10/24/14

Danced for this sunset tonight. God's romance.

St. Augustine

Hello everyone! Well the five of you who read this blog! :) hi. Wow ok so let me first apologize for not keeping up with this, mission life is not full of free time haha. That being sad, this is mission life! And it's beautiful!

To do a brief summary of my time spent so far I will say that training was absolutely amazing. I encountered the Lord far more than I knew he could take me and I still am. Teams were announced mid September and I was put on Team 5 which is a parish team in Forest Lake MN. To be truly honest I was hoping not to be put on a parish team. I thought that I was called to a traveling team, but there is the phrase I thought and my thoughts are not always God's plans  and for that I am learning to be thankful for :)

So here I am a month and a half into mission life and here is what I currently am doing. Here at the parish my team and I are running things like the bi-weekly confirmation program, the weekly high school and jr. High youth groups, open youth houses twice a week where the jr. High and high school teens can come and do homework and relax after school, we are going to local high school sporting events to randomly evangalize and even taking some of the youth to places like the mall of America to try their hand at evangilizing. We also take teens on one-on-one activities like going to the local bagel shop or the one starbucks they have in town! Haha and this let's us truly minister to them where they are at.

Looking at my mission here and now, I still don't truly know where the Lord is leading me but I have learned some important things while here so far. The first is how to love. Not by my own standards but the Lord's standards. Read 1 Cor 13 and you will see why. The second is obedience. The Lord has a plan for all of us and the role in which you are assigned is not less than or unequal to the role he has appointed someone else. He put you there because he knew only you could fill that role in his plan. Read Gal. 2: 20-21. Which leads me to my last point, trust. Trust is huge, unbelievably huge and can be a monster if we don't let ourselves by vulnerable to the Lord. We can not control what he has planned and his plans are better than our own, we must trust that he will direct us and those around us for the betterment of all of us and his Kingdom, and ultimately isn't that what we want, his Kingdom on earth? Read Jer. 29:11 

St. Augustin once said that "my heart is restless Lord, until it rests in you" I may have messed up the quote's wording but nonetheless it's beautiful and true.

And that's what I am personally hoping for this year. To rest in full love, trust, truth, and wisdom in the Lord. Please pray for me as I pray for you. The adventure continues!

Thank you for reading I love you all, see you in December!

Love, Erika