Luke 5:5-6

Sometimes God is silent. There are times when I pray that I look around the room and wonder why it feels like my prayers are hitting the walls and bouncing back towards me. I wonder how long it will take for God to work, move or speak.

Sometimes when God speaks it is so soft that it is easy to miss. In those times, I have found that what it takes on my part is to simply trust that God is moving and take the next step...I put one foot in front of the other holding on to the fact that in the deepest of my heart I know I am doing all that I am doing because it is my aim to please God.

Sometimes when God speaks it is so loud it shocks me. I have yet to hear the audible voice of God (although my Grandfather has had this privilege), but I have had very specific times in my life when  I was extremely certain I heard God's voice and it was life changing.

1. When I was called into missions. 
2. When God told me to stop being afraid and to follow him. 
3. When God  told me that it was okay to live in the United States and that I would be doing different types of ministry throughout my life for him. 
4. When God told me to be a pastor. 

Then, there are times when God speaks to me about my every day life and situations. For me, He often provides a Scripture passage or a devotional passage on the exact day/time/prayer that I ask or need it. There are times I open up my devotional and the subject is on the very topic that was burdening my heart. There are times when I pray, wait for a verse reference to come into my mind, turn to it and it speaks immensely to the situation I happen to be going through at that exact time. There are times in my daily Bible reading when I am simply reading along and sometime will jump off the page and my spirit will prompt me to stop reading, sit and meditate on those words and God will often speak to me through them.

Last week was one of those times.
Planning the mission trip has been very challenging and very intense. There are moments when I want to sit down on the floor and cry and ask for the adult to come and take over now. There have been some unique challenges with my situation because the people I have been working with to plan the trip have changed three times in the last year. Since two of those people were brand new to their jobs and I am brand new to planning a trip there have been things that have been miss-communicated and in some cases missed.

A couple of weeks ago there were still things for our trip that were not settled that very much needed to be settled. I was a hot mess on Monday. I met with my prayer partner Monday afternoon and she prayed a lot and I cried a lot we prayed. (BTW, quick side note. I love having a prayer partner. I have found that I see more answered prayers out of my time with her than any other time. I would encourage everybody to get one!) On Tuesday night, I got into bed and read my daily Bible reading. I came to Luke 5:5-6 and it was as though God took a giant stamp and stamped the word "Thailand" right across the page. This is what the verse says...

"Master," Simon replied, "we worked hard all last night and didn't catch a thing. But if you say so, I'll let the nets down again." And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear!

Jesus is asking Simon (Peter) in this verse to go out and fish even though Simon has already been out fishing and caught nothing. As I read this, I felt exactly like Simon. I had worked so hard (not all night, but for a year) on the mission trip and was at a point of feeling like I had caught nothing. Yet, God was saying to me, go back out there, get up tomorrow and work on this again, I am going to do something amazing, your nets are going to be so full they tear. I was so certain that God had spoken to me through this verse. 

I love when I feel like God is promising something good to me! :D 

The next morning, I received a call from the head of the mission department for our entire denomination. She had spent her morning reading every single e-mail I had written (70 pages in a word document) and she realized that there were unresolved issues with my trip. BOOM. She spent the next half hour going over all my questions, giving me advice, providing me with resources and helping me work on the unresolved issues I was facing on Monday. It turns out that the lady I had been working with was out of town, her boss (probably because the lady I was working with was new) was checking her e-mails while she was gone. This boss saw one of my e-mails and called me. Apparently, after our conversation this boss contacted the big boss and sent a copy of all my e-mails and whammo it all worked out. The relief that came from this phone conversation left me with a joy that lasted all day. 

I imagine Simon Peter running around yelling, "We got fish! We got fish!" I spent my day running around yelling, "God answered my prayer! God answered my prayer!" I was/am so thankful that God had been with me every step of the way on this mission trip. I was reminded again that it is not my trip, but that God is truly the one in charge. For that, I am so glad! 

Happy face! 

Yard Sale Madness

This past week has been insane. INSANE. I feel like I say that most weeks and then it always seems like the next week is more insane than the last. That does not make me feel very good about the future. :)

Me, at the start of Friday morning. I never know what to do with my hands in pictures so I often opt for an awkward pose. :D 

But truly, this week has been more crazy than normal because a lot happened all at once. We lost a wonderful woman in our congregation due to surgery complications. It was completely unexpected and devastating. There was a very serious issue between two of my youth students that needed extra and immediate attention. We had youth group which runs every Wednesday night. One of our freshman girls said she felt called to give a message to the other students so I was working with her this past week (she really needed very little help though...she rocked it) to prepare for Wednesday. On top of all that, it was yard sale week. (This was a fundraiser for our teen mission trip.) By Tuesday, I had a pounding headache. At this point in my week, nothing had been resolved on any of the things I mentioned previously. The woman was in critical condition, nothing had been done on the situation between the youth, youth group hadn't happened OH and we were just coming off of Easter, which at a church is a HUGE ordeal. Okay. So Tuesday, before noon, my head felt like it was seriously going to explode. I never get headaches, so when they do happen I pay attention because I know it is usually a result of too much stress. I had done very little at this point to prepare for the yard sale sans FaceBooking the kids and asking them to sign up for shifts - which only a few replied to. Also, I had picked up some pricing stickers at the dollar store. That was it.

