...in continuation of my previous blog, I first just want to acknowledge how incredibly faithful He is. Lord, you are worhty of ALL of our affections and your word really is LIFE. It breathes LIFE into me. I just cannot imagine having to go through all of the chaos, hurts, heartaches, and unexpecteds of life without something unchanging and LIFE-breathing. Thank you Jesus for your Living Word of LIFE!
Okay, so going back several weeks, Terri and I continued talking and praying. The Lord made it overwhleming evident to me that sitting around, feeling restless, and doing nothing was no longer an option. I knew too much. I felt too much. Looking back on it now, I think that I knew from the day I got that very first email from Terri, that God was preparing me for a new season of life.
Terri propsed a campaign since comes back to the States, to raise $100,000 to build a new Safe Home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia as soon as the money is raised, so that these girls can get out of thier enslavement and into a safe place where they will be trained in a trade and encouraged by believers equip to help them work through the horrors of thier past. $100,000 is a big number. Praise the Lord we serve a BIG God who is breaking hearts world-wide for the plight of these broken and hurting young women.
Just over a week ago, I gratefully accepted Terri's proposal to come on as an intern for Faith that Works here in Fayetteville, AR. I am so excited to watch as God makes a way for this money to get raised and for other people to come on board. I have been hard at work, developing my own fundraising goals and plans, which will all go twords the total goal of money to be raised to build this home.
After praying through many different ideas and doubts and thoughts, the Lord really just gave me a beautiful vision for what this fundraising campaign should look like here in Fayettville. I have set a goal of raising $10,000. After some conference calls and skype dates and with a lot of support from the team in St. Louis, things are moving along.
At first, I really hesitated in deciding whether or not I was at a point in my life where I could really commit to taking something like this on. Not only time wise, but more so knowing myself and my connections to Fayetteville at this point (or lack there of) and my overwhleming lack of boldness in most situations, I honestly didn't know if this was something I felt eqipt to do or not. As I spent many nights on my knees crying out to Him for direction and wisdom in making this decision, I realized that this really wasn't even my decision. See, the only things holding me back were my selfishness. Being pushed to do things that I normally wouldn't do, to talk to people I normally wouldn't approach, to ask for money from people I didn't know, to form a team when I had not one person committed...to raise $10,000 when I really had no idea where to even begin. I was scared. Daily, I felt all of my insecurities rising up and bubbling over. I heard lie after lie echoing through my mind about how there is now way a twenty-year old college student with no clue where to even begin, no connections established, and a whole lot of fear and insecurities could ever be capable of doing something like this. Believe it or not, I actually had several people tell me that I might not be ready to take this on, that I should just wait until graduation. It seemed that everything I most feared would have to be faced in order to fulfill such a commitment...even my overwhleming people-pleasing tendencies.
But then I see their faces. All the time. The words of thier stories echo through my mind, on a continual stream that cycles over and over again. I find myself rehearsing the statistics in my head, in the off chance that I may get to share them with someone. Night after night, my assignments remain piled on my desk, untouched, as I devote hours to reading book after book about modern day slavey, allowing the stories, the darkness, the redemption to etch itself into the depths of my heart. I surf the web, in pursuit of news updates, learnign about hundreds of different non-profits and ministries attempts at fighting this injustice, taking notes, writing down names. Anyone who so much as gives me the time of day, instantly becomes a victim of my desperate attempt at bringing awareness to the victims of trafficking, this unending drive within me seems to never shut down. And in those moments, you know the ones when your flesh is screaming to do the one thing that you know won't glorify Him in any way, the continual all out war we are in on a daily basis, the fight for LIFE over death in those little tests of our faith...it is in those moments, that I find myself fighting to choose LIFE because if I what I say I believe is really true, then in these moments of overwhleming temptation, the ones in which I desire to return to the yoke by which I was once enslaved, if I say that what I believe is really true, then it is such moments that determine whether or not I actually believe what I say I believe is true. And it HAS GOT to be more true in those moments then any other time, because if in those moments of my weakness and battles, I cannot experience victory in the Truth, then how in the world will I ever be able to sit down with a girl who has literally lived through a hell unlike anything my mind can comprehend, to sit there and tell her that this Word, this Truth is trustworthy for her to base her life off of, and if she believes it, then she will experience LIFE and hope and worth and purpose and love. But if I can't trust it in those moments, how will I ever be able to tell her she can trust it to redeem her life from the pit and breathe LIFE into her? Even in the heat of the battle, in this crazy random way, they are spurring me along. Girls around the nation, the world, girls in Addis Ababa, girls broken and hopeless, DEAD, girls I have never met. Yet never leave my thoughts. Continually spur my actions. It seems that these girls and thier cries to be st free from thier enslavement have literally seaped into every possible crevis of my heart, my mind, and my life. Like I said, it seems this decision was never really up to me. I think He decided seven months ago, that very first night He began to break my heart for these girls.
So here I am, an intern for FTW, in the beginning stages of this campaign to raise $10,000 to go twords the larger goal of $100,000.
Overwhlemed. Excited. Scared. Passionate. Blown away by Him already!
If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and be answered. -Prov. 21:13
In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:33
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