And here we are...pursuing, praying, asking and serving. At this point in life, that's really all Jared and I can do as His followers. As hard as it is, we know more than anything that with God in control we can pull through anything.
It has almost been two weeks since our miscarriage and little Leena Marie left us for a better place; a place where we will someday meet her. God has brought us so much restoration in these last two weeks, more than I could have ever imagined possible. But know that we have not become stone to the situation, we still cry from time to time and ask God for understanding, but a good cry is always good to have! So we have been able to press on but yet remember and be prayerful about what happened.
The past two weeks have just been a whirlwind of stuff going on. Jared has been working and I've been meeting with some people here and there. This particular week is something that is a bit out of the ordinary, but we're excited to see how it goes. I am in Onalaska, Wisconsin this week taking care of a grandma who I have never really known all that well. Both Jared and myself have been very prayerful about this week and what God may have in store while I am with my grandma. Here's just a bit about this situation:
Grandma, Sallee Farley, is my dad's mom. Grandma is currently slowly slipping away from us as she has just recently been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She has been smoking since she was a teenager and currently in her late 70's, I believe... Grandma has never known or wanted to know about Christ, and it's been heart breaking to watch her wither away and not know of this person who offers a life that is so extraordinary! So I was asked a while ago to come take care of her for a week, and I agreed to this. As I have prayed about this over the last few weeks I asked God to give me the right words to just even become friends with her, or just create a relationship with her. I've never known about her other than the fact that she is my grandmother.
So I've been here for about 24 hours already...and it has definitely been hard! She is unable to walk on her own, so I have to be balancing her around. Other than that she stays busy watching some tv and reading the newspaper between eating and medication. I'm not really sure on how to engage in conversation with her about simple little things. I know I'm dying to know the story behind how her and my grandpa met and the whole story behind that relationship...but for some odd reason I just can't seem to form the right words. Lol! I know what some of you are thinking, "Jeez, Anna...you talk all the time, how could you not think of anything??!". I'm not sure what the answer is. But I'm still praying and it's still early in the week, so we'll see.
Anyway, so maybe some of you can be praying and/or thinking about that for me. Jared is back in Omaha for the week, he'll just be working and probably meeting with people here and there as well. So we're away from each other for the week, which is something we see as being good for us every once in a while, but we definitely miss each other too.
So needless to say, this could potentially be a very hard and trying week with being away from my better half and having to be in constant care for my grandmother will be trying as well. But it's a good position to be in because I know that in no way am I able to rely on my own strength, but on the strength of my God who will willingly give me strength if I ask. Anyway, so it'd be SUPA sweet if you all could be praying over this week, that God would utilize myself as well as Jared and that we will be the servants who are always pursuing, praying, asking and serving in His glorious name!
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
"Have you considered my servant Job?"
Job 1:8
And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"
I know lots and lots of Christians talk about Job and how they admire him and wish they could be just like him, some of us even just use him and the story to relate to just about anybody or anything. And I (Anna) prayed quite a bit about using Job in this, but I really believe that God has laid his story on my heart for this year.
So, that last time we blogged we basically caught everyone up on the heartache we had just been through with all this door closing business. No Salt Lake, no Chicago...but a yes to Omaha. Here we are, hanging out in Omaha and absolutely falling back in love with this place. We've moved into our new place (which we are sub-leasing from friends who are out of state for the next 5 months for schooling) and love it! We've even got laundry shoots, SO GREAT! Anyway. It's been a tough road trying to get on the uphill after everything that had just happened. No SLC, no Chicago, no jobs, no money, and we were frantic about a place to live. But! We had a God who blessed us when we definitely didn't deserve it.
Anywho, Jared was re-hired back at Jimmy Johns and then was hired at a place called Urban Plunge where he was a facilitator for youth groups and/or small groups to experience Omaha and it's inner city ministries. He loved that job especially, and it was a total God-send for him to have that outlet. God blessed us with this house for only $450 a month, and how that money came in was only by His doing. God blessed us with new friends who knew that we were going through and offered us help in grieving through that and laid out another opportunity for us. I probably won't get into that particular opportunity much in this post. Wait for the next posting!
