By Faith

Too many days I get too caught up in lesson planning, patrolling my classroom, and correcting papers to remember that I am right in the middle of an adventure.

I came to Bolivia and stayed.  God is teaching me how to listen to His voice.  Teaching me how to trust Him in new ways.  Stretching me.  The trials that I will face during this year are not just something to endure.  They are an adventure to navigate my way through, trusting my Guide who has never failed me.  I am following this Guide because He saved my life when I was hopeless and helpless, and now I have eyes only for Him.  If following Him to a place that is part rainforest and part grassland, part upperclass 5th graders and part young orphans who cling to me, part familiar and part foreign is what brings joy to His heart, then only that will make me content.

I claim in no way to be like the great men and women who have gone before me in spreading God's name to all nations, but if I can have a little taste of what Hudson Taylor felt when he lived on a loaf of bread and a bag of apples, or if I can experience a small fraction of what Amy Carmichael felt when she gave Christ's love to those who had never heard His name, then how can I complain? If "grin and bear it" is what God calls me to for a year, how can I not have the biggest grin, the most joyful bearing?  Who am I to doubt my Guide's plans?  

I don't know what lies in the coming months, and I have no idea what I'll do when I go home, but I will "bless the Lord at all times.  His praise shall continually be on my lips."

Now pray that I can rest on God's strength to live as He calls me to, because although my words and my spirit can be willing and strong, my flesh is weak.