Just being real

I have a rant. I don't usually rant (at least online), but I feel that this needs said. 

I am tired of fake people. I am sick of looking at Facebook and Instagram and seeing perfectly cropped and edited pictures and stories. If someone wants to post about something tragic or painful they have to put a spiritual spin on it. I see post like, "this hard thing happened, but God is good and here is an inspiring verse that I am encouraged by." Sure. If this is truly your response, fine, but what about when it's not? I think that there is nothing wrong with posting something like: "This hard thing is going on, please pray for me." That's it. No need to say how much we have learned because of this trial. There is no shame in telling people that you feel like your life is falling to pieces. They probably feel the same way.

We all have that one friend (or many) on Facebook that ALWAYS posts about how awesome their devotions are and how they are the most amazing Christian because they are doing this really spiritual activity (accompanied by a heavily edited Instagram picture of their Bible and a sunset to emphasize that they got up REALLY early to be extra close to God). What does the Bible say about praying to get attention? "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

(Matt 6:5-6) 

This is not just a social media problem. I see this in real life. The biggest example of this to me is worship leaders. As a fallen human being, I have a hard time believing that every time that you get up to lead worship that you are able to joyfully worship God. I know there are weeks that I can barely stand to hear the music, there would be no way for me to sing praises in front of the church or school. I know that leaders have the responsibility to lead, I understand that, however, it is not necessary to try to act like everything is fine. I think people will understand if you choose to say that you are having a hard time. I think your team should be able to step up and help you if you need to take a break. If you get to worship and realize that your heart is not right, what is wrong with asking your fellow vocalists to help you sing because you are incapable. One of the hardest things that I have ever done is tell the group I was leading that we were not going to have worship because I was not in a position to lead at that time. I am not telling you about it to make me look good. It is hard to talk about, I felt like I was weak, like I was letting everyone down. But instead, they understood. They were not angry. They saw that I was a real person who struggled like everyone else. 

A leader that I greatly look up to is not afraid to deal with her struggles in a real way. She feels free to cry while leading if she is struggling and ask for help from the rest of the team if she knows she is not doing well. This doesn't make me think poorly of her, I respect her for it. I love her more for it. 

But I see so many leaders get up week after week and put on a flawless show. Always the same passion and excitement for worship. I have a hard time singing with these people. I can't help but think about it. I know that my opinion of someone should not affect my worship, but it does. I beg leaders to think about how they are coming across. And maybe, if you realize that you are fake, tell your team. Admit your imperfection to them. Trust me, they will understand. They are broken themselves. Take the time that you need to work through things. Be honest with others and with yourself, but most importantly, be honest with God. He knows. Trust me, He knows. If you do not humble yourself, He will humble you. Speaking from experience, this is not a fun experience. I beg you. Be real. You will not lose respect, you will gain it.

Closed!?!?

On Wednesday morning all students of Moody Bible Institute-Spokane recieved this email:

"While we will make adjustments to certain program elements of Moody Bible Institute and Moody Theological Seminary, we will unfortunately be closing the Spokane Biblical Studies campus at the end of the 2018 academic year, and offering Spokane students the options of transferring to Chicago or completing their program online."

This is a shocking blow to all of us students. For those of us graduation this May, it is not a huge deal, however, for all the students not graduating this is a massive hurdle. But the people effected the most are the faculty. They almost all, except the few asked to go to Chicago, are unemployed starting June. 

Moody Bible Institute - Spokane has been a huge part of my growing into the person that I am now. 

For one thing, this is the place that I met my husband. 

I have also learned so much, not just from classes, but from fellow students and teachers who have poured into my life. 

I will forever look back at this time that I had at Moody Bible Institute - Spokane with joy. These have been some of the best and hardest years of my life. I thank God for this opportunity and look excitedly towards what He has planned next for us. 

The summer days pass quickly

 

A few week ago, I had the honor to be a bride's maid in one of my best friends' wedding. 

It was a beautiful wedding and an amazing bride!

The next week, my husband and I got to travel to Oregon to go to Christian Youth in Action (CYIA) and visit family. 

We stopped at Multnomah Falls

We actually hiked all the way to the top. We did not realize how wet and cold we would be by the end of it, but we still had a ton of fun.

CYIA this year was pretty great! It was my 9th time being at CYIA (if you count that time in Arkansas).

This year we had five different CEF missionary groups from around the world that we learned about and raised money for. 

Each day we heard about a different one. Monday was Martha from East/Central Africa, Tuesday was Pastor D. from Madagascar, Wednesday was Dr. Christopher from India, Thursday was Korn (pronounced Gone) from Taiwan, and Friday was Daniel, Rachel, and Michelle from Oregon representing the Arise program though CEF. 

The theme of the week was "Around the World".

This year I got to lead worship and be a team trainer. I had the best team!

Joseph, Colette, Chris, and Michelle were the greatest teammates I could have wanted. I was very sad to say goodbye at the end of the week. 

After CYIA, I finally got to see my family. We have had a lot of fun!

Foot art with paint Sharpies

I am also attempting to launch my photography ministry. I call it Pics with Purpose.