So needless to say, we felt like we were finally on the beginnings of an uphill and figured we've been through a lot and we probably have nothing else unfortunate to happen...any time soon.
A little back story here in order to help the next part of our story - Jared and myself have been very prayerful in the past year and even before we were married about a family. We knew that getting married to each other also meant that we would be in positions to be parents one day. So for about the first 7 months of our marriage I (Anna) was using these little dudes we women like to call, "The Pill". In December, Jared and myself prayed and fasted and knew God was telling us it was time to be rid of those pills. And we obeyed that calling. So more or less, Jared and I were ready and willing to God blessing us with a little one whenever He felt we were ready.
In July, we found out that we were expecting! So what did we do?? Well, DUH! We told everyone! We were so excited and couldn't wait to be parents! But for some odd reason...in the back of my mind and behind scenes, something just didn't feel right. My heart was very troubled for the first 3 weeks that we were pregnant and adjusting our lives around it that something was just wrong about this pregnancy. I didn't tell anyone because I believed it was just me being a paranoid first time mom....but that intuition just wouldn't go away. Anyway...
So just yesterday Jared and I were heading back to Omaha after a weekend in Wisconsin on vacation with my family. That morning I noticed some spotting and some pretty intense cramps, nothing out of the ordinary, but they were there. So we called to doctor and were reassured that nothing was wrong... That was until we made our next pit stop before getting into Omaha and I noticed that something was very, very wrong. I went to the bathroom and noticed somethings that were extremely abnormal and knew we need to get to the emergency room quick. At that point the cramps were severe and the bleeding had gone beyond what was normal. Jared and I have never been so heartbroken, scared, confused and anxious in our lives.
We got to the hospital ER and after 2 hours of testing and blood work the doctors told Jared and I that we miscarried. We were only 8 weeks along... August 16th will forever be a date which is ingrained in our memories. This is hard for me (Anna) to even be sitting here and watching the words being typed onto the computer screen....after finding this out barely even 24 hours ago. I have never experienced such heartbreak over a child that I had not even met. We had to say goodbye before we could say hello.
At this point the only thing Jared and I could do was pray. I've never been so tempted in my life to be angry with God and throw up some nasty words and be done with my services to Him. But at the same time, I knew that if I were to do that I would be more dead inside than I was feeling even then. Somehow, throughout my whole ER visit I was able to be composed, calm, and sturdy enough to be on page with the doctors. It was ONLY by God that I was able to hold it together. And what was even more amazing was that I had this partial understanding and peace! "WHY?! or HOW?!" one might ask. God. Jared and I prayed so, SO hard that God would give us understanding and that our faith would be strong and not shaken. We asked Him to take away any anger and help us to see that He knows us better than we know ourselves and that He knows what He is doing.
We were encouraged by some friends of ours to go ahead and give our baby a name as so to see that the baby was a human and not just an "it". S0 last night Jared and I gave what we believed would have been our daughter the name, Leena Marie. We believe that God has her now and that we will one day get to meet her. This morning I was laying in bed and asked God if He could tell baby Leena Marie that mommy and daddy say hello, and that we love her so much. We also said that one day we would love to meet her. And I can't even begin to tell you the amount of peace that the Lord has already given me, even after 24 hours of what seemed like hell.
And here we are. Mine and Jared's hearts are still tender and very vulnerable right now, but our prayer is that God will restore us and help us to use this part of our story now to bring glory to His name. We want to be able to be used by Him to encourage and help others. I know the most of encouragement I've received the past 24 hours have been from the women who have experienced this loss before, so if you are one of those who are reading this...please know how much of a blessing you are to people like me. And please know that I have a special place in my heart and prayers for you and the little ones you will meet again one day.
