Puzzles

I have been thinking a lot about missions and what a group can accomplish when they go on a short term mission trip. When I first began thinking about this I thought that they did not really get anything done. Then God showed me something that helped me to better understand why missions whether short or long term get a lot of things accomplished.
My cousins and I used to work a lot of puzzles to entertain ourselves. It was cheap and challenging and when you get 4-6 people working a puzzle together its a good time to sit and talk. So, quick advertisement if you want to get to know people better invite them over for dinner and then work a puzzle with them. Anyway, God reminded me of these times and I was confused about this picture and what it meant. I was asking God about it and what this meant and He showed me that missions is like a puzzle. When you work a puzzle the final goal is to have all the pieces of the puzzle fit together to make a picture. There is a very similar goal with missions as well, the final goal is to reveal the love of Jesus Christ to the broken, poor and widowed and bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth.
When your working a puzzle you first dump out all the pieces and everything is crazy and thats kind of how a town without God looks like, messy and not fulfilling the purpose it was designed for, a reflection of Gods character. God showed me that short and long term missions help organize the mess. First, you flip over all the pieces so the correct side is facing up, which could a team bringing healing and wholeness to the broken hearted. Then, you get all the edge pieces together and gather all the same colored pieces in one place, what a house church and Christian example of community might be. After that, little by little the pieces start coming together and what was once a mess begins to form a bigger picture. Short and long term mission trips are integral to bringing more of the character of God into a neighborhood, town, or nation because the peoples in these places were created in the image of God to reflect the vastness of His glory.

Life


Life has been a handful these past few weeks, with our mini-outreach to Vienna then team building and with ensuring that everything is as prepared as possible for outreach, I have been kept busy. The last few weeks I have been regularly praying for the finances of my team because as a team we are very much below what we need for a budget during our outreach. I have also asked many others I know to be praying with me. We have our plane tickets but other than that not much else. This last week I had been spending a lot of time praying and fasting and have had prayers answered. The other day we a had a time of giving and were given 2,600 Euros for our outreach. I was so excited that I wanted to jump up and down and shout, but there were people on the phone so I had to restrain myself. Those of you who know me know how loud I can be when I am excited and this was even better because God heard me and answered. It was sweetness. God's timing is perfect and he looks after me and turns his ears to my prayer. My heart sings and my mouth testifies to his kindness and goodness.