How did we get here??? (Part one)

Welcome to my first ever blog! For quite some time I have felt that God wants me to share with others through the spoken and written word. I have decided to start blogging as one of the ways to share of His incredible timing and love. I hope to write a new blog every week to two weeks or as time allows. I hope you will follow my blog and you will be encouraged and reminded of God’s goodness.

So how did we get here? As I look back on my life up to this point I am in awe of God’s timing. From the beginning, God had a plan in place for my life. My testimony is not one of deliverance from darkness or miraculous changes. My testimony is all about God’s timing from one point in my life to the next. I feel in order to truly explain who I am and what God has brought me to and through in my life, I have to start at the beginning.

I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior when I was five years old. It was nothing dramatic, a simple prayer beside my bed, and I was a Christian. I grew up in church. We went every time the doors were open. My parents were involved in every ministry the church offered. It was what I would have considered to be a typical Christian family. That is, until my parents went on their first missions trip overseas. I think it was Guatemala. They came back with what seemed like some kind of strange addiction. Serving overseas was like their new favorite past time. I was fourteen when I went on my first trip, it was to Venezuela. It was incredible. I loved every minute of it. It was certainly a life changing trip that I will never forget. But months later when my parents told me that they felt God was calling them to move overseas for full time ministry, I was devastated. I was fifteen and captain of my cheerleading squad. I had friends, a boyfriend, and a life that I wasn’t prepared to leave behind. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I spent the next year in Guatemala with my parents in full time missions ministry. (I have lots of stories from that year to blog about later!) That year I experienced so many things that I would later realize were all stepping stones in the ministry that God was preparing me for as an adult. One thing that still stands out in my mind was a week we spent with children hosting an Olympics. There were hundreds of kids. We would play with the kids during the day and help them as they competed in different categories. In the evenings we had church. We would do skits and mimes. I don’t remember the skits we did or the songs we sang. What I do remember is that one night the children were told about Jesus and His love for them and how He died on the cross to save them. They were told to find someone to pray with them. Two young girls approached me. They were girls I had played with all week. They told me they wanted me to pray with them to ask Jesus into their hearts. I remember that I felt so nervous to pray in Spanish as it was something I had never done. But after praying that prayer of salvation with those two girls, I felt like I had somehow changed too. It was like something awakened inside of me. God had used me for something amazing, and I was only sixteen. There is certainly more to my story, but I feel this is a good breaking point for now. Let me leave you with the verse God gave to me for that particular time in my life. It has continued to be one of my favorites throughout the years.

I Timothy 4:12, “Let no one despise or think less of you because of your youth, but be an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.” (AMP)

Be Blessed,

Julie.

*Party of 8*