Dumela!

This heart note is in honor of the group of people who are in Botswana right now serving the Lord!!! i went on the trip last year and it was one of the most powerful mission trips that i have ever been on and i know that God is doing magnificent things with every single person that is there right now. when i think back on my trip a year ago what i remember most is how much the Lord uses a vulnerable heart. i went on that trip with my mind set that i was going to be completely open to whatever God laid before me. i was blown away at all the opportunities He gave me to be His servant. one of my favorite memories from the trip, though, was getting baptized. thomas nelson, my college minister and leader of the trip, told us about how in the times of Jesus people would leave big stones in places where something really powerful/meaningful/big had happened and they would call them "Ebeneezers". well the Lord had done so much in my life in the 2 years prior to that trip that "shockingly" enough, all seemed to be what led me to go on that trip. so in honor of what the Lord had brought me through i decided to get baptized there in Africa and have that be a promise of a life devoted to Him and one of the many Ebeneezers that im sure ill have in my life. now when i look back at that trip i am reminded of a God that never sleeps and is always moving in the lives of the people He loves. i dont have much to say tonight but i hope that it encourages you to move towards a vulnerable heart or pray about what that looks like. You may have to sacrifice a lot to get there but dont you think its worth it?

1 peter 1:3-9
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

by the way....Dumela means hello is Setswana....its the only word i remember :)