Happy Thoughts

So I feel like I normally sound kind of depressing on my blog posts...it's usually about how my life is horrible or I realized I was a terrible person or found a way to be less of a terrible person.  But fear not! Today I am super happy and instead of gloom, I will be sprinkling a wee bit of sunshine on your day.

As you all know I'm raising money to work at Team Expansion right now and it's been a bit of a process. In January it'll be a whole year since I first started fundraising. At first I thought I'd be down in Louisville by the summer (as in last summer) and then when that didn't work my goal became fall, which also didn't work. So needless to say, the reality of my working with Team Expansion has always seemed far off. I never had any intention of giving up, it just seems like it's something that's so far out of reach that it's almost not real. However--I am happy to say I'm getting SUPER close to my goal and will (hopefully!) by in Louisville by Spring of 2012!!

God has really been doing amazing things lately, especially when it comes to my support raising. I've been around $1,000 away from my goal for about a month or so and I'm really running low on contacts. I've talked to most everyone I know already so I was, to be honest, starting to get a little worried that I'd have to come up with a Plan B, like working part time at Team Expansion and getting a part time job somewhere else to help pay the bills. I was getting fairly stressed out about it and I have obviously been praying about it a lot and then just the other day God totally blindsided me with an amazing miracle that cut the rest of the support I need to raise in HALF! How awesome is that!? God has continued to amaze me throughout this whole process and it continues to blow my mind each time!

This means I am now less than $500/month away from living in Louisville. I can't even begin to express how amazing this feels. It's been a crazy long road, and I know I'm not there yet and there's still a lot to do before I can move down there, but it's getting so close that it's becoming real. I'm starting to really believe this is going to happen. I'm starting to look into apartments and furniture and locating Taco Bells in the greater Louisville area.  It's been such a long time in the making and I feel like I'm really going to move, which is super crazy. But also crazy exciting! I'm getting ready to start a life. A real life. So far every stage of my life has been sort of an in-between stage. In high school I was always waiting to get to college. In college I was always waiting to graduate and get a real job. And for the past year and a half I've been waiting to move out of my parents house and start a life of my own. But once I get to Louisville, there won't be any more waiting. It'll be the real thing. I'll be living in an awesome city near amazing people doing the job I've always dreamed of doing. My life is going to be freaking amazing. And I can barely wait.

Anyways, I was just really excited about everything that's happening right now and how close I am to my goal so I just wanted to share that with everyone :)

PS...I'll be trying out some new names for my blog. Obviously Adventures in Africa wasn't quite cutting it anymore. If anyone has suggestions I'd be happy to hear them. I'm terrible at this.

I Wasn't an Accident, Kyla!

So there’s two things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’m not sure if they fit together but I’m going to put them in the same blog post because I’m lazy so I will try to fake my way into making them sound like they’re related.  If you can figure out where the two thoughts come together you win a special prize! Marshall’s losing his teeth now and I can’t keep them all, so….

The North American was a few weeks ago (and was amazing, by the way!) and I spent most of my time at the Team Expansion Unleashed for the Unreached booth. For those of you who weren’t there, it was a really cool, humongous booth set up for people at the convention to research and hopefully adopt an unreached people group. Once they chose a people group they placed a pin on the big map where their people group was located. It was really amazing, we had around 200 people choose people groups and the map filled up really quickly. So that was really cool and very exciting because it will be my job (when I finally get down there!) to follow up with these people and hopefully work with them on a long term basis.

So anyways—here I am, seeing all these people researching these different people groups and putting their pins all over this map and it kind of occurred to me, I could’ve been born in any of these places. I could’ve been born in India or Afghanistan or North Korea. I could’ve been raised in a Muslim family or I could’ve been born to Atheists or I could’ve been born to Fred Phelps (God Forbid!). The point is, I was born to 1 family out of billions. I happened to be born to a Christian family that took me to church all my life and showed me Christ and his grace and what it means to be a Christian. Would I still be so dedicated to the cause of Christ if I had been born in one of those other places? Maybe.  Maybe not. There’s no way to know.