 I started taking pictures of my sisters, taking yearly family pics, band pics, and most recently my parents asked me to take some pictures of them for their newsletter. This made an idea start to form in my mind. What if I took pictures for missionaries and other people who need cheap pics to use in their newsletters, prayer cards, and anything else they needed? Having just gotten married I know that getting photographs done can be quite spendy, so I can up with the idea for Pics with Purpose.

My idea is that I would go to lunch with you to learn about what you need and get to know you. I think that knowing each other a little bit will help get the pictures that you want and help make the photoshoot more fun! After lunch we would go to the desired location and take the pictures for as long as it takes to get the shots you want. After that I will go home and edit the pictures. I will then find another time to meet with you to give you the final product. I will give you all the raw footage as well as any that I edited. We will do this digitally; I will bring a flash drive with all the pictures and you can download them onto your computer. 

There is no charge unless you want me to print the pictures for you, and in that case I will only charge what it cost me to print them. I do accept donations if you feel inclined to pay me, but it is definitely not required. 

I would love to use the gift of photography to bless people who would otherwise not have pictures.

If you are in the Spokane area and would like to have a few pictures done, you can go to my Facebook page (Pics with Purpose) and send me a message or you can reply to this blog post. 

One more exciting bit of information is that Christopher and I will be traveling to Germany this Christmas break. We will be there from the beginning of December till the middle of January 2018. We might be a little bit crazy, but it will be an exciting adventure! 

More information to come about why and what we will be doing while we are there.

Eins, два, three, 四

The school year started off pretty cold. I think this is the most snow I have ever had to deal with. I do not really care for snow. And then just when we thought that maybe spring was coming and winter was over, that stupid groundhog had to see its shadow and the snow came pounding down again. 

Not everything has been so sad though. This year has been awesome even with all the snow. 

This year I am still on a worship team at Moody and have had a few more opportunities this semester. A few weeks ago our leader/lead singer got sick and put me in charge of leading the team. This was both fun and terrifying. We also had to opportunity, as a team, to do a two hour musical worship service in a local church. 

Something that I have been learning in all of this is that God is funny. Not in a disrespectful way, but what I mean is that I do not always need to be so serious when thinking and talking about Him. Sometimes I feel like I can have fun, but as soon as we start talking about God: no more fun, be serious, do not enjoy this. While we are to have a healthy fear of God, we are also to enjoy Him and all that He has done for us. He has given us so much to be thankful for and joyful about. Why can't we show that in how we worship and talk about Him?

"Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises!
Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody!
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD!"
[Psalm 98:4-6]

 

But after a long run of winter, spring may just be coming soon. As I sat in class today with the sun warming my back, I wrote flowery words to describe how I was feeling: "I love to gaze out the window and see the blue sky and flowers starting to push up through the still frozen earth. While the rest of the world lies dead, these small green..." I was distracted after these words so who knows where I was going to go with that thought. 

Lately my classes have been really influencing my everyday life. My favorite class right now is Intercultural Communication. This class uses reading, lectures, discussions, guest speakers, field trips, and projects to teach us how to minister cross culturally. For a team project that I am a part of, we are looking at how to reach minority groups in our our community. Our group is choosing to research Ukrainian people in Spokane. The first step in this was to go to a Russian speaking church. The church that I usually attend Sundays also has a sister  Russian service at 2pm. We connected with a few people and now we will be hopefully meeting with them and attending this sister church more often. I am very excited about this opportunity!

Another project for that class was to attend a Talk Time meeting. These are times for international students to meet with American students to practice their English. This week there were about 50 Japanese girls in Spokane to learn English. They were all super sweet and I wanted to take them all home with me. We were celebrating an early St. Patrick's day so I got to try and explain, in very simple words, what we were celebrating. it was hard to even explain seemingly simple concepts such as luck

If you would, be praying for these people that we have been in contact with. Most of the Japanese students were not Christians and I was having a hard time even explaining simple concepts to them so I felt totally lost trying to talk about the Gospel. Please pray that next time we see them we will be able to share with them the good news of Jesus.

Thank you for your prayers. God is doing amazing work.

Tschuss!

NEVER!

God has a sense of humor. 

Lately I have taken to not saying that I will NEVER do something, because that seems to be just what I will do. 

Things I have said I will never do:

I will not move to a big city

I will not marry a man named Christopher

I will not go to a four year college

And now look at me:

Living in Spokane, WA

Married to my amazing husband Christopher

And in my third year of Moody Bible Institute

God has been taking me on a pretty crazy ride. I cannot complain though. God has given me more than I ever deserve or even knew I wanted. 

Right now I do not know what I am going to do after I finish Moody next spring. I have a few options that I am considering, but I do not know where God is leading me. I am trying to be flexible yet prepared. I am heading in the direction of getting a Masters in Elementary Education after I get done at Moody. But who knows. I am just trying to never say NEVER.

Wedding

Here are a few pictures from our wedding. If you want to see more go to our facebook page.

 All moved out of the storage unit, and into our new home.

Visiting family for Christmas

Not much else has happened. We finished another semester at Moody. That leaves 3 semesters till I graduate. 5 down, 3 to go.

Continue to pray for school. I am learning a lot and want to remember this after I graduate. Pray that we will know what to do after Moody.