One week home in California and finally able to breathe deep... The view from the deck of my new house does help a lot! If you've been following this, you know that I've just been through quite a wild ride over the last 9 months. Since the death of my grandpa, I've been running full speed ahead into everything I've been doing, be it staff training in Kona, staffing a school, preparing our team, going to Israel, working with Arabs and Jews, or even just attempting to wrap this school up in a healthy way. Even my down time has been spent with intentionality and an output of energy. That hasn't stopped yet, but I can feel a letdown of all this pent up momentum impending, so I'm praying that doesn't come in the form of a crash either in my physical energy or my emotions. God's kept me running smoothly - relatively - throughout all the bumps, trials, highs, and lows of this year and I know He's not done helping me yet. Hallelujah! That being said, I am already aware that this is just a pit stop. I am blessed to have the ability to be home through the holidays with my family, which is a luxury many in my circle do not get and that I appreciate beyond words! After that, in January, you may know that I am planning on returning to Kona to do a 3 month secondary school called the School of Illustration - focusing on my art skills, ability to use it in either business or ministry, and how to deepen my personal relationship with Jesus through it as well. I am really looking foreword to this not just because art is a passion of mine but because I am very interested in bringing such skills to the mission field. Art is a form of expression and worship that can be brought to the hardest and darkest of places and used to facilitate things varying from cross cultural communication to inner healing to discovering and receiving the beauty of Jesus's love. It's an open door into the human heart that I believe God has put on my heart for a reason and that I intend on taking with me everywhere I find God bringing me. And as of April, the world is my Oyster! God has opened up many opportunities for me and it's really up to me to just choose one. If you could be praying with me for clarity and direction, that would be such a blessing. I know that doing missions is what God has stirred my heart for and is what I see myself doing no matter how far down the road I look, but that has yet to be focused one particular country - or continent, for that matter. Knowing this, I do desire to continue my education (in intervals, it seems, including the next 3 months I have at home) so that I might have more to offer the places and people I minister to. Getting more training in my art, writing, Sign Language, and psychology are all things I look foreword to pursing. Alongside those things, I have opportunities to continue going into the nations including to help another DTS, to go to Asia with a friend of mine, or to join ministries in multiple Middle Eastern countries. Each idea holds a bit of who I am and what desires I have in my heart to do, now I just need to let my heart be still and see what direction God is nudging me to take. In this time, please continue to keep me in your prayers! God is so good and has blessed me abundantly in His provision for me, protection over me, and in the way He has built such a strong community around me! "Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care." (Psalm 95:1-7 NIV)
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March 2023
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