So...this has been probably the worst year of my life. But at the same time...this has been the best year of growth for Jared and I. We've barely got just one year under our belts of marriage and we've experienced so much. But what has kept us going throughout this year is the fact that we serve a God who is bigger, stronger, and knows us better than anyone. We have a God who loves us and will not tempt us beyond what we can handle, we have a God who will help us get back up, wipe the dust off, and continue on our journey with him. He will strengthen us in our testing and trials. So this is why we believe the story of Job kinda fits with our year so far...maybe not quite to Job's exact situation, but in some ways. We know that God will never forget us or leave us, if he had, then there is no way that Jared and I would be doing as well as we are right now. We've prayed that God uses us and his servants to show others that He is worth it. He is worth following after. We want to be the ones whom He can look down upon today and say to that disgusting satan, "Have you considered my servants, Jared and Anna? They will not be shaken by your temptations and schemes, they will not turn from Me and will have fear for Me. They will turn from your evil and look to Me, because they know that I am their God, and I will always take care of them."
THAT is the God we serve!
And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"
I know lots and lots of Christians talk about Job and how they admire him and wish they could be just like him, some of us even just use him and the story to relate to just about anybody or anything. And I (Anna) prayed quite a bit about using Job in this, but I really believe that God has laid his story on my heart for this year.
So, that last time we blogged we basically caught everyone up on the heartache we had just been through with all this door closing business. No Salt Lake, no Chicago...but a yes to Omaha. Here we are, hanging out in Omaha and absolutely falling back in love with this place. We've moved into our new place (which we are sub-leasing from friends who are out of state for the next 5 months for schooling) and love it! We've even got laundry shoots, SO GREAT! Anyway. It's been a tough road trying to get on the uphill after everything that had just happened. No SLC, no Chicago, no jobs, no money, and we were frantic about a place to live. But! We had a God who blessed us when we definitely didn't deserve it.
Anywho, Jared was re-hired back at Jimmy Johns and then was hired at a place called Urban Plunge where he was a facilitator for youth groups and/or small groups to experience Omaha and it's inner city ministries. He loved that job especially, and it was a total God-send for him to have that outlet. God blessed us with this house for only $450 a month, and how that money came in was only by His doing. God blessed us with new friends who knew that we were going through and offered us help in grieving through that and laid out another opportunity for us. I probably won't get into that particular opportunity much in this post. Wait for the next posting!
So needless to say, we felt like we were finally on the beginnings of an uphill and figured we've been through a lot and we probably have nothing else unfortunate to happen...any time soon.
A little back story here in order to help the next part of our story - Jared and myself have been very prayerful in the past year and even before we were married about a family. We knew that getting married to each other also meant that we would be in positions to be parents one day. So for about the first 7 months of our marriage I (Anna) was using these little dudes we women like to call, "The Pill". In December, Jared and myself prayed and fasted and knew God was telling us it was time to be rid of those pills. And we obeyed that calling. So more or less, Jared and I were ready and willing to God blessing us with a little one whenever He felt we were ready.
In July, we found out that we were expecting! So what did we do?? Well, DUH! We told everyone! We were so excited and couldn't wait to be parents! But for some odd reason...in the back of my mind and behind scenes, something just didn't feel right. My heart was very troubled for the first 3 weeks that we were pregnant and adjusting our lives around it that something was just wrong about this pregnancy. I didn't tell anyone because I believed it was just me being a paranoid first time mom....but that intuition just wouldn't go away. Anyway...
So just yesterday Jared and I were heading back to Omaha after a weekend in Wisconsin on vacation with my family. That morning I noticed some spotting and some pretty intense cramps, nothing out of the ordinary, but they were there. So we called to doctor and were reassured that nothing was wrong... That was until we made our next pit stop before getting into Omaha and I noticed that something was very, very wrong. I went to the bathroom and noticed somethings that were extremely abnormal and knew we need to get to the emergency room quick. At that point the cramps were severe and the bleeding had gone beyond what was normal. Jared and I have never been so heartbroken, scared, confused and anxious in our lives.
We got to the hospital ER and after 2 hours of testing and blood work the doctors told Jared and I that we miscarried. We were only 8 weeks along... August 16th will forever be a date which is ingrained in our memories. This is hard for me (Anna) to even be sitting here and watching the words being typed onto the computer screen....after finding this out barely even 24 hours ago. I have never experienced such heartbreak over a child that I had not even met. We had to say goodbye before we could say hello.
