goodbyes

"i hate goodbyes."
-lloyd christmas

i have never been this emotional in my entire life. i broke down in tears twice in the time it took me to write this blog. i did not realize it would be this hard. even though i hate to say goodbyes, i have found that it is a necessary evil. it helps to bring closure on both ends. our training in colorado taught us that we needed to say good goodbyes. the idea was that in order to fully embrace our new culture, we needed to "let go" of our home culture here in america. in order for my ministry in latvia to be effective, i cannot be consumed with wishing i was back home in america. in order to build the relationships i need to build in latvia, i cannot be constantly wishing to see my family and friends back home. i have to let go of all of that for the time being, and trust that God is Sovereign over these things. i must choose embrace my new culture and i cannot do that while i am still clinging to my home culture.

all that to say, this does not make it any easier for me to say goodbye. i have already been able to say a few goodbyes, but there are still a lot more that need to be said in the next five days. i dread a few of them. i literally get sick to my stomach when i think about saying goodbye to my family. so, i ask for your prayers and for the Lords Grace in this process of saying goodbye. i know it will not be easy to say goodbye, but i also know that the cost of following Jesus is never cheap.

november 14th!

woops. the departure date just got pushed forward by a day. IM LEAVING ON THE 14TH! thank the LORD! He is good...

Jehovah Jireh (again)

i am fully funded!!! i got a call a few nights ago from a supporter who wanted to increase their giving and that put me over 100% on pledged support! praise God! He is faithful to provide.

why latvia?

i get that question a lot. and here is why...

because of kids like this who do not know who Jesus is... simply because there is no one to tell them about Him.

waiting...

as most of you know, i am not in latvia. my september 1st departure date has been pushed back indefinitely. i am now hoping to leave by late october.

this experience of waiting has shown me how incredibly impatient i am. as i wait for the rest of my financial support to come in, God has been giving me a crash course on patience. He has gently dragged me through this process of waiting on His timing. what makes this so hard, is that i feel like i have been waiting for this departure date for the past six years and now its looking like i might have to wait a little bit longer than i had anticipated... and as all impatient people know, these last few weeks of waiting have not been very pleasant. i am being forced to trust God. crazy huh?

so that is where i am at as of september 25th. please stay tuned for more updates and thank you for prayers and tremendous generosity towards me during this time! i have been encouraged by your support.

SPLICE

our SPLICE group

your prayers were answered! thank you so much! i was blessed to take part in this SPLICE training. i came away from this experience with a better understanding of what i will encounter as i prepare to move into a new culture and more importantly these weeks of training helped me to get back to having an intimate relationship with God (it took getting away from "ministry" for five weeks to realize how spiritually dry i had been over the past six months!). i am thankful for getting to experience God in some special ways during this training. praise Him!

SPLICE was a very emotionally draining three weeks. i made a lot of good friends and that is what made saying goodbye to this loving community so hard. as a community we had developed a common bond because of our shared experiences and understanding about what we were about to partake in as fellow missionaries in different parts of the world. we also witnessed how God had worked mightily in our three weeks together. here are a few of the pictures from SPLICE;

this man changed my life (robin allen, the director of SPLICE)

mike & i on top of pikes peak

a few friends from SPLICE (from right to left; fletch, ashley, candace, sarah & mike)

goodbye to my SPLICE family. it was fun. you all will be missed.

60%

a few people have asked me what percentage i am at for monthly support... well, i added it up a few days ago and i am at around 60%! more than half way there...

also, the past few days i have been working on my prayer card. here is a rough version of the one that i will be sending out to my supporters;

PILAT & moose hunting

the MTI training center

well, the first half of my training is over. PILAT has helped me to learn a lot about language and as a result i feel better equipped to take on the daunting task of learning the latvian language. (pictured below: mike, fletch & i with the director of PILAT; dwight gradin)

mike, nick and i were blessed to have the ulman family who allowed us to live with them for the past two weeks and i know we were all blown away by their hospitality. (pictured below: maici, erin, gavin & david ulman)

on friday afternoon after PILAT ended, we got the chance to drive up to fort collins for the weekend and visit with our fellow JVLV missionaries, kelly and donna hargan.

