Wednesday, January 21, 2009

It's the Little Moments that Change Your Life

Hi everybody!

I thought I would give you a little update on what's going on in regards to the ministry process, and share with you a few stories of how God has blessed my life and the dance ministry in recent days.

First of all, thank you SO much to all who responded either via this blog or through email (or Facebook! I am such an addict!) and for continuing to pray and consider supporting my leap into full time ministry. I have definitely surrendered and asked God to give me patience, because the process is SLOW!

I have applied with the national office of the AG church and now have to wait an agonizing 6-8 weeks for my application to be processed. Then, I will hopefully have an interview with our district offices (which happen to be in Sacramento, woot!) and THEN God willing, I will raise full support and be able to serve full time!

So, with that being said, thank you again for being so prayerful and generous with your time and finances, as many of you have given to the dance fundraisers and will be giving to my monthly support. I am so grateful to know you!

I will be returning to Trinidad this July to lead another team of Christian artists to the island to present outreach performances to the local churches, and we also will be serving on a construction team and teaching children the Gospel message. It's going to be a crazy busy 10 days, but we are all so excited - we have an amazing team this year!

If you have asked for an info packet regarding the ministry I serve, you will soon be receiving a letter. Here, you can support our Trinidad team, or fill out your preliminary giving commitment if you choose to be a monthly supporter once I have a completed application with the AG church. I sincerely hope you will consider sponsoring one of these two great causes!

Directing the dance ministry itself has continued to be both a blessing and a challenge. After family, it is by far the best part of my life, but also can leave me super frustrated at times. I was going through a pretty severe phase of self pity on Tuesday afternoon for various reasons, but I asked God to just put me in a good mood for rehearsal and refocus my life.

Did he ever!

Our spring dance performance is about a girl who is terminally ill and decides to live her remaining days in a positive way that helps others. I invited a man from our church to be one of the actors in our show, and it turned out that he found out THAT DAY he had cancer. He accepted the role in the performance, even though it will be during his chemo treatments and probably right before surgery. He told me how much our ministry blesses HIM and thanks ME for being strong and noble during all of Sam's hospital stuff......um, well that humbled me and brought me so much joy to learn that our ministry means that much to others that they would want to take part WHILE battling cancer. Now we have a cast member who is basically living the plot line in real life. I had a good cry after finding all this out. I am so blessed to know the people I do, and work with the people I do.

Another bright spot is a young lady who just joined the ministry. We have two optional devotional times, before and after dance rehearsal, and she comes to BOTH. I asked her why she comes twice, and she said because she wants to get to know everyone in the group better so she can connect. I think that's awesome that a 17 year old wants to spend extra time doing a bible study so she can plug into God's family and learn more. I was again, humbled, as I've been annoyed about having young girls that come sporadically. And then in comes Faith with her faith.....go figure.

I could go on forever. We have a brilliant group of dancers and actors, and I am so unbelievably excited for spring! If you would like to be on our sponsor list in the coming months, please let me know, and I hope you are all doing fantastic.