missions update

Friends and Family,

I'm just getting started at this-it's all a little new to me-but I hope that this page can help some of you to get better informed about what's going on with me in regards to missions.

Saturday night, I was able to set up visuals and share here at the camp about the two trips God enabled me to be a part of this year through OM(Operation Mobilization).

In May, Moldova(E. Europe) was the destination of the small 7 man team I was a part of. Come August, joining another larger team, of 16 team members, I was off to Namibia(S.West Africa). Both of these missions trips were short term, only about 2 weeks in length. The main thrust of each mission was to come alongside local churches and missionaries and strengthen them in their work in these foreign countries. OM does not seek to travel to an overseas country to take charge, but to be a helping hand. So with this in mind, as a team, we brought help to these places through children's programs, youth ministry, women's Bible studies, singing, testifying, sharing the Word in church services, strengthening believers, and praying with the nationals. Often we simply reached out with the love of God through practical means.

In Moldova, this may have been experienced through helping an elderly woman hand-wash her clothes, or lend a hand with paperwork at the mission house in Chisinau. In Namibia, teaching sign language to a school teacher, sharing food, or picking up trash along the roadside. With each little act of kindness, the Lord was instilling in us as a team, life lessons we will not too easily forget.

I began to learn, and still am yet learning, that often God does His most life-changing work when we least expect it. Who would think that giving a hug to a child, or sitting quietly next to an elderly person, listening to their story retold through a translator, or any number of small seemingly insignificant things could ever make an impact on someone's life?

We often look for the HUGE things, such as being able to lead someone in prayer as they make a decision to trust Christ, that will make an impact on a life. But, what does Jesus see as important? Jesus took time to hold little children, and to listen to Nicodemus in the middle of the night. He touched the leper, and sat and ate with sinners. I know God has continued to teach me that perceiving things through His eyes is so much more beneficial than trying to discern through the natural eye, or with the limited intellect we call our own. Again and again He speaks to me to 'see with the Spirit's eyes; understand with the mind of Christ'-

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in

Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be made equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath also highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above all names, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow,

of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Phil. 2:5-11