At this point the only thing Jared and I could do was pray. I've never been so tempted in my life to be angry with God and throw up some nasty words and be done with my services to Him. But at the same time, I knew that if I were to do that I would be more dead inside than I was feeling even then. Somehow, throughout my whole ER visit I was able to be composed, calm, and sturdy enough to be on page with the doctors. It was ONLY by God that I was able to hold it together. And what was even more amazing was that I had this partial understanding and peace! "WHY?! or HOW?!" one might ask. God. Jared and I prayed so, SO hard that God would give us understanding and that our faith would be strong and not shaken. We asked Him to take away any anger and help us to see that He knows us better than we know ourselves and that He knows what He is doing.
We were encouraged by some friends of ours to go ahead and give our baby a name as so to see that the baby was a human and not just an "it". S0 last night Jared and I gave what we believed would have been our daughter the name, Leena Marie. We believe that God has her now and that we will one day get to meet her. This morning I was laying in bed and asked God if He could tell baby Leena Marie that mommy and daddy say hello, and that we love her so much. We also said that one day we would love to meet her. And I can't even begin to tell you the amount of peace that the Lord has already given me, even after 24 hours of what seemed like hell.
And here we are. Mine and Jared's hearts are still tender and very vulnerable right now, but our prayer is that God will restore us and help us to use this part of our story now to bring glory to His name. We want to be able to be used by Him to encourage and help others. I know the most of encouragement I've received the past 24 hours have been from the women who have experienced this loss before, so if you are one of those who are reading this...please know how much of a blessing you are to people like me. And please know that I have a special place in my heart and prayers for you and the little ones you will meet again one day.
So...this has been probably the worst year of my life. But at the same time...this has been the best year of growth for Jared and I. We've barely got just one year under our belts of marriage and we've experienced so much. But what has kept us going throughout this year is the fact that we serve a God who is bigger, stronger, and knows us better than anyone. We have a God who loves us and will not tempt us beyond what we can handle, we have a God who will help us get back up, wipe the dust off, and continue on our journey with him. He will strengthen us in our testing and trials. So this is why we believe the story of Job kinda fits with our year so far...maybe not quite to Job's exact situation, but in some ways. We know that God will never forget us or leave us, if he had, then there is no way that Jared and I would be doing as well as we are right now. We've prayed that God uses us and his servants to show others that He is worth it. He is worth following after. We want to be the ones whom He can look down upon today and say to that disgusting satan, "Have you considered my servants, Jared and Anna? They will not be shaken by your temptations and schemes, they will not turn from Me and will have fear for Me. They will turn from your evil and look to Me, because they know that I am their God, and I will always take care of them."
THAT is the God we serve!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Welp...what now?
Where do we start? How does one even begin to explain everything when the past few months have been a whirl wind of stuff? I guess we will just go ahead and try a stab at this thing we like to call "updating". So...here we go!
Since you last read, Jared and I were just in the midst of quitting our jobs and going into full time support raising for being out in Salt Lake City in order be with the team who was involved in campus ministry. So. We quit our jobs, and then just a few days later received some word about an opportunity to pursue church plant training for a year. This was a program that was going to be started up by a professor and friend we know very well, and Jared was asked to be one of the first students to pilot the program. Linked with this training was also schooling for learning about Ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament studies. So we prayed pretty heavily about this opportunity and saw it as a way to just add another quality to our team in Salt Lake City. So we decided to tell our boss' with Impact Campus Ministries that we wanted to pursue this opportunity and just push SLC back a year in order to receive this training. In the process of informing our authorities, we both came to a mutual agreement that we needed to resign from Impact in order to fully pursue this opportunity. And resign we did, peacefully and in support of each other on both sides.
