Hello
friends and family
I have some
very big news to share with you all! You can feel free to
read on below or you can click HERE
to watch a little video I made.
Well, the
Lord has been gracious enough to bless me with the opportunity to move back to
Romania for full time ministry!
I ask that you would join me on this journey! I am so humbled to be moving back to
Romania. I will be working with Firm
Foundations Romania as the manager of the after school program in Budila. There are over 800 Roma/Gypsy families in the
village. This is the same village I was
working with back in 2010 when I helped out with the Roma/Gypsy teen girl
mentoring program. That program has
grown into this after school program, and one of the girls that was in our
group back when I was helping out has just graduated from High School! She is the first teen from the Roma community
in Budila to graduate from High School!
What an accomplishment!
My hope for Budila is that a dramatic change will take place. The Roma/Gypsy community in Romania are
outcasts, and there is much prejudice against them. I want to work with the children and teens
in the after school program to show them the Love of God. I am excited to help them with their
education and encourage them to stay in school, but what I am most excited
about is teaching them about Jesus. This
community will not be transformed through education alone, this community needs
the Spirit of God in their hearts in order to be transformed and my prayer is
that the Lord will use me to convey His love and His truth and to be a light to
the kids, teens, mayor, parents and the staff and volunteers who will be
working with us.
Let me tell
you why I believe the Lord has confirmed for me to move back to Romania. For the past 4 years, since I moved home to
Southern California I have never had a day go by when Romania was not on my
mind or in my heart. I have had several
requests from friends and co-workers over the years asking that I move back to
Romania and join them in their work.
Each time I have taken their request to the Lord and felt that He was
asking me to stay in California. At the
beginning of the month a friend who is the president of Firm Foundations
Romania asked that I come back to Romania to manage their after school program
in a Roma/Gypsy village where they are working.
The program has 100 children who attend twice a week. They receive a snack, help with homework and
most importantly they hear the Word of God.
I told Sarah I would pray about it and praise the Lord this time He is
saying GO!
During my
prayer time, I asked that the Lord would confirm to me what His will was. I asked that He would give me a verse out of
my daily Bible reading. He gave me more
than I could ask for. As a friend said,
“God is not whispering at you, He is yelling at you.”
After
spending time in prayer about whether or not the Lord had for me to move, I
opened my Bible up to where I had left off the night before. I picked up in Romans 10. I came to Romans 10:14-15:
“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?
And how shall they preach unless they are sent?
As it is written:
‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the
gospel of peace,
Who bring glad tidings of good things!’”
I had to do a double take, I just prayed that the Lord would give
me a verse saying stay or go, and here He was talking about being sent! Of course the first thing out of my mouth was
“Lord, can You confirm again to me that You have for me to move?” Oh how we have such little faith sometimes.
Well, He answered my prayer again, that night as I was getting
ready to go to bed my devotional, My Utmost for His Highest was titled “Visions
Become Reality”. (You can read it by
clicking HERE if you like.) The entire devo really spoke to me and again
confirmed this calling. I loved the last
lines, “…don’t lose
heart in the process. If you have ever had a vision from God, you may try as
you will to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never allow it.” It was like He was saying that the vision He
had given me for Romania was not over.
He had taken me into the valley for the past 4 years and was working on
getting me ready to go back. And try as I like to find something else here in
the US that would fill my “Romania hole” in my heart, I can only be satisfied
by doing His will and now that means, returning to Romania.
So of course
the first thing out of my mouth was, “But Lord, can you confirm this to me
again?” HA! I was starting to feel like
Gideon when he kept laying his fleece before the Lord!
But the Lord
is so patient! The next morning at
church, my pastor walks out and says things were going to be a little different
that morning and that a girl who had just returned from a mission’s trip would
be speaking to us. I almost fell out of
my chair. This had never happened before at my church. Finally I was starting to think, “Ok Lord, so
it seems like it is Your will for me to move?!”
With the
realization that this was the Lord’s will an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy
for the role of managing this after school program which would also involve
being the liaison between Firm Foundations Romania and the Mayor of the
village, and would need to be done all in Romanian (gulp!) came over me. But the Lord heard my fears and 2 days later
gave me another amazing devotional which you can read HERE if you like.
I want to quote the whole thing to you, but the part that really stood
out to me was,
“You say –
But God can never have called me to this, I am too unworthy, it can’t
mean me. It does mean you, and the weaker and feebler you are, the
better. The one who has something to trust in is the last one to come anywhere
near saying – "I will serve the Lord."
We say – "If I really could believe!" The point is – If I really will
believe. No wonder Jesus Christ lays such emphasis on the sin of unbelief.
"And He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief." If
we really believed that God meant what He said – what should we be like! Dare I
really let God be to me all that He says He will be?”
Honestly, my letter would be a short novel if I wrote to you all that
the Lord has done over the past two and half weeks to continue to confirm that
this is His will for me. There are so
many “coincidences” that I would be a fool to look at them as anything other
than the Lord just going above and beyond to assure me that this is what He has
for me.
My request is simple, please pray for me! Please remember me, Romania, Firm Foundations
Romania and the people of Budila in your prayers.
I do not have a set move date yet, but am looking at the end of
September or beginning of October. There
are lots of little things that need to fall into place, and I know the Lord has
a plan as to how it will all work out, I just don’t know that whole plan yet! I have also had some health issues come up
lately and I ask that you would keep that in your prayers as well, that
everything will be straightened out before I move.
I will be starting my support fundraising in the week or so. I am still working out details about that and
will let you know more about that soon.
Thank you for taking the time to read this extremely long message!
