Trusting the Lord

‎"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path." [Proverbs 3:5-6]

This has been a really cool verse for me this past week, because the Lord has been teaching me a lot about the fact that He is sovereign and His will is perfect - there have been multiple times that I've thought I had something planned out for myself and He has totally changed that around on me! a.k.a. I made myself a rule that I wasn't gonna work before 7am this summer. Aaaaand I work at 5:30 everyday! Wooooo!!! So yeah. The Lord has really shown up and said...nope, THIS is what I have planned for you and it's gonna be SWEET. So yeah. It's good stuff.

I guess I don't have too much to say...work is good, project is good, same old same old. I'm just really pumped to get back to campus and take back what I'm learning. It's weird to think that there's only a week and a half left - it went so fast! Please just be praying for me, that I would keep working for the Lord and trusting in Him 100%, and not slacking off just because I'm almost done. Yeah. If I think of something really cool to share, I will!!

~ Lo

[TITLE]

Yeah...I don't know what to call this one. Oh well. Make up your own title.

So today is Friday, my first real day off in almost two weeks. To be totally honest, I'm completely drained and exhausted and I think I could sleep for three days straight! I worked Wed-Sat at 5:30am everyday last week, had a super busy Sunday, and worked Mon-Thurs. morning this week too. *Sigh* I'm so thankful to have a day of rest, and I know I wouldn't have been able to make it through without the Lord's help. I had to constantly remind myself that "The joy of the Lord is your strength" [Nehemiah 8:10] and "this is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it." [Psalm 118:24] God has really been teaching me a lot about just relying on His power and strength to get me through even silly little things like waking up early in the morning and working for 7.5 hours. It really isn't anything horribly difficult, and people do it all the time erryday. But I'm finding that even those little things are draining at times and we are to rely on the Lord for everything we do, not just when a major tragedy happens.

Speaking of big scary things happening....we've had some scary stuff happen this past week on project. There have been a lot of health things going on - one of the girls had to have surgery for appendicitis a few days ago (she's doing well now!) and another girl had a fall and got a minor concussion.

Right now, my friend Jaden is on her flight to Minneapolis to Mayo Clinic to be with her family. PLEASE PRAY FOR THEM - her mom is has bleeding in the brain, which can be super serious but they don't know what the implications are yet. She first went to the hospital in their hometown in South Dakota, they couldn't do anything there. They flew her to Sioux Falls and they couldn't do anything there either, so now they've airlifted her to Mayo. Jaden first found out about this yesterday afternoon and then last night found out that she needs to go home, and left at about 7am this morning. Here are things you can be praying for:

1. Healing. God is all-powerful and can bring healing - pray that if it is His will, he will heal Jaden's mom quickly and will give the doctors wisdom through the process.
2. Safety. Jaden has family coming to Mayo from various places, and obviously she's flying from NMB (she just boarded from Chicago to Minneapolis, so she's almost there!), so please pray for safety for all of their travels.
3. Peace. Pray that God would cover Jaden's family with a blanket of peace and comfort, and that they would find rest in Him, trusting that He is sovereign and in complete control.

Thanks for your prayers!

Hmm...what else can I update you on.....I'm not really sure. Well last Saturday was the "No Talent/Talent Show", in which Marissa and I competed and sang some Christian parodies. It was super fun and we ended up in 3rd place! This past week has been super good growth-wise, God's been teaching me a ton and I've just been doing a lot of processing (and as a result, being anti-social) and it's been SAWWEEEEEETTT!!

Ok honestly, I can't think of anything else to say at all which is super lame, because I know there has to be more to say! Maybe if I think of something cool later I'll get back on and post it...peace out!

Lauren

The Halfway Point Has Been Reached.

Whassupp?? Time to do the (looking like bi-weekly) filling-in of project...I'll just dive right in!