But then last week (due to the fact that I was home alone and really bored and entertaining myself by watching lots of historically set movies) I started thinking—I could’ve been born not just anywhere in the world, but at any time during history. I could’ve grown up during the time of Constantine or in the Middle Ages or in the 1920s. There are literally infinite possibilities of time/place combinations for me to exist. Europe in the 1500s, South America in 2000 BC, or Ohio in 1987. It’s not that I just feel blessed to be who I am and where I am at the time I’m in. I definitely do. But it’s more than that. Why? Out of these billions of places and times I could’ve been born, why now? I have a hard time believing that it’s just chance that we’re each born exactly where we were during the exact time period we’re in. I know there’s more to it than that. I think God specifically brought you (and me) into existence at this exact time and place because this is when He knew we’d be most effective for Him.  It’s no accident that I was born when and where I was out of these infinite number of options.

So the trick now, I suppose, is figuring out what it is God wants me for here and now.  I probably won’t ever know exactly what it is God wants me for or why I exist now and not 1000 years ago. But at least I know there is a reason and that it was not an accident (even if I was an accident KYLA!).  

So that’s kind of comforting.  A lot of the time (especially right now while I’m in limbo between slight unemployment and an actual job while I’m fundraising) I feel kind of useless. And a little lost, to be honest.  I’m fundraising, yes, but it’s a slow, somewhat frustrating process at times where you have to put your entire self-worth on the line for people to judge. That may seem a little dramatic, but it does feel like that sometimes. Here I am telling people about my dreams and goals and passions and heart, telling them that I found my true calling in life and they get to listen to me, judge me, and decide whether or not I am worthy of their time or prayers or money.  **Now, to be clear, I don’t feel that way with most people. Almost everyone I talk to is very excited for me and they’re so happy for me and they’re almost always willing to pray for me even if they can’t help me in other ways, which I totally understand and appreciate. But it’s still hard to put your entire being out there for examination and judgment and approval so you can do your dream job. It’s very humbling, which is not a bad thing. And I’ve learned so much so far and met some really incredible, generous, sacrificial people. **

Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked. The point I was trying to make was that I’m in this super weird in between stage of my life where I have a job waiting for me, but I just can’t get there yet. So I can’t really get another job because I’m working full time trying to get to the job I have waiting. Most of my friends have real jobs or are going back to school this month or are married or live far away. They’re all moving forward and I feel like I’m still stuck in this awkward stage where I don’t really know what I’m doing or when I’ll get my chance to move forward.

This was really bothering me for awhile. I got so frustrated because all I wanted was to move to Louisville and start working but it just wasn’t happening yet. Someone said to me a few weeks ago “I had no idea it was this hard and took this long to become a missionary!” And I had to agree with them. During training they told us it would take awhile, sometimes years, to get your funding to go and that it’ll all happen in God’s time when He’s ready for it to happen. But I just kept thinking –Why?? It’s not like I’m doing anything helpful to You right now.  I could be with Team Expansion, reaching these unreached people, but instead I’m sitting at home watching another Cake Boss marathon, waiting for it to be my turn to go. (Just to be clear again—I do lots of fundraising things during the day most days. But I also watch a lot of Cake Boss while doing so…I mean, you can only make so many phone calls in a day you know?)

This really bothered me for awhile. And still does a bit. But not that long ago I started reading Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest and, on a particularly difficult day, came upon this:

Put God’s Will First. “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God” (Hebrews 10:9).

A person’s obedience is to what he sees to be a need— our Lord’s obedience was to the will of His Father. The rallying cry today is, “We must get to work! The heathen are dying without God. We must go and tell them about Him.” But we must first make sure that God’s “needs” and His will in us personally are being met. Jesus said, “. . . tarry . . . until you are endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). The purpose of our Christian training is to get us into the right relationship to the “needs” of God and His will. Once God’s “needs” in us have been met, He will open the way for us to accomplish His will, meeting His “needs” elsewhere.

