Boast in my Lord

The last couple months have been CRAZY! I thought everything was going to slow down a little once I bought a house, but I've just been a completely different kind of busy. From buying appliances, to meetings with utilities, planting grass, fixing things. I've been running around for a month and a half and haven't even had time to think. First things first, I need to give y'all a quick tour of the house!

The first thing I had to do was figure out where I was going to sit down. I had some furniture and a lot of small stuff, but I didn't have a couch or even a chair. I decided to invest in a nice couch that would fit a few friends. Whether people are coming over to watch a football game or enjoy a fire in the fireplace, I wanted to have enough seating for more than a couple friends to hang out. Here's the Den at the house! Unfortunately we don't have central air conditioning, so you can see the box fan at work. I'm considering the idea of knocking out that wall to put in a sliding glass door to increase airflow and access to the back porch! Right now the entrance is a side door through the laundry room behind the Den. It's not really an ideal location to easily get in and out from outside, where I'd love to spend 98% of the time I'm at home.

I obtained a couple things during my time down here including the TV above and the table below from Laura as a family she was nannying for moved out and generously gave away some of their things. I'm not the biggest fan of the railing and carpeted dining room floor, but I'm continually reminding myself that this house is more of an investment toward my future than a place for me to invest my finances.

One of the things I enjoyed the most when I first saw this house was the large kitchen. For some reason, apartments and rent-able homes never have enough kitchen space. Apparently if you don't own, then you're not expected to want kitchen space. We comfortably had 6 people making 3 completely separate dinners in this kitchen a couple weeks ago. With the help of the grill outside, we cooked it all up and barely got in each other's way! I've been utilizing the grill a lot, but the kitchen has also been great. Since moving, I've started a workout routine that has me leaving the house between 5:30-6 every morning. That has me in bed pretty early, so I have been trying to cook a week's worth of meals every weekend... all made possible by the huge kitchen!

I had intended to put this final picture on here and let everyone know that I have a sweet room up for grabs! Well... I've been praying with expectation a lot lately, and God has done more than I ever thought He'd want to do to bless me. One of the things I asked for was that God would provide me with someone to live in the final room that would be a good addition to the house. After Laura came across a Craigslist ad for a guy needing a room a few days ago, I contacted him about the room I have available. He came and checked it out and couldn't believe I was going to rent it to him for the price I asked! I told him, if he's going to help me pay my mortgage, then I'm going to help him save some money for his future. I haven't talked to him much since he stopped by, but he wants the room and he'll be moving in soon! It's such a great blessing to ask and receive! But, if all this excites you, and you want to check out what Charleston has to offer, then feel free to let me know and take Brandon's spot when he goes back to school at the end of August!

I've started some sweet projects now that things are finally getting settled down inside! I bought some plants and I'm starting a butterfly garden in the front of the house hoping to get some colorful visitors throughout the summer months. I dug up some Sago Palm pups from around town and I'm working on potting them and caring for them until I can transplant them in front of the house to add a little pizzazz. I also got a couple ferns for the woods along the edge of the house, where I've actually already had Mississippi Kites nesting! 

This is one of the fledglings that was flying around the house one day. They did really well in the air, but landing was still a trick they had to master. When I saw them I headed onto the roof hoping for some good shots, but this is the best I got. The way they landed was similar to a child falling on their butt. In order to take more care in landing, the kites would spread their wings and just fall onto the leaves around the branch they wanted to land on, then search with their feet until they found the branch! It was a pretty cool sight, and it's definitely a blessing to have such a cool part of creation reproducing in my yard.

I've also had at least 6 deer at one time in the yard, along with tree frogs, lizards and a poisonous snake nearby (I was excited to take his picture, but I'm definitely keeping my eye out for him!)

Brandon and I have set the kayak out to sea twice now from the boat launch a half mile from the house. Both times we've gone out to an uninhabited island called Caper's Island and collected driftwood. It's a pretty interesting paddle. If we launch too close to low tide, we end of battling pluff mud and oyster beds on the way out. If we don't time it right on the way back in, we encounter the same thing. Then the route takes us across the intercoastal waterway into some fairly open water as we head out the inlet between Caper's Island and Dewee's Island. Caper's is a very popular spot for camping and weekend beach activities for boaters, but it's a beautiful island and a very relaxing retreat from home. There's a ton of driftwood lining the beach, so I finally have all but two pieces that I need to build a sweet coffee table! I've realized by owning this home that things are a lot cooler when they're free!