First matter of business = VIDEO! Yes, you can kind of actually see what I'm doing here! My friends Geoff and Josh made it...they have mad skills. Seriously. Check it out. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ79HcsioSk

So. Staff is gone. Their last official time with us was Thursday night, during Agape week. This marks the halfway point of project and we are now a completely student-led project for the rest of the summer! I miss them tons - they taught us so much and gave us amazing encouragement and training, and were just a joy to have around! But now that they're gone, I'm also really excited to see how the rest of the summer plays out; we're on our own now and learning to use the leadership skills the staff taught us. Before the staff left, certain students were put into specific leadership roles left open. These include leaders of the several different teams (OPS, Community, Prayer, Worship, Outreach), leaders to take over Bible studies/discipleship, and "The Big 6" - six student leaders chosen to direct and oversee the entire project. My friend Jeff and I were both chosen to continue co-leading our Sunday night worship team, which I'm really excited about! Not too much has changed for us as far as our responsibilities go, the only difference is that our coach, Mike, isn't there to make sure we aren't messing too much up. ;) In case you're wondering...here's what I do! Jeff and I meet on our own at some point during the week and choose the songs for the following Sunday. We usually try to learn a bit about what the theme will be for the week, who's talking and what about, so we can choose some songs that will go along with the theme. I make copies for everyone, and we also usually try to find some scripture that goes along with the theme and go through it with the band before practice, just to cast vision for the week and set the focus for our time of worship. I love it. :)

Agape Week

a·ga·pe

1.

the love of God for humankind.

2.

the love of Christians for other people, corresponding to the love of God for humankind.

3.

unselfish love of one person for another without sexual implications; brotherly love.

...that was our theme for last week. Wooo!! It was really awesome - the biggest thing we learned was that the best way to show love to our brothers and sisters is through words of affirmation. So we were challenged to affirm everyone as much as possible! It was really eye-opening to me though, because I realized, wow this is so cool, nobody ever does this! But in reality, this is something we should be doing this for each other every day. It was so encouraging to receive affirmation from others - I truly felt cared about and appreciated, and very loved! I also realized how fun it is to affirm others. Sometimes you can just see in someone's face how much they appreciate your encouragement and it's so worth it!

^{[1 John 4:9-12] 9} This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

To sum it all up....agape week was good stuff.

Out of This WORLD

This is the first theme chosen by students! We're in the middle of our "Out of this world" themed week, which is basically teaching about rejecting the things of this world and focusing on our relationship with the Lord. This basically sums it up:

^{[1 John 2:15-17] 15} Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Fatheris not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

It's been really cool just focusing on pinning down the things that I put above God in my life and surrendering them to him. I'm really excited to see how the rest of the week plays out!

What God's Teaching Me

Here are three things I feel like the Lord has really been teaching me and laying on my heart this summer.

1) Positivity. I've always been prone to complain about things that I don't like or that make me uncomfortable. This past school year, I really was conscious of the fact that that's not okay and I worked on it a lot. I felt like I was beginning to get a decent handle on it, but then.....I got here!! I love it here SO MUCH, don't get me wrong. But as I've previously stated, my job is a challenge. It's super early in the morning, and rather monotonous. God is definitely testing me in my patience and ability to stay positive - there actually have been several times that I've said "yeah I have this complaining thing down! I'm being positive about everything now!" and literally the next day, something super lame happens! And it's another test for me to learn to be positive and look at God's plan for me and what He wants to teach me through a situation, rather than just being negative about it and complaining.

2) Self-Discipline. I know I touched on this a little bit before, so I won't say too much. But basically, I've always struggled with managing my time well and getting the sleep that I need. I'm one of those people that really needs my alone time at some point in the day, but I don't like that and I fight it every step of the way. I love being around people and I often will choose to hang out with my friends when I know that I need to rest, have a quiet time, or just be by myself in general - this is super draining! It's definitely challenging being here when we all live in the same area and see each other all the time. People especially hang out late at night, which I have to choose not to do and go to bed early so I can be rested for work early the next day. I feel like I've really been growing in this area this summer, but I still have a loooong way to go!

