Where You Go I'll Go

A little back story...... 

Something we practice here at Ywam Montana is the reliance of hearing God's voice and then acting on it. Our whole mission is founded on a late night vision one of our founders had.

In the early days of December 2019 my co-leader Joey and I sat at a table in the fairly empty cafeteria and prayed asking the Lord where we should lead a team this upcoming spring. As we sat, countries and cities came to mind and we began to dream about all the places we could lead students and all the ministries we could be doing! We narrowed the entire globe down to 2 nations in SouthEast Asia and submitted it to our leadership. With lots of questions and prayer we were given the okay to pursue these nations! 

As January came to a close news of COVID - 19 encouraged us to re-evaluate our outreach locations. With this we had to bring this information to our team of 11 students who had spent hours in prayer for the nations we had thought we were going. As we sat in a circle with them and brought them the news, they did something that we did not expect. They encouraged my co- leader and I! They affirmed our leadership and the way that we had been walking through this whole situation. there were of course tears and disappointments that we had to walk through with the students but at the end of the day we felt the fathers gentle voice speaking over us "I know what I'm doing, trust me and keep moving forward"

Once the students had been informed we started the search. We looked at Panama and Costa rica and Mozetlan, again pursuing the word of the Lord into where he would want us to go. All those places fell through due to one thing or another. We finally heard back to a small group of islands in the Caribbean. With fresh perspective and new dreams of outreach we began to cast vision for our team of ministry opportunities and what the Lord had in store for a small island. However, soon after we had allowed our hearts to grow excited, the news of the global pandemic had brought our campus leadership to the heart wrenching decision to send our 22 students and whole SBS along with a handful of secondary schools home so we could close our doors and sanitize. 

For the next week we were walking with students through the what and why and how of the current situation. Many of them had never experienced hearing God's voice and were excited to see where God was leading them for outreach and were excited that God had even spoken a place! This brought confusion and disappointment to a lot of students and I would be lying if I said I wasn't feeling any of that too. In the duration of a week I got to choose faith in the face of disappointment and I got to choose gratefulness in the face of chaos. 

The Now 

In the last couple weeks of shut down and self isolation the campus has never been more quiet. Dorm 3 stood empty for the first time since the opening of this campus as a Ywam facility, and everyone in the staff dorm was shut up in their rooms uncertain of the new rules of living. This left plenty of time of binge watching The Simpsons on Disney plus and going on long walks around the trails and up black tail mountain. Restrictions began to lift and we were allowed to interact more with each other which led to long walks and deep conversation. Conversations that had found depth because of time spent in reflection, reflection that was often muddled by busy days and careful consideration of the discipleship of pupils. In this time we talked about God's plan and will, and free will, and how it all intertwines into the world we see today. We talked about international missions when you can not go international. Now please hear this, I am a firm believer in missions where you are at. That we need to tell our neighbors and people around us about the good news because the United States needs Jesus. As a campus we have been serving anywhere and everywhere in our community that we could from hand making masks  to donate free to first health care workers and then to the at risk, to making and handing out free meals with the boys and girls club, and to opening one of our dorms for front line workers who might need a place to stay while waiting for test results for COVID 19 so that they don't have to possibly bring it home to their families. I also am a BIG believer in overseas missions because I feel that reaching the unreached cross culturally is the call that God has put on my life and I happen to live in a community of people who feel the same! So our conversations have been "now what"? What do we do in the meantime and how do we continue overseas missions from afar. 