It kind of blew my mind that, first of all, I read this on the day I was thinking about all of this stuff so much and was really upset about it. That was cool. But it also made me feel like such an idiot. Maybe God’s “needs” in me aren’t met yet. I have to obey his will for ME and meet his needs in ME before I can meet His needs in other people. I was being so selfish and so impatient. I wanted to go and start my work because I didn’t like where I was in my life. I didn’t like being in between. But maybe this is exactly where God needs me right now. Maybe if I started working with these unreached people now, as I am today, I’d ruin their chance of loving Christ forever.  I hope I wouldn’t be that terrible haha But I guess you never really know. For whatever reason, I’m not who I need to be yet. I’m not sure how to become that person that God thinks is ready to serve Him in Louisville but now I have another goal, besides getting the funds I need to move—becoming that person that God knows will serve His people in the best way possible. That and finishing my Cake Boss marathon. 

The Two Little Circles That Changed My Life

So as I mentioned before, I'm starting with Team Expansion soon. I have officially been accepted into Team Expansion which I'm super excited about! (They must not have read the psych evaluation too closely...) I already finished the 2 week training program called Launch and everything, so now it's on to the prayer raising and fundraising and life planning bits.

But let's go back a step. Launch. Like I said before, it's a 2 week training program for anyone who wants to work with Team Expansion. It's mandatory for everyone and I can see why...it was awesome. Seriously, some of the best teachings I've ever had on spiritual disciplines and missions and finances and faith and grace and tons of other things. I really learned a lot during those 2 weeks and some of it I figured I'd share...well, just because I can. And now that you're reading this you're probably curious and can't stop.

When I first got to Launch I was actually rather intimidated by...well, everyone. There were 8 of us there for both weeks and out of those 8 at least 5 had already been involved in long-term missions around the world. One woman had been a missionary for 43 years already. Everyone else was older than me by at least 6 years. And here I was, 23 and clueless, coming in with just a 2 month trip to Kenya under my belt. (Now I'd like to clarify here that I don't mean to belittle my time in Kenya...it was by far the most amazing experience of my life, but it seemed kind of puny when compared with 43 years overseas) After the first few days of hearing what everyone else had been doing with their lives, the ministries they were involved in, the souls they've saved, I started to feel kind of inadequate. I'd already been dealing with feeling like I wasn't good enough or qualified enough or spiritual enough to do this. I've never directly brought anyone to Christ. I've never baptized anyone. I've never led a Bible study. I can barely muster up the focus to read my own Bible half the time. Why did I think I was good enough to work with an amazing missions organization full of some of the most godly people I've ever met? I really struggled with this for awhile and thought a lot about what I was getting myself into and if I'd be able to handle it.

Then one day during training we were actually talking about this, feeling like you're not worthy of serving God. We were going through Mark 10:29 and Ephesians 6 and one of the guys said something that really stuck with me. He said, "When you say you're not worthy, you're saying Jesus isn't worthy." That was a huge eye opener for me. As soon as he said that I just felt a thousand times better. If we love Christ and are filled with him and the Spirit then by saying that we aren't good enough, we're saying he's not good enough. If we think we can't do it, we're saying he can't do it, because he's in us. If Christ is in my heart then insulting myself is like insulting him. It made it a lot easier to accept that it's not ME that's going to be doing great things for the Lord, it's God working THROUGH me. I'm just the vessel for His work. It takes a lot of the pressure off when you see it that way :)

Thing I learned #2. During one of our talks about support raising we were talking about our fears, things that make us dread raising support for our ministries. I learned a lot about faith that day, but one of the things that meant the most to me was when someone said "If it makes sense on paper, then you don't need God in the equation. You've got to have faith." This was huge for me as a super organized, systematic planner. I like to have everything all completely and totally together myself before I ask God to step in but when you're fundraising for a ministry that's literally impossible. I can do all the preparation I want, but when it comes down to it, I just have to have faith that God will get me what I need. He will open peoples' eyes and hearts to His work; I just have to do my best and He'll take it from there. Once again, it takes a lot of the pressure off when you realize there's nothing you can do and that you just have to give it up to God and trust that He'll be there.