3) Loving by Faith. *Kind-of-touchy-subject-for-me alert* As followers of Christ, we are called to love everyone. Even people we don't like or don't get along with easily. This is something that's super hard for me, and if I come across someone I don't get along with or we just have super different personalities, my first tendency is to just avoid them. At school or wherever else, avoiding people is pretty easy. I maybe will have to say hi to someone every once in a while, but then I go my merry way and don't have to deal with anything again. Here, it's different. Don't get me wrong, everyone here is super great! But let's be real. There are 100 of us here. Ok well...97 but whatever. It's a lot of people. Odds are, not everyone's going to hit it off and be besties, right? Everywhere you go, you will come across someone who just rubs up against you and you may not exactly care to get to know them or spend time with them let alone love them. But guess what's so great?! We are called to love everyone, including those who you don't know how to connect with. Here, I don't have the option of avoiding anyone (and like I said, everyone here really is cool, there are just a lot of very different personalities!) and therefore, I have to learn to love them all. Imagine how super not fun it would be to be around people you can't get along with, ALL THE TIME! It's definitely a process for me, and I'm learning but have a long way to go. So please pray that I will continue to trust the Lord in learning to truly love each and every one of my brothers and sisters here on project!

Ok I think that's probably enough for today. Want to know how I decided that? It's because my battery is about to die. You're welcome for sharing. :)

Lauren

P.S. HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!

Softball, World Missions & BUSY BUSY BUSY.

Dear Whoever-reads-this,

I deeply apologize for my lack of updates over the past couple of weeks. The time has flown so fast that I feel like I just posted yesterday! Obviously that's not the case...so I'll update you now!

Killing the Giants

I know I explained Killing the Giants week in my previous post, but let me follow up on that! God was so good and did amazing things during that week. As a project, we had set a goal of about 2700 spiritual conversations initiated and 1400 Gospel presentations. At the end of the week, the totals added up to 2400 initiations and 1015 Gospel presentations! While we didn't meet the goals set at the beginning of the week, these numbers are still huge and we never could have reached nearly that much on our own - God was definitely present and obviously at work in every conversation that took place that week.

All for One Week

Unity week was awesome. It was all about us coming together as a team and building strong communication with everyone else in the group. Staff's way of doing this was by giving us clues throughout the week in the form of cryptic poems that gave us guidelines or rules to follow for certain events or activities going on during the week. Anytime we tried to get info out of them, their response was, "What one of you knows, all of you know." I'll be honest...I was really sick of hearing that by the end of the week! Some of the clues told us how we were to act during the group picture, and most of the others explained guidelines for the upcoming Student vs. Staff softball game on Saturday. The tricky part of these clues was that we weren't allowed to use Facebook, texting, or any technology for that matter, to communicate the clues to one another. One person usually got a clue in their mailbox and was to share it with everyone else by word of mouth.

When Saturday rolled around, we followed the instructions from one of the clues that said we all had to be united as we walked to the park a couple of blocks away. Wearing white shirts, white face paint, and carrying a banner with all of our names on it, we marched down the street chanting, "Who are we? WHITE NOISE! What do we do? WIN." I must say...it was pretty epic and fly. During the game, certain awards and penalties made things more exciting and were based on times that we were united during the week, and times that we were not. We cheered and yelled and screamed the entire game, and I felt like we were all one big happy family (of 97 people!). In the end, we lost by 3 points, but I have never had so much fun losing a game, and I'm pretty sure the rest of us would say the same. We walked back down the street chanting in hoarse/almost gone voices about being united and the best team ever. ;)

World Vision Week

Well now here we are, in the middle of world vision week. It's all about learning to have a heart for the lost, especially internationally. We have lots of different informational meetings, dinners, etc. for those of us who are interested in learning about international Summer Projects, STINT, or being on staff overseas. Our Sunday night meeting was the kickoff to the week, and we learned lots of stats about countries that are almost completely unreached. Some countries only have one missionary per hundreds of thousands of people, and it broke my heart.