it was a nice chance to connect with them again. kelly took us out four-wheeling on his birthday and it was quite an experience! as we were driving to where we were going to go four-wheeling we had a chance encounter with a MOOSE!

it came out of the bushes and out onto the road and cut off our jeep!!! i got so excited that i felt like that annoying kid in Jurassic Park....

i could not believe my eyes, this thing was huge and it could move! we kept asking kelly to pull up next to the moose and to his better judgement he decided not to. we later realized the wisdom in this decision, because there was no roof or doors on this jeep for protection and apparently moose tend to be very aggressive animals.

on sunday morning we drove back to colorado springs and went to new life church. overall, it was a very nice relaxing weekend. on to SPLICE....

MTI

its funny because the more i talk to people about the trip, the more i realize that i have no clue what i am about to get into! and in a weird way this is very comforting to me. i can look back on the times in my life where i have felt similarly and those were the times where i have been able to see God work the mightiest.

thankfully, i will have some formal training before i make the move overseas. from july 23rd-august 24th i will be in colorado for missionary training. Mission Training International is the training organization that Josiah Venture sends each of their missionaries to and this is what my schedule will look like for the next few weeks;

• july 23rd-august 3rd- i will be enrolled in the PILAT (Program In Language Acquisition Techniques) training program. these two weeks are focused on acquiring the skills that are necessary to learn other languages.
• august 6th-24th- i will be enrolled in the SPLICE (Spiritual, Personal, Lifestyle, Interpersonal, Cultural and Endure/Enjoy) training program. this is a three week program that focuses on developing healthy missionaries.
  

if you think of me during this time, i would ask that you would pray for me. pray that God would humble me and continue to prepare me to serve Him in Latvia. also, pray that i would walk away from the training with a better understanding of who God is and a deeper love for Him. thank you for your support!

LV slideshow

this is a little slideshow i put together to show some of the pictures from my previous trips...

Jehovah Jireh

WOW. i have well over 25% of my monthly support raised! God raised over $300 in monthly support TODAY! and thats not including the $2,000 that He also raised in one time gifts TODAY! Praise the Lord.

graduation

its official.

on may 26th, at a little after 9am, i graduated from Biola University. the ceremony was a needed ending to my college career. i had been living in a limbo for the past five months feeling like i was finished with school, but without it being an official thing. and now it was. i was finished.

it was a bittersweet experience. on one hand graduation was a very happy moment because it marked a closing to an amazing period of my life, but on the other hand it was a very sad and sobering reality. this was it. no more college life. i knew that this meant the times i would see my college friends would be much fewer and farther between. in fact, i probably said goodbye to a few people for life.

i thank God for the opporunity that He gave me. i am very grateful for my time at Biola and i was blessed to be there for three and a half years. i was blessed to learn about the One True God. i was blessed to meet the people that i did. i was blessed to experience the things that i did. i was blessed to learn from some amazing people. i was blessed to figure out more of who i am. i am a different person now than i was four years ago and i am thankful for that. even though it gives me a pit in my stomach to think about it, i am thankful for graduating.

Biola does this neat thing during the first week of school where they have a dinner for all the incoming freshmen and they have you write on a notecard your hopes and dreams for the next four years. i filled out that card and sealed it in an envelope four years ago. they gave the envelopes back to us the day before graduation. i cannot remember what i wrote down and honestly im scared to open it. im afraid of falling short of what i had hoped to do over those four years. im scared that i wasted too much of my time at Biola. im scared that i squandered the gift that God gave me. im scared that whenever i do open and read what i wrote down four years ago, i will finally understand that my college career is officially over.

regardless of what i wrote on that card, college was what it was. i was blessed to experience it. i am thankful for it and (though it is a bit cheesy) i feel this famous saying shares some of my same sentiments towards the last four years;
"I asked God for strength, that I might achieve; I was made weak, that I might learn to humbly obey. I asked for health, that I might do greater things; I was given infirmity, that I might do better things. I asked for riches, that I might be happy; I was give poverty, that I might be wise. I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men; I was given weakness, that I might feel the need for God. I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life; I was given life, that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all, most richly blessed."
-Unknown Confederate Soldier's prayer