The projects will continue, and I hope to continue being able to tell cool stories. I really want my home to be a place of peace for my friends here, and also a place for visitors to find rest. God has blessed me with so much over the last couple years, and I believe that's because He wanted me to share it with the people around me. I believe that everything God has given me, He's given me as a gift to share with the people around me in order to deepen relationships with friends, family and even strangers sometimes. My house is your house. Mi casa es tu casa. Please come visit and enjoy the history, beaches and food Charleston has to offer!

Love you guys! Thank you so much for the prayers! As children of God, He cares for us as a father cares for his children. He wants the best for us and will give us the best if we honor Him with the little things!

Life is NOT Boring!

I haven't been writing much lately, but it's definitely not because there aren't things that I want to share! I have struggled with what to use this blog for and up until this point I've used it to update friends and family around the world on what God has been doing during my time in Charleston and the transition I've gone through from coming here with nothing to now having a career and almost a permanent home. God has used me in awesome ways and provided for me in miraculous ways, but our adventure isn't even close to over! 

This will begin a new era of blogs focusing on the adventures, spiritual and physical, that God leads me on!

My parents are visiting Charleston for the week so last weekend we spent some time exploring some of the surrounding natural areas. My dad has been trying to take pictures to further develop his website (www.wildriversgalleries.com), so I took them on a short trip to Patriot's Point trail, which is a narrow stretch of woods between some sports fields and a golf course that often produces some good birding.

We got skunked! I think we saw less than 10 birds along the trail, and I was about to turn around and go back to the car when I remembered that there's a field at the end of the trail that I've seen some cool stuff in, so we continued to the field. We actually found a good number of dragonflies and butterflies along the road on the way to the field, so my dad finally got to snap a few pictures. I've also seen some green snakes along the road here, but I wasn't able to find any of those when the camera was around... fairly familiar story for wildlife photography. They can sense the Nikon, but even more the Canon!

We got to the field and the trail around the field hadn't been mowed recently. It was still fairly early, so the grass was still wet with dew, but we decided to walk through anyways. I ended up soaked up to the knees and literally had puddles of water in my shoes. Waterproof shoes are an awesome invention, until you get water on the inside because waterproofing apparently works both ways!

As we were walking I looked up and saw something walking along the trail ahead of us, so I lifted my binoculars to check it out and it ended up being a coyote. There's actually a sign at the beginning of the trail where we had parked that says to beware of coyotes because they can be found in the area and they're dangerous!

Well, as I'd grown up believing, this coyote was by no means dangerous and took a quick turn off the trail as soon as it was able to catch our scent walking up behind it. It's interesting to me that something as wild as a coyote lives in areas that are so populated by humans. We build fences and throw concrete and asphalt down as many places as we can think to put it, but some animals adapt and continue to call it home. It reminds me of the bubble we love to pretend we live in. We try to keep our mind and eyes off of those things that are clearly around us so that they don't bother us. It's not just the coyotes and spiders we choose to ignore, but we also avoid areas of town where we might encounter hurting people or might get asked for change by a homeless man on the street.

Everything starts to blend in as we choose to put our blinders on, but I want to challenge you to ask yourself what your purpose on earth is. I believe that it's not to make a name for myself or dwell in my riches, but to live out the story that God has written for me. And I think for myself, and for everyone else, God's story for us is to share His love and His Son with whoever He puts before us. I want to invest my time into those people who need hope, because I've found Hope and it's very available to anyone searching for it.

Worship through Obedience

Most people attempt to live a life without regret. It's easier to do whatever we want within the moment, then try to turn those actions into something with a positive outcome later. Lots of people my age wander into this lifestyle through alcohol or drugs, which consumed in excess clouds judgement and results in choices that wouldn't had been made otherwise. Some people find themselves battling to find financial security within an addiction to consumerism. Even relationships, if entered into without caution and intentionality, can be extremely harmful to the life we form, or more importantly, our relationship with the God we love and serve.

You can pick up any magazine, newspaper, or open any news website and see a story about someone in a position of fame or power who was living a life without eternal intention. Bill Clinton decided it was worth it to have an affair. Justin Bieber decided it was worth the DUI. A quick google search finds a list of 66 professional rappers who thought their choices were worth the risk of jail time and found themselves behind bars. Every day we have a choice of whether to just take what the day brings in whatever form it comes, or whether to live intentionally and with a purpose.

