Faith is...

Hey! I hope everyone is doing well! I have had a good couple of weeks. I have spent some good time with family thanks to a couple of birthdays (Maddie turned 2 and Kerry turned more than that!) Everyone had a good time, except maybe for Eric who is on round 2 of the flu!

School is moving along. We are in the 5th week of classes so I am a third of the way down with my last semester! I can’t believe it is here. What I am going to do afterwards?! Haha I am lucky to have an answer to that, but the problem comes when people ask what I am going to do after Japan. Only God knows and hopefully one day He will share that with me! :)

Faith is hard to keep! “Keep up the faith!” is a common phrase, but work is involved in keeping faith. Someone can’t just say they have faith and it automatically comes to them. During this entire process of preparing for Japan and then to actual go has been the biggest test my faith has ever had. If someone were to tell me two years ago I would be doing missions, I may have laughed in their face! The idea sounds good, but to actually do it is a whole other story. So every step of the way has taken faith. The only way I can follow through with God’s plan for my life is faith. The only way for me to understand God’s will for my life is faith. The only way my family can get through this is faith. If I didn’t have an ounce of faith I could not have surrendered my life fully to God because this is scary! The unknown is scary and if you know me at all, you know I don’t like the unknown! I get stressed out at a fly on the wall! But I did have enough faith to say yes and as I go through this journey my faith keeps increasing and increasing. I am beginning to not care what the rest of my life has for me, because God has the rest of my life in His hands! I am not worrying about whom I am going to marry, where we are going to live, how I am going to make a living, or how many kids I am going to have because I know that God has the answers. I know God has the plan so I can’t plan for anything! I can have my desires and hope God fulfills them, but I can’t plan on it! God knows what is best for my life and He knows what I can do for His kingdom. It is SCARY, but I am excited to get the answer! I am excited to see what God has for me because it is a million times better than my dreams, a million times better than I can even imagine!

So here I go at “Keeping up the faith!” The next step is support raising! I will be making calls this week asking for support, financial and prayer. It takes courage, courage I can only find in God, for me to make these calls. So as you are reading this, please pray for me as I call. Pray for God to speak through me and pray for the individuals I am calling. My total amount I need to raise is $19,000.00. Yeah, it is big, but so is my God! He knows where the money will come from and when! Also, if you feel like you and your family should give support, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I am not completely for sure who all is reading this blog, but most of you I know I will be contacting in the next few weeks. However, don’t hesitate to ask for me information!

I hope everyone has a great week! And “Faith is” is a great song by Beckah Shae! You should check it out!
Amanda