once more, even with those I had grown up with.

With no actual vehicle, I’m like a baby lying in a mat waiting for someone to pick me up. With no place of my own, I’m like a kitty in a carrier, packing up my over night bag to sleep in different spaces. But instead of looking at these as obstacles I want to take it for the gift that they are in a fast paced western society lifestyle I am choosing to embrace again. The gift is humility and needing others. I can’t travel without the help of my family and friends. I can’t process my time on the mission field without the listening ears of curious friends and family. I can’t show the depth of my love for God without somebody to love.

I’m entering in the work field, taking it as business as missions to some degree to love again.

and you know what?

Just as when I was on the mission field, God is faithfully providing food and shelter, my basic needs as well as giving me hope for the future.

There have been days and may still be days where I can’t help but want to cry if asked the right question, “how are you doing?”, that is.

But I know better than to look for long at what I don’t have. I know that when we essentially only look to serving ourselves, we risk depressions. To love, we must deny ourselves in ways and make sacrifices. If I could I’d be discovering a new nation to fall in love with and would be telling you the story of what God’s up to there. That’s a part of my makeup, I am an explorer but I want to serve my nation and family again, the one God has entrusted me into and blessed me with. I want to keep my grass green and “do first” to then “teach”.

We weren’t meant to be an island nor are we supposed to build our own kingdom, but there’s a part of my journey right now that has led me to an all too familiar wilderness-at the bottom, feeling low, feeling broken, feeling hopeless, feeling too young, too old, essentially not enough. This wilderness or valley is part of my continuing testimony. It is in this wilderness that my own kingdom is breaking in order to partner with the new not so new kingdom of God.

So I’ve come back because I have student loan debt to pay but that’s not my only reason. I also have a legacy I want to leave, and I need roots to start. I have a niece and nephews that are looking to me to be an influence in their present lives. I have a career I want to begin so that I can inspire the next generation to not take what they have for granted but to make a positive difference in the world by giving what God gave to them, whatever that may be. I have a degree I want to finish so I can become a local teacher and hopefully take missions during the summer break with students that need to see that life is bigger than them. I have mission organizations and missionaries I want to support who tirelessly juggle the 1,000 relationships so that everyone might know Christ more deeply and intimately. I have short term teams I want to host because Louisiana is still on God’s mind. I have a responsibility as a U.S. citizen, so I need to vote.

But a growing todo list won’t make me happy to do life. Nothing will make me happy. I get to choose happiness because my joy hasn’t run out. God is my giver of joy and that’s why I not only want people in the East to know God but also people in the west.

Life won’t be easy. Health may fail, people may change, feelings may flee, anxiety may come, but life is beautiful and you know what? People make life beautiful and worthwhile.

God destined me and you for this.

Relationships.

Paul became all things for all people and to teach my hometown I am joining the working class to reach those who are too busy for church. I am bringing church to them. I can’t do this alone in no way shape form or fashion overnight. It’s going to take courageous others living missional while working steadily and it will take time. I hope my life of faith is tested tried and true to those I grow up with and have already quite literally grown up with. They don’t want to just take my word for it, they want to see me ‘finish’, and hopefully and with God, well.

So I need strength to start again with those I love and have loved and will love. I need my heart to heal and move forward but to be thankful for the years I had with those around me on the mission field, and to keep in touch with them. I need to be here and I need to allow the refreshing cold water of starting over to refresh my skin and shock my complacency. I need to work hard while also keeping transparent. I need to fight for family and make new friends. I need to start my work and finish my schooling, and so I am. Lastly, I need to steward the most important relationships of all, the one with God and myself and with those around me in my geography first.

Here’s what’s ahead or what God has already provided, that gives me hope and a sense of direction and purpose in all of the unknown I face in 2020:

a place to stay for cheap rent, quiet and quant, with a prayer room, Lord willing I’ll be moving into soonI just got hired to teach guitar and ukulele at a local music and art academy, the pay is great and I start in a few days I am starting to teach private piano lessons from my home next week I signed up with my sisters for a fitness bootcamp starting next week for the next few weeks (I love the gym and Cambodia taught me to love to workout with others-the accountability and community inside of this lifestyle is amazing)

Here’s how you can be praying

I need a car, I’m from a rural part and need a car to travel to the city for work. I also want to have wisdom with my finances, to be paying off debt, paying bills, paying tithes, and giving to missions. I’m looking for a home church to start this leg of my journey. Pray for more clients/ the right students, with private piano lessons and classes at the music and art academy. Pray that God bring me His Shalom peace and I keep His kingdom perspective about this season of new beginnings

Here’s how you can be supporting

If you or someone you know wants music lessons and you live in the Houma area, I’m scheduling now (message for details).

I also still have my 21 days Bible study on the book of John for your donation of $21 or more (send PayPal donation and start receiving email). I sell health and wellness products through Advocare, check out the catalog here: www.advocare.com/1412618

Lastly, I am relaunching my T-shirt “Finish” campaign, so that proceeds can help me start a science course and buy my books before my semester begins at the end of March 2020. https://www.bonfire.com/finish/

Thank you for your continued prayers and support through the years and beyond. May God bless you and may you have His peace in this awesome new year.

In closing, if I can bring any encouragement to you if you are facing a similar season, don’t fear this season of newness, starting from scratch, or finishing goals. You and I are never alone. God’s presence has never left us and He promises to never leave us. You can count on that, no matter where 2020 leads/ I’m banking on it.

below: a glimpse into the future

laundry’s vineyard and such 2021

Truly a year of 1000 + relationships