In the midst of this I have been thinking about Ruth in the bible quite a bit. She probably had some unmet expectations when her husband and his brother and his father died, leaving her with a downcast mother in law and a sister in law who decided to go back to her father's house. That in the midst of her circumstances she chose to be all in, all in with her mother in law and all in, in making life livable. In Ruth 1:16 she makes the well known declaration of what I like to call the "all in'' by saying  “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God." NIV 

Now there is so much in this book that is so carefully tucked in the old testament where Boaz is often admired for his role as the kinsman redeemer, and Ruth for her faithfulness and how God blessed her because of it. Her grand gesture of following her mother in law into the unknown has always been something I have admired and thought, given the chance, I would react the same in anyplace the lord led me. If I was faced with a seemingly hopeless situation into an unknown journey, I would say "where you go I'll go" because my faith in God is as strong as Ruth's faithfulness to her mother in law. In the midst of COVID 19 I have found it easy to check out and simply go through the motions of volunteering and doing projects around campus. Half way through this self isolation God woke me up. He began to speak of future plans and what is next. At first I didn't respond, what was the use of beginning to plan or pursue anything in the midst of  a world wide shut down. I had allowed some bitterness to seep in because all the carefully laid plans that took hours of time and energy, were wiped away in a matter of days. It is a good thing that God's faithfulness is not determined by my attitude. I began to reach out to past students again checking in with them and praying with them as a world of unknowns littered their paths. I connected with friends who have been overseas for years and have made the hard choice to leave the ministry they had worked so hard on in order to provide a safer space for their families, not knowing when they could return to their overseas home. I started listening to the still quiet voice that was nudging me into the future and what possibilities it holds. 

I dream of another generation coming out of this time, a generation that is more ready than the last to rise up and go where they are called. That those of us who have been called to train will come out of this time of sabbath and pruning and whatever other biblical lingo we have given to self isolation, more equipped and focused than ever. That in this time the Lord has been renewing hearts and transforming minds and teaching busy bodies what rest looks like (even if it has been through trial and error). 

After this "wake up call" I soon volunteered to take on any of the students from the winter quarter who did not get to go on outreach, and help them plan and navigate coming back to Ywam MT to join the Fall school outreach. I began to take advantage of quiet afternoons in dorm 3 where we were putting new coats of paint in all the upstairs rooms, to listen to different books of the bible and podcasts that took deeper looks into the different theologies of each book. I began to feel a hunger in me for more understanding and felt grateful for time to spend in studying the word. This led me to looking even further into the future past what this fall school might hold (that is the next school I will be staffing) and I have made the decision that in the fall of 2021 (not this upcoming fall but next) I will be applying for School of Biblical Studies in Sunshine coast Australia! I have made this choice to take a year away from staffing DTS here in Montana so that I can 1) be more equipped for the calling I have to overseas missions and pastoral work. 2) pursue a degree through UofN. 3) to spend 9 months studying the word so that I can better pour into others as I feel is a lifelong calling on me and my spiritual birthright (thanks Rob and Val who are continually welcoming people into our family and pouring into them). 

This does not mean I am leaving missions. quite opposite actually. This is me taking time to be a student so I can better do what I feel is the path the Lord is asking me to take. 

After completing SBS the plan is to return to Ywam Montana to enroll in yet another school called Titus project, which will also count as credits towards my degree. This is a school that is all about teaching the Bible to pastors all around the world so that they have a better grasp/ tools to read the word and look at the context in which some books are written. 

In the midst of a seemingly hopeless situation of not knowing when the world will open up again I have felt the urge and the still quiet voice asking "will you trust me? will you go?" and the other voice in me that says "why get excited and why plan? it can all change anyway why bother?" Fortunately for me the still and quiet voice is more consistent and unshakable than my own voice. 

So what does this mean for my supporters? for those who have been giving monthly and donating significant yearly or one time gifts? I am humbly asking for continued support while I am in Australia. The total cost of this 9 month school will be around $8,000 not including airfare and normal monthly living costs (bus fair, any special groceries, coffee for studying, etc.) I plan on fundraising for tuition this year along with working to raise the money for SBS and the school after that Titus. How this will look as of right now I am not sure. but I want to make my intentions for returning to missions clear. This is not the end but simply me pursuing further training so I can be better equipped and more effective in my ministries, and I ask that you prayerfully consider continuing in this partnership with me of training and mentoring young people so that the world will know that there is a God who loves them!