After resigning Jared and myself were still jobless but waiting to hear about this opportunity for this program, which would have been based in Chicago. So we were preparing to possibly move to Chicago, Illinois...and quite honestly, we were pretty excited about moving to a different place! So we waited...and waited...and waited...and guess what...we WAITED! I can tell you (Anna) that I have never experienced such anxiety, pain, anger, excitement, and pure frustration all at one time ever in my life. I literally thought I might burst at the seams! And yet, God was transforming me in ways that I did not realize until after all this waiting was done and we received word on whether or not this school/program was going to happen. And the answer was...a kind of no/yes? What?! We were told that the people who were going to underwrite the program wanted to change things up, and it was not in the way we were originally pursuing. So to us, basically God had told us, "nope, not here either guys". We quickly had to decide whether or not we were going to pursue this anymore and just tough it out, or to let go and focus on what the heck we were going to do. So after much prayer, meditation, fasting...repeat...we decided to stay in Omaha. Here we were, jobless, soon having to move out our apartment and having no place to move into yet, and in pursuit of...well, nothing at that point.
I cried. And cried. As a kid who has grown up with family who is always on the move, I looked forward to finally moving to a different place for a while. Finally being away from school and making new friends...living more on the edge than Nebraska! But then God said, "No" and I became angry and hurt. I was angry with God for a good month...but was then quickly hit in the face with the realization that God knows what is best for us. He knows us better then we know ourselves. Why should I continue this anger towards him? God has provided for me thus far...why would I doubt that He wouldn't for the rest of my life?
So this leads me to Jared and I currently:
We are about to move out of our apartment and into a house in Omaha for the next 5 months. We will be living in an area of Omaha that is a bit poorer and quite a bit different than what we are both use to...but the exciting thing for us is that we are getting to chance to live in society (outside of our gravel road apartment now) and live out our lives as followers of Jesus Christ! God has given us this incredible opportunity to live among other Christians in a neighborhood where Christ is not fully known. We will be living in community together, doing life together, and living out the ministry of Jesus together...and all in hopes that those who do not know Him will see our love for God and each other that it becomes contagious! How exciting is that?! To live a life that is so incandescently in love with Jesus Christ that the only way to show it that is simply live!
GAH! What a rollercoaster, but we've finally come to a pit stop. And here we are. Updated to the current day, and getting excited for what the next day and days after that hold. At this point, Jared and I are kind of going a week at a time and yet remaining prayerful about the future. Our priority right now is to do what we can with the time that is given to us right here and now, and God has blessed us more than we deserve. So...what now? ; )
Since you last read, Jared and I were just in the midst of quitting our jobs and going into full time support raising for being out in Salt Lake City in order be with the team who was involved in campus ministry. So. We quit our jobs, and then just a few days later received some word about an opportunity to pursue church plant training for a year. This was a program that was going to be started up by a professor and friend we know very well, and Jared was asked to be one of the first students to pilot the program. Linked with this training was also schooling for learning about Ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament studies. So we prayed pretty heavily about this opportunity and saw it as a way to just add another quality to our team in Salt Lake City. So we decided to tell our boss' with Impact Campus Ministries that we wanted to pursue this opportunity and just push SLC back a year in order to receive this training. In the process of informing our authorities, we both came to a mutual agreement that we needed to resign from Impact in order to fully pursue this opportunity. And resign we did, peacefully and in support of each other on both sides.
After resigning Jared and myself were still jobless but waiting to hear about this opportunity for this program, which would have been based in Chicago. So we were preparing to possibly move to Chicago, Illinois...and quite honestly, we were pretty excited about moving to a different place! So we waited...and waited...and waited...and guess what...we WAITED! I can tell you (Anna) that I have never experienced such anxiety, pain, anger, excitement, and pure frustration all at one time ever in my life. I literally thought I might burst at the seams! And yet, God was transforming me in ways that I did not realize until after all this waiting was done and we received word on whether or not this school/program was going to happen. And the answer was...a kind of no/yes? What?! We were told that the people who were going to underwrite the program wanted to change things up, and it was not in the way we were originally pursuing. So to us, basically God had told us, "nope, not here either guys". We quickly had to decide whether or not we were going to pursue this anymore and just tough it out, or to let go and focus on what the heck we were going to do. So after much prayer, meditation, fasting...repeat...we decided to stay in Omaha. Here we were, jobless, soon having to move out our apartment and having no place to move into yet, and in pursuit of...well, nothing at that point.