I realize this is getting long. Sorry. Feel free to get a snack, go to the bathroom. I'll start again when you're ready.

Good? Ok. So before I get to the big life changing moment of the 2 weeks I'll tell you 2 other things I learned (but in a super short, concise way)

Super concise thing #1. It's hard to tell which voice in your head is the Spirit's. If you're like me, you have multiple voices (I really don't think they read that psych evaluation...) and some of them are telling you that you're a terrible person for doing or thinking whatever it is that you did or thought. And you might be a terrible person, I'm not here to judge that. However, what I learned was that God's voice, God's Spirit, condemns the sin or the action, but not the sinner, not the person. When I'm feeling bad about myself, about who I am, I have to remember that's not God. God doesn't break us down, he builds us up. He loves us despite our actions. I thought that was a pretty cool thing to remember.

Super concise thing #2. Ok this isn't so much something I learned but something that I heard and was awesome. On this particular day we were talking about spiritual disciplines and fasting and when fasting changed things. One of the couples there had been serving as missionaries already for a number of years and the wife had gone through a period of pretty intense depression, almost to the point of suicide. There was a 3 day period she said she was just consumed with this dark depression and could barely function. Then on the morning of the 3rd or 4th day she woke up and just felt better. Like, 100% completely better, no dark thoughts hanging over her head, no depression, just joy. She immediately went to go tell her husband and his response was "Good, I can finally eat again!" This whole time she'd been dealing with the intense depression he'd been fasting for her without her knowledge, just praying that God would bring her out of it. I don't know why, but that really stuck with me, too. I thought it was not only sweet, but incredibly awesome to have a husband who is such a good friend and such an obedient Christian, who would literally go days without eating to make sure his wife was ok. Anyways, I thought that was cool.

Ok....last thing. But this is the big life changing one so get excited :)

I have a tendency to get incredibly and unnecessarily anxious about silly things I can't change. Things that are far in the future or things that might never actually happen. It's slightly ridiculous, but true. To give you an example....nope. Not going to. I sincerely thought about it and even typed out a few examples...then I realized, no one needs to see the ridiculously crazy side of Kelsey so we'll just leave it at the fact that I get worked up over things I have no control over.

Anyways, Doug Lucas was talking to us about the life of missionaries, things we need to be prepared for mentally and spiritually, how life is going to be different, things like that. He said that when we go overseas the culture is obviously going to be different but it's up to us how we handle it. We can be frustrated that we have to stand in line for 3 hours to pay a bill or we can use that time to practice language skills with people around us. It all depends on our point of view, our attitude. He made us repeat the most important word I heard the whole 2 weeks: Acceptance. He said to picture our worries, concerns, and irritations like 2 circles, one inside the other. In the big circle it says concern and the smaller circle inside says influence. Inside these circles are all of the things we're anxious about, things we want to change, things we stay up worrying about at night. But we need to separate our worries into the 2 categories: concern and influence. The big circle is everything that we're worried about, but the smaller circle is what we can change. We need to focus on the smaller circle, on our circle of influence. There is absolutely no point in spending 3 hours worrying about the weather tomorrow or if someone's going to rear end my car on my way home. That's not my circle of influence. I can't change it so I need to give it up and ACCEPT whatever happens.

It's at this point we need to trust in God's sovereignty. Another thing Doug reminded me of is that God has something planned for us everyday--it's just up to me to find whatever "easter egg" is hidden in my life that day. There's something we can learn, something we can get better at, something we can understand more deeply every day, we just have to find it, find the positive in the situation and accept the negative for what it is.

Without going into detail (you are obviously a good friend for reading this far already and I don't want to abuse your fantastic attention span), I'll just tell you that this one idea, the circle of concern vs. influence, seriously changed my life. It changed what I think about on a daily basis. It changed how stressed I am about my future. It taught me to live in the present, not in the worst case scenario future that I used to dwell in. It's so freeing to actually realize that you have little to no control over your life. Scary? Yes. But so good. Because the person who IS in charge is the person I trust the most. And let's be honest, He'll make much better life decisions for me than I would make for myself...

