and the seasons change

A week and a half ago, I had a significant change of season in my life.

I am taking a brief sabbatical from the arts team. While they are headed to Paris and Edinburgh on outreach, I have joined the first-ever counselling school that my base is offering.

The lecture phase of the school is three months long, and the slogan is "Receive to Give," which means that, while we are learning how to counsel others in a Christian way, we are receiving healing ourselves. I am receiving a lot of healing at the same time that I am being prepared to return to my ministry with the skills to help disciple the nations - and our future teammates - with Godly wisdom.

It's been an unexpected blessing to be here, to have peace and the chance to spend extended amounts of time with God. This is the busiest season for the arts team, and my leaders were gracious enough to allow me to leave the internship that we are running so that I can come be a part of this school.

As you pray for me in this time, please pray that God gives me the strength to say yes to the decisions that He places before me. It is a huge growing time for me, and I am only too aware of my own fragility. But I also know that He will not ask me to do anything that He is not preparing me to do.

One of the best parts of the school thus far has been how we focus on giving back. We do evangelism every week, as well as going to the Salvation Army to serve dinner to the homeless on Wednesdays. I have always loved going to the Salvation Army, and it has given me the chance to have weekly conversations with the people that are there, and to follow up with them about prayer, illnesses, and the evidence of God working in their lives.

God has also been using music a lot in this time. I began playing the ukulele this past winter, and I have been playing the piano again, as well. I am currently praying about purchasing a 3/4 size guitar (because it fits my size better than a full-size guitar). God has spoken to me a lot about the place that worship has in my life, and I am trying to take concrete steps to move in the way that He is leading me. Music has a way of bypassing the mind and touching the heart with truth that I find hard to accept when I filter it through rational thought.