Catch Up....

I have officially been here in San Francisco for 8 months! Its been a few years since I have updated my blog ...I think maybe its time! 

This past month was defiantly a month of breakthroughs for me! I feel like I just sat back and watch Jesus break down walls, and fight all the while asking me to just be still…to trust and watch him work.  How amazing our Jesus is! How many times have I gone into something with the desire to bless and serve other, but in the process I am the one that learns and is blessed! This is very much what has happened with SF. 

I came here hesitantly, and very nervous, painfully aware of my own shortcomings and insecurities. I had tried to come and join staff with Because Justice Matters for three years, always feeling confident that I was strong enough to live in the Tenderloin, and participate in ministry, but the doors were always closed to me.  Then the Lord called me home for a year and it was extremely difficult for me. I had just come home from Vietnam and Cambodia, and an incredible 9 month long Bible school though University of the Nations, and then I was home. I felt like I was in the wilderness… alone. 

During that year the reality of how broken, fearful, and foolish I was overwhelmed me. All the hurts from my past, that I hadn’t dealt with, surfaced causing me to feel as if I was drowning. It was then that the Lord gently whispered to me “now you are ready”. 

What the Heck God! 

I’ll be honest I didn’t even know if I liked God anymore, let alone if I wanted to go and work with a ministry that was focused on his Justice. How could I go and help other people walk through healing when I was in the middle of brokenness?  How could I point people to Jesus when I was struggling with my own faith that he is good?

So I fought the Lord; bringing him my lists of my struggles, sins, and  insecurities and fears. Trying to remind him what kind of person I was, as if he didn’t see, or had forgotten me. The truth is, I thought he had. Corinthians 12:9- “But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”…so that Christ's power may rest on me.”

Praise the Lord that he is so much bigger then our pride, our pasts, or brokenness. His grace is unchanging, and he is our anchor, or hope in the middle of every storm that life brings our way. So after some major confirmations that could only come from his perfect orchestrating, and some major heart change I decided to follow his call. After that I was so humbled to see how he provided for me, not just financially but in the community he placed me in in Gunnison. My family, friends, and church family came together to support me financially and prayerfully, and I set off, not alone, but with the Body of Christ behind me! 

Man it rocks my world to look back at everything the Lord did for me, through the people in my life, through YOU who I am writing to right now. I could not be here without your support, without all your encouraging words that helped me through that year in the wilderness. So from the bottom of my heart “Thank You so very much!”

I know find myself living and being sharpened in a community of people passionate about Jesus and excited about what he is doing in this city at the YWAM base! I am amazed every day at the women that Jesus has brought together in BJM  to fight for Justice and most importantly to love the women and children in our community. I have been a part of pioneering an incredible ministry in the Tenderloin to the youth and their families. Learning to love them well and partner with them in raiding their families in a very difficult city, and a very challenging neighborhood. Our girls are growing in their knowledge and understanding of a God who is passionate about them and is so delighted in them! To learn about self esteem and their identity in Jesus, and to be equipped to break the chains of abuse and addiction in this community. We are training World Changers and it is incredible to be a part of that! This is only the beginning of the revival God is starting here in the bay area! It is so much bigger then me, and Because justice Matters, and YWAM, and the other ministries in the TL, and I can’t wait to see it come into fruition!

      I have been learning allot about how to do ministry well, something I’m sure I will be learning to do the rest of my life. I feel like I am seeing Jesus in a way that I haven’t before, or at least in a very long time. So many walls have been torn down I was allowing to be there because of un-forgiveness and doubt, towards the Lord. I perceived that he had failed me so many times, in protecting me. I could look back and see times I thought he had abandoned me, and it hurt so badly. But he didn’t leave me, he didn’t fail to protect me, he always was, is now, and will always be with me no matter what life throws at me. I still have some pretty big questions, and allot to learn and to wrestle through with him. I will most definitely mess it up, and have doubts. I may change, but God never will and he is choosing to use this imperfect ministry to reach out to the lost treasures he is so  in love with, and I am so humbled and amazed at his grace, and his perfect unchanging love in that! Praise God! I want to be transparent with where I’ve been, am now and will be! I am 24 now, and I am super stoked to see what this next year of life will bring!