Watch Out Guys, I Have A Life Plan!!!!

Well! There have been some big changes in my life in the last few months, so I guess it’s time I go ahead and update all of you who I’m sure are sitting on the edge of your seats, just waiting to see what I’ll do next. So here you go…

First, let me give you a little back story. One Sunday after I got back from Kenya Doug Lucas, President of Team Expansion (an awesome missions organization out of Louisville—check out their website, for real, it’s fantastic) was speaking at my Dad’s church in Milan. I’m obviously interested in missions and I’d heard great things about Team Expansion as an organization so I figured I’d go check it out. At this point in my super exciting story, you should probably know that I’ve always thought it would be cool as a career (as a second choice, if I can’t have a llama farm) to organize and plan short term trips for churches or other groups going overseas. I love the idea of short term missions trips if they’re done correctly—a group of wealthy, self-centered people can spend 10 days in another country, change the lives of the people they encounter there, and then, with a new outlook on life and American culture, can come back and change people in and around their own community. People who are impacted end up changing twice as many lives, which I think is a cool, unique aspect to short term trips. So anyways…

I got a chance to talk to Doug after the service and I asked him how I would go about doing that with a missions organization. Doug basically told me he’d been needing someone to do something very similar to that at Team Expansion and they hadn’t really been able to find people yet. It was actually a pretty crazy coincidence, in my opinion. Some may call it a “God-thing.” I think I will call it a Godincidence, for these purposes. So. That Godincidence began months of e-mails back and forth, figuring out what I and another woman who’s doing the same thing would be doing, what our jobs would look like, getting logistical things all figured out, etc. We met at the National Missionary Convention in November to talk about it some more and work out some details. Blah, blah, blah, lots of things happened and I filled out lots of paperwork….

Skip to now. I’m currently in the middle of a 2 week training program everyone at Team Expansion goes through called Launch. Me and 10 other potential missionaries that are going all over the world are getting intense training about Team Expansion as an organization, the difficulties and rewards of missionary life, support raising tips, etc. I’ve already learned so much more about missions, the importance of spiritual disciplines, the necessity of reaching the unreached and the best ways to do it. It’s really been a fantastic week spent with a lot of fantastic people.

So if everything goes well (and my psych evaluation comes out ok—cross your fingers everyone) then I will officially be a Team Expansion employee by the end of the month! I don’t think I can even begin to tell you how exciting it is for me to finally feel like I have some sort of career path or direction in my life. And you know what the BEST part is?! Apparently, they either have or are getting a number of alpacas to live at Emerald Hills, the Team Expansion headquarters!! So while I may not have a llama farm, I will work at a place that has llama cousins on it. And I don’t think I could ask for anything more than that. Maybe an endless supply of green olives and tacos, but I think I’ll just be content with alpacas for now.

Oh P.S….One of the great things about Team Expansion is that they don’t ask their missionaries to support their office staff. A lot of missions organizations take a percentage out of missionaries’ funds in order to pay the staff in the States, building expenses, buy coffee? I don’t know what they do with it. The point is, Team Expansion doesn’t do that. The missionaries keep like, 99% of the money they fundraise. While that is awesome for them, it ends up being less awesome for me (even though I think it’s a great idea and is super helpful to missionaries that are already on tight budgets) because that means I also have to raise support to work for Team Expansion.

I know what you’re probably thinking-- “Kelsey! Don’t leave me out! Please, send me a support letter so I can give you money to eat and live on! I want you to live in the nicest cardboard box money can buy!” Well thank you, kind people. And fear not, I would also like to live in a super nice cardboard box (maybe one of those big refrigerator ones!? I could even cut out a window!!) so I will most definitely honor your wishes and send you a support letter so you can both pray for me (and my cardboard home in the rain) and send me all of your money! J