I cried. And cried. As a kid who has grown up with family who is always on the move, I looked forward to finally moving to a different place for a while. Finally being away from school and making new friends...living more on the edge than Nebraska! But then God said, "No" and I became angry and hurt. I was angry with God for a good month...but was then quickly hit in the face with the realization that God knows what is best for us. He knows us better then we know ourselves. Why should I continue this anger towards him? God has provided for me thus far...why would I doubt that He wouldn't for the rest of my life?
So this leads me to Jared and I currently:
We are about to move out of our apartment and into a house in Omaha for the next 5 months. We will be living in an area of Omaha that is a bit poorer and quite a bit different than what we are both use to...but the exciting thing for us is that we are getting to chance to live in society (outside of our gravel road apartment now) and live out our lives as followers of Jesus Christ! God has given us this incredible opportunity to live among other Christians in a neighborhood where Christ is not fully known. We will be living in community together, doing life together, and living out the ministry of Jesus together...and all in hopes that those who do not know Him will see our love for God and each other that it becomes contagious! How exciting is that?! To live a life that is so incandescently in love with Jesus Christ that the only way to show it that is simply live!
GAH! What a rollercoaster, but we've finally come to a pit stop. And here we are. Updated to the current day, and getting excited for what the next day and days after that hold. At this point, Jared and I are kind of going a week at a time and yet remaining prayerful about the future. Our priority right now is to do what we can with the time that is given to us right here and now, and God has blessed us more than we deserve. So...what now? ; )
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The next step
So, here we are. We've received our calling, we've gone through some training...and what's the next step? Support raising. Those short two words are so intimidating and daunting. Our minds wants to shut down and cry because I know that life as a missionary involves this act of support raising. But as our human nature wanted to cry and shy away from this step, our hearts was oddly at peace with this scary, but humbling task. So...
Let us catch you up a little since our last post:
Jared, myself, and our teammates Brett and Nicole Ricley (as well as their baby, Jonathan!) had been praying about a date in which we are shooting to be out and living in Salt Lake City. We knew going into this idea of asking God about a date would require a lot of prayer, meditation, fasting, and wisdom from others. So we prayed about a date that had popped up while in conversation with our team, and God made it very apparent that we are to work towards this particular date: August 15th, 2011! We believe the reason this date has been given to us is because of the new incoming freshman on the campus we will be working on, University of Utah. We want to be there for them when they first start up a new step of life in college and allow God to utilize us to impact them from the get-go!
So, in order to make steps towards getting to this date we need to be in full time support raising, and quick. We knew what this meant, and as young newlyweds we felt we were not ready to take this next step. What was this next step? What did being in full time support raising mean? For us it meant giving it all to God and trust that He will provide. Translation: it was time to put in our two weeks notice(s) at our jobs. Again, we buckled down and prayed hard about this decision, and the answer was given in time. I (Anna) was given this confirmation over a course of a couple of months as I am looking back at it. I didn't realize that this was what God was preparing me for until I really started asking and seeking about this bold move. So the answer was given and we gave the notice. April 1st is the last day of work for Jared and I, and then we head to Iowa to meet with potential supporters. We're really doing this! Our hearts are racing and set on the next goal...to get to Salt Lake City! We are excited yet nervous at the same time. Will you pray with us as we start in on this faith journey? At this point we need all the prayer support we can get as we walk in faith!
Let us catch you up a little since our last post:
Jared, myself, and our teammates Brett and Nicole Ricley (as well as their baby, Jonathan!) had been praying about a date in which we are shooting to be out and living in Salt Lake City. We knew going into this idea of asking God about a date would require a lot of prayer, meditation, fasting, and wisdom from others. So we prayed about a date that had popped up while in conversation with our team, and God made it very apparent that we are to work towards this particular date: August 15th, 2011! We believe the reason this date has been given to us is because of the new incoming freshman on the campus we will be working on, University of Utah. We want to be there for them when they first start up a new step of life in college and allow God to utilize us to impact them from the get-go!
