City Mouse

As promised…a conference recap.

We arrived at the conference on Monday and we ended up leaving to come back to Atlanta on Friday evening (It was a very long week). Despite being a long week it was definitely an amazing experience and here are some highlights…

One of the main things that was accomplished was that I was able to confirm that Bolivia is still my main focus. I did meet with Kim and Mike Miller, the SAMS missionaries in Honduras, and they are doing some amazing work there – in a rural village called Chasnigua. I was so impressed by what they are doing and I was interested in their ministry because of their strong focus on children. But they will primarily be working in a rural village of about 60 families and as I pray about it more I just really feel that God is leading me into a more urban environment for my ministry.

I really do think that to some degree I am just a city mouse at heart. And one of the interesting things that I learned this week about ministries in the rural areas is that things kinda die down in the evenings after dark. Most of the ministry activities happen during the day. Makes sense. And when I stop to think about the variety of ways that God might use me wherever He sends me I just really feel that I could be apart of some amazing ministries in the evening. In fact, most of the ministries to street children in the big cities happen at night.

I was also able to spend some time with the Bishop of Bolivia and get his blessing to move forward. So now the next really big step in front of me is my placement trip to Bolivia. This is big because this trip will determine the exact city that I will be moving to and the exact ministry that I will be partnering with.

So in about two months I will be back in Bolivia for two weeks to visit Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and La Paz to try and figure out which city/ministry truly grabs my heart and to see where I will live for the next three years of my life. In the meantime, I am about to start taking my dog and pony show on the road. My “quit my” business cards are printed and ready to go. Now my goals are to setup as many face to face meetings as possible with potential supporters and also to schedule larger scale presentation opportunities at as many churches as possible. And I am working on finalizing my first official support letter which should hit mailboxes in a few weeks. So if you get an email from me asking for your mailing address get ready!!!

It certainly is all about building relationships. But it’s a very tricky thing since I only have about seven months to build new relationships here before I hope to move. I HAVE to truly view people through the lens of wanting to build a long-term relationship with them. If I just see them as dollar signs and only show interest in myself and not interest in their world – they will see right through me. And rightly so.

The conference also just simply confirmed that my God is a missionary God. And that Christianity without missions is not really Christianity at all. Probably the best thing was just the opportunity to listen to real missionaries share their experiences. I received some great tips on how to take care of myself in the field and how to combat both physical AND spiritual attacks.

It was a very exciting week which took me one step closer to “the move.”

T-minus 7 months, 16 days, 11 hours, 25 minutes and 45 seconds…