Giant Fears < Giant God

Facing the Giants. That’s the theme of this week for us in Ocean City. Facing and conquering the giants of fear in our lives that prevent us from living fully and radically for the gospel. On Saturday night each one of us reflected on what we’re most afraid of in evangelism and made goals for attacking those fears. For many people, their ‘giant’ so to speak is sharing the gospel with specific family members. For others it’s sharing with people of a different ethnicity, a large group of people, co-workers, friends from home, and many more. Our goal this week is to break down that giant of fear. In addition, we each set a number goal for how many spiritual and gospel conversations we want to have by the end of the week. The group’s collective goal is to have 4,271 conversations by Saturday night.

Personally, my goal was to lead 30 spiritual conversations on the boardwalk and at work. I’m almost at my goal with a couple days to spare, and am feeling tired but so excited to leave it all on the court. When I went out sharing on Wednesday afternoon I was just feeling exhausted. I didn’t want to be listening to people’s perspective on life who didn’t even want to be talking to me, and it was so incredibly hot and humid. I wasn’t feeling it, and I had plans to go out sharing for a few more hours with my discipler. What ended up happening was that my discipler and I approached a group of three girls and went through the survey of what they think about life and purpose, and I proceeded to lead them through a pamphlet called the “Knowing God Personally” booklet that presents the gospel clearly and concisely. They believed and wanted a relationship with Jesus, and actually prayed to receive Christ as their Lord and savior. And on Tuesday afternoon, two girls prayed to receive Christ with me and my friend, Bronwyn, as well. At work 2 hours ago, my friend Krysta brought a girl from China (named Casey) to Christ with the KGP as well. It’s insane to see the excitement these people have had about the decision they made, and to know that God has an amazing plan for their life and for their relationship with him.



(This is my action group!)

A Bible verse that is striking my heart this week is 2 Corinthians 12:9 when Jesus said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” and Paul claimed, “therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” This week I have felt more incapable, exhausted, sinful, unintelligent and not knowledgable than I have felt in a long time. Yet God is using each one of us in eternal ways. I don’t deserve to play a role in God bringing someone into a relationship with him, but he has allowed me to. I don’t deserve to have a relationship with him, but thank God that he allows me to!

Honestly, I’m feeling blown away by God’s grace and depth. This week has been so powerful- seeing God change hearts and open souls to eternity is insane. There really is power in the name of Jesus, and I am so excited and encouraged to surrender all to him and watch how his power is made perfect in the weak and sinful and pathetic human that I am.

We have a wall in the Family Room where we post a "brick" (red paper with name on it) of the people who made a decision to follow Christ this week, and that wall is growing like wildfire! Check it out :).

The Best Kind of Pie

I pride myself in my responsibility: that I am always early, I get things done, I don’t lose or break things. However, in the past two weeks I have had two fat slices of humble pie, and God is teaching me a lot through them.

The 28th of May was an exciting day, I packed and prepared to take off for Ocean City, NJ, and got to the airport around 7pm for my 9:55pm flight. When I met my traveling companions at the airport, we were all super excited! We were getting to know each other and hanging out. Our flight was to board from gate 33B, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. However, little did we know that in gate 33A there was another flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to take off at 10:15pm. The only difference was that ours was with Spirit Airlines, and the other was JetBlue. Mind you, they were both labeled JetBlue... Confusing in itself. Anyway, what ended up happening was that we thought that our flight was delayed 20 minutes because Spirit didn’t have clear flight postings, and we got in line for the wrong flight. When we got to the front, they informed us that we were in the wrong line, and the rest is history. We had to come back the next night for the same exact flight, 24 hours later.

My next incident happened on Thursday night. After our weekly meeting here in Ocean City, NJ. There were $1 rides at the carnival place on the boardwalk. It had been raining hard earlier that day, and so the ground was still wet. Some friends and I decided to go on the Log Ride, similar to the one at Knotts’ but WAY smaller. In the big splash at the end of the ride I got a bit drenched, and my purse was in the line of fire. I found out a few minutes later that my phone and iPod and all of my papers were quite wet and dysfunctional. I went to the AT&T store the next day and got a $20 phone - no email, internet, camera, or contacts! Super humbling. Also, the rainy day is pictured below!

What I’m learning through these incidents is that I am definitely not in control, and when I try to be I still fail. Yet in these lessons it is easy to forget that the lesson of being conscientious and aware is still extremely important. It’s embarrassing to mess up so many times in such preventable ways.

On a lighter note, I started work at Superfresh in the Produce department, and according to my co-worker, Chris, I’m a natural at cutting and presenting vegetables. So, Mom, all those days of helping you in the kitchen have paid off! I make beautiful chopped vegetable dishes :).

I made it to Ocean City, NJ! Today is the one week anniversary of Kelvin, Kim, and my arrival to the beautiful Jersey Shore. We actually got to Jersey a day late because we missed our flight and had to take off a little late... long and tragic story, but feel free to ask and I’ll fill you in on the details! However, we’re here and so thankful that God has given us the opportunity to come.

The first week consisted of training in sharing the gospel, multiple opportunities to go out sharing on the boardwalk, job searching and starting them, and getting to know each other and build a community. Already I feel at home here, surrounded by people who genuinely want to know me and my heart.

The authenticity of the people here is so incredible and beautiful. Sharing our testimonies over dinner is commonplace, and going out sharing for fun is natural. My own testimony - which will come later - rests on the idea of being a slave to fear and insecurity. The first few days here I definitely wrestled with these and compared myself to the other people here, feeling like I wasn’t enough and wasn’t up to par. However, in facing this head on and admitting my sin of comparison and judgment, God is working in my heart and showing me the beautiful and unique qualities of each person here. Instead of being jealous of the awesome characteristics of the other students here, I am able to appreciate them and rejoice over God’s goodness and creativity in making us all different and unique.

Putting my brokenness aside and focusing on Jesus Christ - the reason I’m here - is so incredibly freeing and purposeful. I feel full of life and I’m so excited to continue this journey over the summer. Already over 7 people have accepted Christ as their savior, and it’s only been a week! Praise the Lord!

Thank you for your prayers and for your support. And for reading this! I'm so excited to see what God has in store for us all this summer, and can't believe I'm actually in New Jersey! So rad.