One more year.... officially.

Found out yesterday afternoon. I'm officially accepted for one more year in Panama. Whoa, it's kinda crazy it'll actually be happening all over again.

Please be continuing to pray for my team and us being here now... but... looking forward to the future, please continue to be praying for the movement here and for the new members of next year's team that are getting prepared to support raise and move. Currently, there are 3 of us ladies accepted and 1 gentleman. Please please please (!!!) pray that one more guy would join the team. I can't imagine the team without at least two guys and I'm praying that God brings us one more... at least, I'd take more if we could get more. God had the dynamic covered on this team totally and I know that it's in his control for next year too.

p.s. took me long enough to figure out how to title these hey??!

My part of my application to re-Stint.

The last 6 months have been full of ups and downs, both as a team but for me individually. But 3 months into Stint when God starting to speak to me about coming back it was honestly the last thing that I wanted to do. Jessica (one of my team members) spoke at a weekly meeting about "running the race" like the finish line was on top of our toes. I was really convicted by that as God spoke to my heart that for me to run like the finish line was any minute I needed to stay another year and to come home to Canada was running like I had 20 more years of ministry. I knew that the decision to stay was the one I needed to make but it still was a little unnerving to me. Stint has been a lot harder than I had ever anticipated. At times I just wanted come home and join what I thought would be a normal staff team somewhere on campus. But in Jeremiah 29 is a letter to the exiles and as I was reading it vs.10 really gave me the peace about making the decision to apply to re-Stint. God says to the exiles, "... I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place (their home)." I feel that's a promise for me to hold onto. Its harder applying to come back another year because I know the struggles that are in store for our team and for the ministry here. More and more I'm coming across verses about the flawless nature Gods word, His faithfulness in His promises and more than that His everlasting love for me. I don't think that I'll really ever understand the depths of any of these 3 characteristics. I could list off the practical and strategic reasons why it's a good idea for me to stay and give this another go and tell story after story of the lessons I've learned here. But in the end its my relationship with God that makes me want to stay. He's placed in my heart a God-given passion for people and daily I learn what that means for my life. But it's His love that gets me up in the morning and turns me in the right direction and places me in the right place when I don't want to move. It's this love thats calling me to stay.