It's week 5 in ministry and leadership development school and this week has been fundraising week. This week has been enlightening and stretching and has brought up a lot of questions. Fundraising for something else is super easy fundraising for yourself is a whole other realm. We grow up in a society that says get a job, make a way for yourself pay your bills and spend money on things that make you happy. But of course when we take on the role of missions where we live in this inside outside upside down world. If we're going to be like the disciples we have to try our best to live like the disciples. But, that also gives us a pretty awesome road-map in the form of Bible verses that lay out the do's and don'ts of missions work.
Possibly the hardest one to swallow though this is living off support... the Lord told the disciples to go out and in every place that they go they will not be in need they just have to find the man of Peace in each village and they will be fed and clothed and have a safe place to sleep. They did not work... they were provided for so that money and bills were nt on the forefront of their minds and they could focus on using their gifts and talents to spread the Gospel. I know I can hear you saying it "what about Paul...?" Really only about three times did Paul work as a tent maker and in those times is because the church where he was visiting may have been offended by him asking for finances and it could have closed the door on them being open to hear the gospel when the other disciples arrived so he chose to make a way for himself but as soon as the other disciples arrived he joined them and they went right back into doing things the way they were before.
We as missionaries are called to share the story of what ourselves and our missions organizations are doing to impact the world. To share those stories with others who have a heart for missions but are not able to physically be on the mission field but have the means and abilities to support in other ways.
If we do not share, then others will never know the need. So, this week we've been challenged, challenge to pray and come up with a list of people to share our needs with. To write emails and invite others to partner with us on this amazing adventure. Our biggest challenge of all get 'the guts' to send the emails and make the calls. I'm still not fully there yet but God is working on my heart and it's coming. I know that I am to be here and I know that there are people out there that would love to support me through this volunteer missions adventure I just have to get outside of my head... but, God is worth it, this adventure is worth it and I'm going to go for it.
It's been a week of being flexible we have a lot of work and different projects going on in our MLD course and in my practical ministry I've also been working on a lot of different and diverse projects. I've still been continuing to work on the Dean's project from last week but also creating invitations for our fall love feast, Student recruitment cards for our on location Egypt DTS... wow, it's actually exciting for the first time ever will be running a DTS in Egypt! what an honor that I get to make the cards that will go out to potential students, how freaking cool.
I've also been spending a lot of time on my website and my blog and my fundraising presentation. I'm learning a lot of new websites and a lot of new elements and design skills which I think should be the goal of everything that you do is to not only make things look great and do with excellent but also learn new skills and talents. I've gotten to share a lot of my knowledge and skills with others in the class as far as designing websites or blogs and helping with their fundraiser presentations as well so I really enjoy getting to share my knowledge and also see other people grow as they learn new skills.
check out my fundraising presentation here: https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-Lsi2y5lcPXzTeYEPsnN
This was a crazy week for us and the base. Monday morning was prayer day so we got everyone together we canceled all the classes and we spend the entire day praying and worshiping together. We had different focus points throughout the morning praying for things like outreach teams and locations, future schools for YWAM Lausanne, the french-speaking community that we live in and for one another. Then we pulled out the humongous 4K Omega map and brought it outside and set it up and had worship and a time to stand upon the nation's declare God's plans and purposes over them that revival and Awakening would come from the people of those Nations that gods vision would be fulfilled that the hearts of the people would be bold and they would speak out and they we would see waves go across these nations of people having revelation of the goodness of God. It was super duper soggy but it was super duper awesome.
On Wednesday it was Kendra and I's turn to do the morning lecture we shared on perspective and we took our fellow students on a field trip to The Sauvabelin tower. We spoke on three points of perspective
1. We spoke on how small and vapor like our existence is in the timeline of Life the timeline of eternity if you were to put your arms out as wide as you could and then you take a nail file and take a teeny tiny bit off the end of your fingernail your arm span represents all of eternity and that little bit you took off the end you just wiped out all of human history isn't that crazy?
2. Then we talked about Paul when Paul was imprisoned in Rome he could have been so bitter and downtrodden thinking about the fact that he would never ever be a preacher because he was stuck in jail he didn't have the time to do the things that he dreamed of. He could have been miserable but he wasn't he had a captive audience 24 hours a day 7 days a week strapped to him with jeans and so he took that opportunity and ran with it and he preached and preached and preached and before you knew it the entire palace knew about Jesus they all knew Paul was in chains for Christ not because of Christ.
3. We talked about was our own perspective how sometimes we can't see the forest past the trees. Sometimes were so involved closely with the situations that hand that we can't see our way out we can't see anything other than what our mind is currently set on. That means in community we have to be vulnerable we have to get perspectives from other people to help us to get out of the rut that we're stuck in. So when we were at the tower at the bottom you really couldn't see how close you were to anything the highway the mountains the lake anything... you could just see the trees and the grass. As we went up the three hundred and something stairs all the way to the top once we got there you could see the whole city you could see the mountains in the lake the cathedral and even through the fog you could see the faint shoreline of France how crazy just that little upward motion got us high enough above where we were at that we could see our way out we could see all of the things around us. I think God gave us others to give us New perspectives he gave us a way out of our struggles through him and his people.
Smallppt.com is good too