There's a word going around in the church recently called "legalism". Some would say that legalism is failing to understand the power of Christ and turning a faith into a religion, an outline of do's and don't. I think the power of Christ is actually best understood when considering those things most people would consider "legalistic". Instead of saying the word and running away from it, let's dig in a little deeper.

The modern day church seems to completely divide the Trinity into three parts. Most denominations focus on one member of the Trinity and fail to discuss the other two members. Even the newest movement, non-denominational, focuses more on Christ and not much on the Father or the Spirit. It's easy to consider certain thoughts or mindsets legalistic if the entire Trinity isn't taken into consideration, but it's important to see the whole picture if we're truly going to live our lives in faith and in worship.

The Old Testament teaches a lot about who God is as our Father. God continually laid rules and regulations down in front of His people in the Old Testament as ways that He would be glorified through their actions. He was so just in those rules that when they were broken, He often made the decision to end their life as punishment. In Genesis 19, Lot's wife turns around after God tells her not to and she dies immediately. In Numbers 25 24,000 people die because the culture had grown sexually promiscuous. In 2 Samuel 6, God ends Uzzah's life because he touched the Ark of the Covenant. In 1 Kings 11, God removes the lineage of David from kingship over all but one tribe of Israel because Solomon started building idols for his many wives. God is too just to allow sin to be present around Him. We often forget who God is as our Father, or we ignore the past because Christ has come. We fail to recognize that Christ didn't come to remove the opportunity to worship God by being obedient in the things He taught in the Old Testament, but because the only way for us to receive salvation was for Him to die on a cross. The opportunity to worship God through obedience is still present as much as it ever has been. Thanks to His love and His Son's obedience, we can now find forgiveness in our moments of weakness.

This is not to say that rules and regulations can't become legalistic. It's important to look at Biblical lifestyle guidelines as opportunities for worship and not as a checklist of do's and don'ts. Following the rules and guidelines for a Christian lifestyle that are set forth in the Bible shouldn't be looked at as a list with gray spots, but as a template for how to live a life above reproach. We never want to give anyone a reason to question our faith, our relationship with God, or God Himself.

Let's take a quick look at how something can be seen as legalistic versus how it can be seen as a greater opportunity for worship

It can become legalistic to teach that people should give more to the church than a 10% tithe. It would definitely be an opportunity for worship and financial obedience to give more than 10%, but no one is going to be cast into judgement for not giving.

We can be legalistic in views on alcohol and drugs. In Ephesians 5, we're told to not get drunk, but beyond that there aren't any restrictions. Proverbs 20 tells us perfectly though that "Wine is a mocker and strong drink is a brawler." It would be legalistic to teach that alcohol needs to be avoided, but it's another opportunity to show God our obedience in greater ways. Teaching that alcohol should be avoided in certain social settings could be considered "legalistic" if taught as a rule, but could be a great guideline and recommendation for how to live above reproach.

It's even possible to be legalistic in church attendance, dating relationships, words that we use, activities we participate in and many other things. So many people make the mistake of seeing these things as a list of do's and don'ts, when the way that worships God the most is to see it as a list of "do what you can's". 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 both explain that leaders in the church should be above reproach. This isn't referring to just pastors and elders, but to the entire community of saints who would be identified as Christians outside of the church community. We should desire to live lives that attract people to Christ in an open and honest way, not lives that could be considered fake or hypocritical due to acting in ways that differ from what people believe Christians should act.

What can we do to worship God in even greater ways?

Instead of living every day looking to take advantage in the freedom of gray areas, let's use those areas to be above reproach. It's very easy to live in a way where we seek the approval of man, and when we have their approval, we assume we're doing everything the way we need to be doing it. Instead of finding comfort in the approval of man, we need to find comfort in knowing that we're living exactly how God wants us to live.

Worship is shown outwardly but is experienced by God inwardly. If our inward mindset toward worship is not seeking to serve God in every opportunity, then our outward actions and emotions are only meant for man to see.

The truth about the Trinity is that God is worthy of all of our worship and all of our obedience. Fortunately, He understood that human nature is sinful and gave His Son for us to be free from the harsh punishment of sin. The Holy Spirit is now available to be present in our lives to help us understand God's word, and to lead us and convict us in ways that allow us to be obedient in ways that God experiences as worship.

What areas of your life are you standing around looking for God in where you should be on your knees with hands raised knowing that He's already there?

