Welcome to my blog.

I will continue posting on our family blog, "It's A Loveless World." However, I needed a place where I could share with ladies from the heart, post recipes, and just ramble about girlie stuff. I hope this blog will be a blessing to you. If you've never visited us at "It's A Loveless World," come on over and say hello.

Now, a little about myself...

Instead of re-writing my testimony, I simply added an excerpt from "The Blessing of Single Servants" a post from our other blog.

Let's back up a little. I was born into a Christian home. My dad entered the pastorate when I was seven. By the grace of God I was gloriously saved at a very young age, 5-yrs-old. You've heard it said that hind sight is 20/20. Well, looking back I can see that God was preparing me for a life in the ministry from the beginning. I knew it was in my heart as a teenager, but I put those thoughts on the back-burner and replaced them with my life's plan. My plan was to meet a handsome dark-haired man at the "mature" age of 18, then we would date until I was 20. After a year engagement, we would be married and after a few years of honeymoon we would start a family, maybe four or five kids. I figured he would probably be going into the ministry and that would solve my need to surrender myself. Well, 18 went by, then 19..., 21..., 24..., One day I woke up and found out I was almost 26 and life hadn't gone as planned. What happened next was a foolhardy thing to do and not something I am proud of.

Late one Saturday, in January 2003, I found myself at my whits end. I was empty inside, except for a nagging feeling that a relationship with God was what I was missing. You see, God never left me, but I had pushed Him out and replaced Him with shattered dreams and a broken heart. That night, I didn't sleep much. Finally, as morning dawned, I slipped out of bed and got on my knees. Mine was not a heart ready for prayer. With tears pouring down, I brazenly told God that He had my soul, but if He wanted the rest of me, HE would have to do something that day in church. If He didn't, then I would stop fighting and go on with my career, being just like most every other christian I knew, service on the outside, cold on the inside. NO feeling would be better than the conviction that was tearing me apart. When you get to that state of spirit, you are completely unaware that you are dangling over a precipice spiritually and God in His mercy is the only thing keeping you from falling. Oh, I could never lose my salvation, but as I have witnessed, a child of God who rebels to this level of a stiff-necked heart is most often taken home.

Let me say here that God is a merciful and gracious God. He wasn't willing to let me go. That morning in church a missionary arrived. Somehow there was a mix up in the schedule, and Dad wasn't expecting him until the next Sunday, but Dad had him preach anyway. Before he preached, I was scheduled to sing. And wouldn't you know it, the hymn I had chosen before this happened was, "I Wonder Have I Done My Best For Jesus." I could barely finish. After I left to hide in the restroom, my Mom met me. I told her that God

wanted me, but I was so afraid that He was going to call me into missions alone. After I cried for a moment, I composed myself and went back to service.

That morning the missionary started his sermon by asking, "Do you really want to be like Christ?" Of course I'm sure most of the congregation would agree that we did. He went on to give example after example of what it meant to be like Christ. Christ was willing to leave His home, Christ was willing to be ridiculed and
persecuted, Christ was willing to die so that men could be free. It was also during this sermon that he mentioned how we are so often willing to pray for God to send laborers into the field, but how many of us were willing to be the answer to that prayer?

Be careful what you ask God to do. When God does something, He does it well! When the invitation was given, I had already been broken. Yet, I still didn't understand. That is, until God showed me that the reason I couldn't give him my dreams was because I was saving my heart for someone that may not exist. That morning, I surrendered my broken dreams, my fears of serving alone, and finally, I gave God all my heart. It was then that God could show me that He was truly All I needed and that He wanted me to prepare for the mission field.

Now, I could truly understand the meaning of Psalm 37:4. We so often read it like this, "Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall "GRANT" thee the desires of thine heart." But, you see, It doesn't say "grant" it says "give." If I delight in the Lord, if He is the most important thing in my life, then He will place within me His desires and only then will He grant those desires. That day I fell in love with God.

Through a series of events, I found myself in that airport in May of 2003 wondering if the chubby guy (sorry, Honey) in the back was the reason I was there. After a month of serving together, we both knew that something was happening. Later, Keith told me that when he gave his church, (a very large church compared to what I was used to), a presentation of our trip, he showed my picture in his slide presentation. When it came up, he told Second Baptist Church of Festus, MO,"...and this is the girl I'm going to marry!" Faith or audacity?

To make a long story short... we spent the next few months courting on the telephone and by mail since I was in Ontario and Keith was in Missouri. We saw each other in June for a week, August for three days, then in October he came up for Canadian Thanksgiving. That is when Keith proposed to me. We got to spend Christmas together and that was it, until the day before our wedding. We were married April 2, 2004. Eleven months later we had our son, Jerry, then Jocelyn, then Kaylee, then deputation, and then ..."

Here we are, living the adventure that God engineered for us. In the next week or so, we will know what the next destination will be. Lord willing, it will be on the field, serving the Lord full-time and in one place! 

It is my prayer that this blog will be an encouragement to ladies everywhere. I love getting comments; it gives me a chance to get to know my readers. So, leave comments, just make sure that what you say is not offensive to the Lord. If it is, I will not post it. Thank you for visiting me. Have a great day serving the Lord.