Noon on Tuesday rolls around and I felt like I was going to lose my mind. I had never had a yard sale in my life and now I was in charge of this one. I had no idea if people would drop stuff off, if people would come, if we would have enough people to work it. To top all that off, I knew my Wednesday was completely booked (seriously, 9:00 am - 9:00 pm booked) and being that Thursday (9:00 am) was our starting drop off time for the sale, I would have no time to get ready.

I reached my breaking point and got up from my desk, announced to the office that I was "taking a break" and went to the kitchen and ate 6 1 cookie. After that I went and sat on a bench in the sun and contemplated my life. Then, I got back up, went to my office, put my head on the desk and prayed, "Dear God, you have led the way, every step of the way. I trust that you will lead me in this. I trust that the yard sale will go fine. Show your power Lord."

Seriously, I immediately felt better.

Roll tape, and we get to Thursday morning. First answer to prayer, a family with two home schooled teenage boys, shows up first thing to stay all day and help Kris and me with the sorting. Yes, we worked all day, but everything was completely organized all day long. Second answer to prayer, tons of people dropped stuff off and we seriously looked like a thrift store.

This is one room of the yard sale. The room with the open door was also full of stuff and we had furniture lined up outside the front of the church and taking up the entire foyer. 

Third answer to prayer, one woman who dropped stuff off was a huge yard saler and decided just to stay all day with us and help us sort stuff and then she proceeded to come back all day Friday and Saturday to help run it. Fourth answer to prayer, a second woman who is great at yard sales, stops by to see how it was going and tells me that she will be back later in the evening to help us with the set-up and that she will come back on Friday and Saturday as well to help run it. The other teens all showed up at 5:00 and with all of us working, things were completely ready to go for the next day by a reasonable hour.

Friday morning comes and so the does the sixth answer to my prayers. A good friend of mine from small group, who works from home, shows up early in the morning and tells me she is going to stay all day and do whatever I need her to. Let me just say, this was sooo good because my brain was still not functioning and she handled the money box like a pro. (My brain was so fried I couldn't count out five $10 bills to make $50. I kept thinking five bills made $40. Yikes!) Seventh answer to prayer, a husband and wife in the church volunteered (they had volunteered much earlier, but I didn't know how awesome they were until this) and did everything from the heavy lifting and moving of all our furniture, to pricing everything. Seriously, when people asked me questions that I didn't have the answer to, I would direct them to this woman and say, "She knows all. Go ask her." Eighth answer to prayer, Kris and I had specifically prayed the night before that God would give us $2,000 from the yard sale (total profit from both days). In the first hour we made over $500. By the end of the first day, we had just over $1,900.

Saturday comes, ninth answer to prayer. All the students show up to help, along with another student who is not going on the mission trip, but wanted to lend a hand. Plus, all the other people who God had brought along in the two days before. Tenth answer to prayer, there was not one argument or bad attitude in the entire three day event. (We seriously prayed about this.) Everybody jumped in, everybody worked hard, everybody got along wonderfully and it was a great great team building experience for the kids. I wish I had a picture, but I forgot to get one. The majority of them took signs down to the road and danced around to get attention and bring people into the sale. Later in the afternoon, they discovered the costume box and dressed up as clowns, in grass skirts and with masquarade masks and did round two of advertising in character form. It was hilarious.

I did manage to snap this shot. I love these two teens! They found Target vests (and accessories)  in the hoards of clothes we had, wore them and walked around assisting people with their shopping needs. LOVE IT! 

Eleventh answer to prayer, for as much stuff as we had donated, there was a relatively small amount left at the end. We were able to clean up and take the remaining stuff to a thrift store in about an hour. Twelfth answer to prayer, in total, we made about $2,800. There was never a down time and there was a constant flow of people both days.

God is so good. 

Thank you to all the people who helped. Thank you God for making this yard sale a success. Thank you all of you who read my blog and can celebrate this joy with me. :D 

One last really cool thing. We have to raise a total of $31,500 to go on the mission trip in July. At this point, we are only about $3,500 away from our final total. In four months we have raised around $28,000. This is not only an answer to prayer, but a testament to how great our God is. He can truly do more than we could ask or imagine!