Settling Soil

As 2014 came around I had some decisions to make regarding my career and current location. Was the company I was working for and the position I was given something I was going to commit myself to for a long time or was it a stepping stone for something else? I prayed and reflected on that question for almost all of last year and knew as I watched the Flip-flops drop on New Years Eve at Folly Beach that I had to make the decision.

I had pretty much decided in early December that things were going really well. I always ask myself if what I'm doing is something that God is using, and I really felt like the answer to that was clearly that He was. So, I waited for my yearly review at work to determine how my company was viewing me as an employee. When the time came I was blown away by how well they had perceived all the time and effort I had put into the company over the last year, so I knew that this was where I was supposed to stay.

I started looking for a house in mid-January. I had originally hoped to find a fixer-upper that I could spend a couple years putting money into then sell it when the time was right, but I wasn't having any luck. I changed my thought process a little and decided I could possibly invest in property instead and just live cheaply while I allowed my savings to develop into something that could afford a house to start a family in. I ended up finding the house below and the owner has accepted my offer!

It's a double-wide home on a permanent foundation, so the only thing that shows from the exterior is the low roof pitch. It's on a half-acre lot a block from the marsh bordering the ocean, and two blocks from a kayak landing where I can walk my kayak to go on weekend adventures! It's north of the city, so I'm hoping it'll be a little quieter and a lot more peaceful than where I'm at now. It has 4 bedrooms, so I hope to rent a couple out in order to have some community in the house, but it'll be great to have some help with the bills too!

My closing date is set for March 31, so as long as I get financing and an acceptable inspection, I'll be moving into this baby in a little over a month! I hope to set aside one room as a guest room, so please come visit. I'll even cook a meal or two!

Life in the office has been pretty crazy over the last six months and a lot of changes have happened, but I'm feeling more and more comfortable with the jobs I'm given and the responsibilities that have fallen onto me. My work load increases and decreases depending on the week, which initially stressed me out, but now I get pretty close to throwing a party for myself on the quiet weeks!

I'm hoping to start taking bigger steps toward starting up work through A Helping Hand once I'm in the house. I had prayed about where to start and have a specific neighborhood I've been praying over for a couple weeks now. Once I'm settled into the house, I'll start distributing some marketing materials and hopefully picking up a few side jobs until I can provide enough work to hand it over to someone else.

I also started dating this really great girl named Laura! She loves Jesus with everything she is and she loves adventure almost as much as I do! I'll tell you more later though. She may end up being the topic of the next blog if she keeps impressing me the way she has been.

The number one prayer request: Pray about coming to visit me in my new house!

Love you all!

The Netherlands

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to travel overseas with a small group from my church in order to do ministry alongside a sister church of ours in Hilversum in The Netherlands. I jumped on the opportunity when it came up for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I want to continue to discover my passions in ministry through obedience to God's word. Also, I'm half Dutch and I had a strong desire to go and see where my ancestors came from. As our flight entered the airspace above The Netherlands I was overcome with emotions. It was such a huge blessing to have the opportunity to return somewhere where my ancestors had lived their lives and followed the same God I was going back to proclaim.

Most of our time was spent painting areas of the church. They had an interior decorator that attended their church who went through and discussed with them how to make the church look more inviting. Every day the team would paint and I would be given all the random handyman jobs around the church. There were some awesome people there that we were able to work alongside. There are two American missionaries that are part of the church who took care of us every day. The wife made sure our stomachs were always filled with the most amazing foods, and the husband was able to spend quality time with many people on our trip building into them. The facility dude, Rudy, was always around to encourage us and make sure we were doing everything the way it needed to get done. And, the intern, Floris, made every job I had to do so much easier by knowing the answers to every question I could think to ask about what I was supposed to do and where to find certain tools. The pastor, Sebastian, was really encouraging to our entire team with his passion and his vision for Thousand Hills International Church. So many other great people supported us while we were there.

We also spent some time working alongside the children's ministry. We helped with a Christmas story night where parents from the surrounding area brought their children to church to walk through multiple scenes of the Christmas story. We also got together with the children's ministry volunteers one night and we were able to brainstorm with them about ways to improve the children's ministry for the church, the parents, and the children.

I was cutting drywall on the second day and ended up slicing my thumb open pretty badly. It was quickly decided that I needed to go to the hospital, so I got to experience the Dutch ER first hand! It was very similar to the American ER, except that due to the absence of an Urgent Care, there are a lot more emergencies.