So, in order to make steps towards getting to this date we need to be in full time support raising, and quick. We knew what this meant, and as young newlyweds we felt we were not ready to take this next step. What was this next step? What did being in full time support raising mean? For us it meant giving it all to God and trust that He will provide. Translation: it was time to put in our two weeks notice(s) at our jobs. Again, we buckled down and prayed hard about this decision, and the answer was given in time. I (Anna) was given this confirmation over a course of a couple of months as I am looking back at it. I didn't realize that this was what God was preparing me for until I really started asking and seeking about this bold move. So the answer was given and we gave the notice. April 1st is the last day of work for Jared and I, and then we head to Iowa to meet with potential supporters. We're really doing this! Our hearts are racing and set on the next goal...to get to Salt Lake City! We are excited yet nervous at the same time. Will you pray with us as we start in on this faith journey? At this point we need all the prayer support we can get as we walk in faith!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Burning the Ships
"This phrase 'Burn The Ships' comes from a historic conquest of history when, in 1519, Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico on the shores of the Yucatan, with only one objective…seize the great treasures known to be there, hoarded by the Aztecs. Cortez was an excellent motivator, he convinced more than 500 soldiers and 100 sailors to set sail from Spain to Mexico, commanding 11 ships, to take the world’s richest treasure. For Cortez, the answer was easy. It was all or nothing! When Cortez and his men arrived on the shores of the Yucatan he rallied the men for one final pep talk before leading his men into battle, and utters these three words that changed the course of history. 'Burn the Ships'." (successsecretsatkempskorner.blogspot.com/2007/09/burn-ships.html)
While we don't ascribe to the motivation of Cortez' speech given to his men, we become enthusiastic about the idea of "burning the ships". For Jared and I, "burning the ships" means a taking a risk, or what is also known as walking by faith. This is it! We are fully giving our lives to ministry, and this is no easy road, folks. Since our decision to devote our lives to full time ministry it has been one heck of a crazy roller coaster. We've cried, we've struggled, we've been joyful, we've been "pee your pants" excited, and whatever else you can think of! God is moving, and we've burned our ships to begin our journey of walking by faith.
So, let us catch you up a little...
A few years ago, 2 to be exact, Salt Lake City became a fairly consistent prayer in both Jared and I's lives. And that's when the roller coaster started. I (Anna) couldn't really jump on board with the whole idea of SLC (Salt Lake City) because it wasn't a big enough mission for me. Missions for me meant going overseas or going to a place that no one else on earth would even dare to think of going. Somewhere crazy, somewhere wild and dangerous...THAT was missions to me. But as time went and as I grew, God continued to bring SLC to my prayers. Jared was always praying about it, but I was so reluctant. Little did I know that God was going to soon break me down and start yelling, "ANNA! Listen!".
Jared and I spent a summer in Spain a couple years ago for our internships for school with a few others on our team. One of those nights, in Granada, Spain, I was out for a run. I was starting to take a run more often to have more time to pray with God. This particular night I happened to be running around a corner and spot this odd looking line of something on the street. So me, being a person who is easily distracted, decided to stop praying and running and look at this odd looking line...that was moving? What?? I looked closer and it was a line of ants! So what did I do? I followed the line, of course! I walk for a while just following it and followed them as the line walked up a tree. And just as I was looking at the top of the tree my eyes caught gaze of this beautiful view of downtown Granada. "What's so cool about that?", you might ask. That view immediately brought the view of the valley of SLC, which we saw our very first trip out there a few months earlier. God had captured my heart at that moment. I cried and all I could do was thank God for opening my eyes. I then ran back to the missionary host home down the street to get Jared and show him. We came back to that same location almost every night to pray about SLC...while in a different city, in a different country and on a different continent!! God is SO COOL!
So from there on out Jared and I pursued SLC, and we said we'd keep pursuing unless God gave us a stop sign...and thus far He has not. God has developed both Jared and I's hearts for the young college aged people of Salt Lake City. God has called us to love him and love each other, for that is how people will know we are followers of Him. We are passionate about being involved in that age group's life. So we were led to apply to Impact Campus Ministries and got accepted!
So...here we are...burning ships and allowing God to put our faith to the test, giving our lives away.
...To be continued :)
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