I have always thought it'd be really cool to do missions overseas, even if it's just short term, but I always just brushed it off because I'd never felt like I had a really strong calling, I felt like I just wanted to go because it'd be a good experience. In December at the TCX conference, I realized that I have a strong desire to go to East Asia for missions at some point in my life. I have no idea if that means one week or my whole life, but regardless, I have a heart for the people who are not supposed to even listen to the Gospel, let alone believe it themselves. At TCX, my question of motives was answered. When discussing how to know if we are called to missions, one of the speakers said, "You don't necessarily have to have a really big calling or sign from God to go. Sometimes just wanting to go is enough." That really spoke to me because it addressed that doubts I'd been having about how to know when you're called to go. Since then, I've really been praying that God would show me His will and plan in this area, and who knows! Maybe I'll be on Summer Project in East Asia within the next couple years. :)

Work has been pretty cool. It's definitely a huge challenge for me to be getting up before 5am everyday, but God's teaching me a lot through it. I've always really struggled in the area of self-discipline, as well as not complaining. This job is hugely testing that and I'm having to consciously make the choice to go to bed when I'd rather be having fun, and to not complain about being tired or needing to get up early the next day. Please pray that I'll continue to trust the Lord to get me through the early mornings everyday!

I wish I had time to share more, but if I told you everything that's been going on this post would be a mile long! So this will have to be it for now unfortunately........PEACE OUT.

Killing the Giants.

What up peeps?! I finally have some down time here in NMB to update you on the past week. I've been pretty busy the past week - I have a job at a grocery store 2 miles away in the bakery, and I fry and make donuts! I do some other random stuff as well...Anyway. I work at 5:30am 5 days a week and I'm done by 1pm, which is pretty sweet. But it's so early!

Last night at our weekly meeting was my first time leading worship for our project. We had practice as a band yesterday afternoon for a couple hours, and it was a really cool growing experience to just let God lead the way. It's gonna be stretching this summer as my co-leader Jeff and I lead the team in worship. Our team's goal is to encourage an environment of worship not just on Sunday nights, but every day by building each other up and making sure that everything we do is for the purpose of glorifying God (Romans 12:1).

Every week has a theme, and this week is called "Killing the Giants." Our biggest focus of the week is evangelism, and we were all to set individual goals of the number of spiritual conversations we initiate and presentations of the gospel. It's going to be a stressful and crazy week, as many people are still anxious about sharing the gospel with strangers. The point of the week is to get rid of as many of these anxieties as possible and for everyone to be totally comfortable with stepping out in faith, walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, and being willing to share the gospel with other people. Please pray for me this week as I'm still struggling with being willing to step out of my comfort zone!

Well...that's pretty much it for now. I'm actually about to go sharing right now! :)

I MADE IT!

Ok so....I just had to post this to update the previous post when I said I didn't know about the worship team audition results yet. WELL now I do, and I will be on one of the two worship bands for our weekly meetings and singing vocals. :) I can't wait to see how God will stretch me in this area of ministry!

Your Grace Is Enough.

Hi Everyone! I'm sorry I've been posting like a madwoman lately...but I feel like there's just soo much to share with everyone! There's been a ton going on and I've been learning so much. I guess first I can fill y'all in on what I've been up to the past couple days, and then I really want to share some of the content I've been learning in the group and in discipleship.

SO. Friday was job searching day. We had our morning session, and then some employers from the area came to offer jobs and fill us in on what those jobs would look like. Then we were sent out to find jobs!! A few of us headed straight for Boulineau's, a grocery store about two miles away from project property. I got a job there!! It was totally a God thing too, because the lady hiring us was filling specific positions and really wanted people who were experienced in the position. Get this! I have zero experience in a grocery store setting or bakery or anything, but she wanted to hire ME to fry and ice donuts!! WOOOO!! Ok but there's a downside to this....I have to work at 5:30am every morning. Ouch. I don't have a car or bike or anything, and walking 2 miles that early is kind of a beast and also semi-dangerous, so please pray that God will provide a safe way for me to get to work everyday!

Friday night was a super sweet time on the beach. Marissa led some worship and a good 40 of us just chilled by the water worshipping our Lord. What more could anyone ask for, seriously?? It was such an awesome experience and God just amazed me that night as I watched the waves and the stars and listened to all the voices praising His name. So cool. :) We did sweet worship on the beach last night too, but not before the Iron Chef competition! Yesterday, we were assigned to our "Impact Groups," a random group of 10ish guys and girls assigned for the summer to just get together every Sunday night and have dinner and fellowship. Our first meeting meant that we had 2 hrs to prepare a legit meal with a budget of $40 and the secret ingredient, pineapple. We got 2nd place out of 11 groups!!