I felt like we were really able to help the church accomplish some things that would've taken a lot longer without us, but even more-so, I realized the importance for our church to build a deeper relationship with their church. I've always been very passionate about the way churches communicate and live together. I've never agreed with the fact that Christian churches, who all serve the same God and are asked to be obedient in the same ways, fail to come together in community. It was awesome to spend time with a family that loves the Lord as much as I do, that I didn't even know existed.

God really used this trip to deepen my passion for international ministries and relational evangelism. I'm sure that at some point in my life God is going to call me to be a part of something large in ministry. I could honestly sit here for hours in awe of how amazing it felt to be a part of the church service at Thousand Hills. I literally feel like I met family members in that church, and after only a couple hours I felt like I was a part of what was going on over there. Thank you so much for praying and for those who were able to financially support the trip! I hope that not only through this trip, but through my future, you'll be able to see the fruits of your gifts.

THANKSGIVING / CHRISTMAS

I just wanted to quickly tell the story of how God maneuvered my plans to get me home to Wisconsin for both holidays with hardly any money out of my pocket! I had originally decided it was going to be too expensive to come home for the holidays so I was trying to figure out what I could do to get home at some point when my boss came up to me and mentioned a work trip to Chicago. It took me a few minutes before it hit me, but I ended up making it work out that I could go home for the weekend after finishing the job on Friday. My business trip ended up switching to Monday, so I changed my plans around a little, then came home and the entire trip actually got cancelled Monday morning after I was able to spend the weekend with my family!

On the way back from the Netherlands, we missed our flight from DC to Charleston due to weather delays coming out of Amsterdam. As we were trying to reschedule flights and get back home I decided it would be worth pursuing the option of switching my flight to Chicago instead of Charleston. A couple strings had to get pulled but I ended up being able to fly home for a few days for Christmas and I was able to see my parents and some really close friends that I hadn't seen in a while. I also got to go snowboarding, but my body is still telling me that that was actually a bad thing.

But, God had plans that were greater than mine and far above mine which allowed me to go home and see my parents twice in this season when I had no idea that it was going to happen at all!

Thank you for all your prayers! There are a lot more pictures from Holland posted on my facebook page for you to look at. And please, ask me any questions you might have about my trip! If it's a good question, I might even just write another blog to answer it!

Love y'all!

Mission Trip to Holland

In a few days I'll be on an airplane travelling to The Netherlands. It's approached so quickly!

I just wanted to quickly thank everyone who has walked alongside me so far on this trip by either financially supporting me or praying for me. I was blessed by friends and family and was able to raise all of the financial support necessary for the trip. Thank you all for your loving hearts and your missional passion! I love that my passion to go out to the world in Jesus' name was accompanied by the passion of many to send someone out in Jesus' name.

I have learned more about what we might be doing over there since I was last able to update everyone. The church we are going to visit wants to function the same exact way my church in Charleston functions. We're going to walk alongside them and share ministry ideas with them, along with encouraging them as a church, and directing staff/volunteers on how our church in Charleston does certain things to improve the weekly worship experience.

I'll be part of our team's Construction team. I'm not sure what we'll be doing yet, but I can't wait to get my hands on some tools and go to work!

I'm really going to value the time away to really reflect on where God is leading me and "pause" from everything that life is continually throwing at me. The places I've always heard best from God are the times where I'm uncomfortable and surrounded by things that are unknown, similar to when I first moved to Charleston. I know that God is going to use this time to break me, to build me back up in His mission.

PRAYER REQUESTS

Please pray for great communication and growth within the team.

Pray for personal growth. That I would experience God in a new way and that our relationship would grow to a deeper level.

Pray that my life would be open to where God wants me to go.

Love you all and cannot wait to tell you how things go!

The Road Ahead

When I sit back and look at where I am and where I've been, it's hard to believe. I'm sure there are times in your life when you have felt the same way. Maybe there were some rough areas you went through and after you escaped from them you looked back and could not believe you managed to get out of them. Or, maybe like me, you just had a completely different plan for your life than the one that unfolded. I didn't ever think I'd be where I am today, but as I look at the possibilities ahead of me because of where I am right now, I can't help but be filled with so much excitement for the adventure God has in store for me!

PREFACE

When I originally went to school for Communication my thought process was that I had two choices. I could either go to school for something that could make me a lot of money, or I could go to college and do whatever I needed to do to go into full time ministry. As I was thinking about that decision I ended up reading a passage in the Bible that discusses how difficult it is for a rich man to get into the kingdom of Heaven. The passage compares the difficulty to that of a camel going through the eye of a needle. I don't want greed and the idol of money to blur my vision of God, so I chose a degree in Communication, believing that it was going to be the first step into full-time ministry. I had dreams of going to remote villages and living life with the people there in order to tell them about Jesus. Well, I got diagnosed with diabetes when I was 19, which made me completely dependent on insulin, putting an end to any dreams of being anywhere away from doctors and pharmacies for an extended amount of time. I thought the dream was behind me and ended up moving into an engineering degree a few years later, assuming that God had shut the door on a paid position in ministry.

RECENT REVELATIONS

Ever since I settled into the working world I've felt distanced from ministry. Even though most of my spare time goes into it, I haven't been able to feel like I'm fulfilling the passion God has put in my heart for it. I've been thinking and praying about what God might have for me. I know there must be a way to serve Him in greater amounts, but so far I've failed to figure out what that might be. Well, for the last two weeks I've been trying to decide whether it was God's desire for me to go on a mission's trip to Holland or if it was my own desire. Most of the time when I receive a support letter or know a friend raising support for something, I judge whether to give and how much to give based on their passion for what they're doing and whether I think they're doing it for the right reasons. I understand that has a lot to do with how I feel, which could easily involve human error, but I figure it's the best thing I can do to keep from emptying the bank account every time I know someone that goes on a mission trip. Well, I wanted to make sure that the people I am asking for financial assistance were being asked by someone who was being led to go on this trip by the Lord and not choosing to go on it out of his own will.

The more I prayed about the trip and thought about why I was going, the more I realized that this is a great opportunity for God to speak to me about my future in ministry. The ability to go to another country on a mission's trip always opens up your eyes a lot more to what's going on around you and gives a much clearer vision of what God's plan might be for your life. Someone shared with me a few weeks ago that short-term mission trips are more beneficial in bringing change in the lives of the people going than the lives of the people being served, and I believe that that's probably true most of the time. I definitely hope to go on this mission's trip to serve the people of Holland, but I also have a strong feeling that God will give me direction during this trip into how I can shape my life now in order to devote myself to ministry better in the future. At some point I would love to do full-time ministry, but I'm completely lost as to how that might happen right now.

So, I've pretty much realized that I don't really want your support to go aid a church in a different country for a week, but I ask for your support to help me discover the vision for a ministry for the rest of my life. I love that I will have the opportunity to work alongside a church, and I'm sure we will do some great things! But, I also know that there are probably people there capable of doing those things as well. I want to develop the passion I have for ministry and allow God to feed wisdom to me on how to develop my life into one of full time ministry.

What I need from you guys is a lot of prayer. I need advice and wisdom. I need financial assistance. God can teach us a lot through the Bible. I consider it my manual on how to love God, my playbook, and my owner's manual on life. It definitely has a lot of answers and gives a lot of direction, but God created the church to create community, and I need the benefits of that community. I really don't know what I would do for full time ministry or how to transition into full time ministry from where I am right now. Or, maybe my life and my schedule just need some rearranging and I just need to get myself into a different type of ministry. There are things people on the outside see about my passion and my skills that I can't see about myself, and I need to know those things in order to determine what direction to go.

Financial assistance is always a hard thing to ask for, but that's why I wanted to share my heart. It's easy for some people to see giving money for someone to go on a mission's trip as giving money for someone to go on a glorified vacation, and that's what I've spent the last two weeks praying about. I didn't want to go on this trip if it was just going to be a glorified vacation. I want to show God my obedience in the small things, in hopes that He will trust me with the big things, which in this case would be a glimpse at the future and vision for my ministry. As of right now I've raised $75 out of $2000, and it's been about a month. That's a long way to go! Based on my blogs from the past, I know there are going to be about 100 people that at least open this page, and just $5 from everyone would make a huge difference. No gift is too small. Please pray about it and consider helping me develop a vision. God is going to put it on some people's hearts to support me in this way, and He won't with others. I trust that He will supply for my financial needs if He truly wants me on this trip.

Cut and paste this link if you would like to give. seacoa.st/thewellholland

I truly love everyone who takes time to read these posts. If there is any way I can share more about my life or any questions that have come up, please ask. I'm an open book!

Love you all!