Today we had auditions for the worship band for the summer. I actually just got done around 3pm and we're supposed to hear back by 6, it's almost 5, so I could hear back any minute and I'm kinda nervous!! I really am ok with whatever happens though because I know that God will put me exactly where He wants me. :)

So that's kinda what I've been up to the last couple days. Now I want to share with you what we've been going through and what has really impacted me. Here's a little overview on the things we learned:

• Practical steps to get into God's word. 1. We need to have a right heart (2 Cor. 5:17). 2. Spiritual breathing every single day (1 John 1:9, Psalm 139:23-24, Psalm 51:10, Gal. 5:24-25). 3. Delight in His Word (Psalm 1, Psalm 19, John 15:5-7).
• Evangelism. The Master, The Messengers, and The Message. Two pillars of a Biblical messenger are compassion (True need + true action) and listening. We got training in using the KGP (Knowing God Personally) booklet, which makes 4 basic points explaining the Gospel.
• Living a Spirit-Filled Life. 5 things the Spirit does when we accept Christ: Baptism, Sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30), Indwelled by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19), Regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and Filled with the Holy Spirit through faith.
• Identity in Christ. Ephesians 1:1-14 describes things that God says are true of someone in Christ. I'll talk more about this one in a minute!
• Sharing your story. We learned a step by step process of writing our testimony in a way that will be short, relatable, and shares the Gospel at the same time. We actually got assigned to literally write it and revise it by tomorrow!

Ok, so about this whole identity in Christ thing. It was really cool, because we had a worksheet with Ephesians 1:1-14 on it, and told to circle every reference of "in him," "in Jesus Christ," or the like. We then were told to write down all of the things God says are true of someone in Christ. Here's what we found: Faithful, spiritually blessed, chosen to be holy and blameless in God's sight, grace is lavished on us, redemption, forgiveness of sins, predestined according to God's will, adopted into His family, and marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit. That's a lot! But it was just so cool and encouraging to be able to look at these and know that these blessings are all true of ME. SWEEET!!

So after that, we had a quiet time with Jesus to process what we'd just learned (there was some other stuff too). One of the questions we were to ask ourselves was, "Which of these promises are hardest for you to believe are true of you?" and I only found one for me, and that was the one that says that we are chosen to be holy and blameless in God's sight. I just had such a hard time believing that He could see me that way, a sinner that doesn't deserve anything and not even anywhere near being worthy of being God's child. It's quite humbling actually. Well, it was a funny thing that that was my struggle, because it was totally addressed in discipleship that afternoon! It's kinda hard to explain because it involves a sweet graph-type visual, but it basically explains that once we accept Christ as our Savior, His grace makes our righteousness go up to 100% and it stays there, no matter what we do. It's eternal. Romans 5:1-2 says that because of His grace, we have peace with God, are forgiven, and that grace is eternal. That's our position. But our condition changes everyday, and is brought down by sin but brought up by spiritual disciplines such as quiet times, prayer, spiritual breathing, and worship. Even Paul practiced these spiritual disciplines, and we see this in Philippians 3:12-14. So, basically everything Laura went through with me perfectly addressed the ONE promise that I had a hard time believing! God is so good.

So yeah....sorry that was such a novel. I realized I like writing blogs a lot more than I thought...ooops. I hardly even shared half of everything, that's how much is going on here and I love it! I just have a couple prayer requests:

• Pray for those who still don't have jobs, there are about 20, and most of the easiest jobs to get are taken. I was so blessed to get a job right away, but some are still looking. Pray that they will continue to trust God to provide for them and put them exactly where He wants them!
• Please pray that I'll find a safe means of transportation to work at 5:30am every day.
• Continue to pray that God will prepare the hearts of people we will be having conversations with over the summer.

Ok, that's about it, FINALLY! Please send me mail, I LOVE MAIL. My address is wayyy back in the first post. Thanks again for your prayers and support, I love you all! :) Peace out.

Lauren