As many of you know our life has been a whirlwind the last two years. Our plans were to join WIM, become missionaries, move to Alabama for training and end up in Mexico sooner than later. But you know how the story went Covid made it impossible for us to rent anything or even try to buy something. So we returned home brokenhearted and confused, we didn’t understand why we couldn’t go get the training done. At the same time, as we came home we miscarried for the second time but that time was a lot harder. It took me a few months to recover from that physically and spiritually just felt like it was a time of battle. My womb was empty, my heart felt empty, so we were going to pray again that God would fill my womb, even the children prayed. Even though we had six children my desire to raise up a legacy, an army for the Lord was great and I desired to hold a baby in my arms again.
During this whole time we continue in our little church ministry here in our hometown. Still praying that the Lord would direct us where he wanted us to go. We were blessed to be able to go to Mexico in February of last year and do a lot of good damage there. 😊 But as we returned home there were still a lot of questions. In May, as many of you know we found out we were pregnant and how exciting that was. And then July came around we found out we were pregnant with twins. All the while we were still praying where did God want us to be. Because our hearts desire was to be in the mission field but it just was not happening. 2021 was a crazy year. A summer full of Bible camps, Community evangelism, family camps, conferences, homeschooling, worship services and practice and preparing to send our oldest son to the Alert Academy. As we wrapped up hunting season in September, got our son to to the Academy and back home we came to the realization that we were not needed at our home church anymore. As much as people would say they were involved in this decision, we believe God finally took us out of our comfort zone. He had so much more planned for us that we had become too comfortable to truly mold. What’s really sad is it’s not the way that we had planned to leave at all, or ever. So we came home and tried to push forward. We continue doing worship but instead here at our home with another family or two and we still prayed and set in confusion not understanding why things were not working out how we had planned. Then on the drop of a dime we had to go to the city for pre-term labor of the babies and we stayed up there from November 29 till January 16 living in our camper with six kids and a dog. Still continuing in ministry but nothing we thought was that big of a deal. But God saw different. We were released to come home for three days and went back up to NIQU for another five days because the twins oxygen was low. Whew what a time! We express all of this because all of the last two yeare we felt have been a major learning curve, and here’s why:
So many times in life we push forward and try to do things with in our own power or we truly feel like God is calling us to do something. And whether he is really calling us to some thing or the enemy is intervening, there’s confusion and chaos when it doesn’t happen how we thing it ought. But this year as we came home with our new twins and all the craziness that comes along with that, the sleep deprivation, the mixed emotions, the new schedule or lack of, is a whole different ballpark. We learned one major thing…….that there is absolutely nothing we can do about things we have no control over. No matter how hard our hearts desire is to be out serving and doing and ministering to the saints, God had simply called us just to rest at his feet. It‘a just like the story of the woman who came and wept at Jesus‘s feet and anointed him with perfume preparing him for his burial. What if we looked at it from her point of view. She was tired, confused, hurt, overwhelmed, stressed and she needed just to get it out. She just needed to come to the feet of the Savior and rest her burdens there and her cares.
We believe that we have become so Focused on trying to serve God how we thought we were supposed to and when it didn’t work we were distracted by the WHY it hadn’t worked instead of the WHAT. Becoming so hurt and confused and distracted by WHY things have not been working out until we realized it’s about WHAT God had wanted us to learn. What was it that God really wanted us to be doing? WHAT had we been missing? Scripture says be still and know that I am God and that’s something that we usually are not good at is being still. And having these twins here at home we have had no other option but to sleep when we can, take a shower when we can, eat when we can, we have control over NOTHING. The last three months has taught us that we can only be sure of resting at Jesus‘s feet and finding our energy and our accomplishment there. We had to stop pursuing full-blown ministry as we had planned, or so we thought, but now that we had stopped pursuing what we thought we were supposed to be doing God is opening doors to what He really wants done. Next week I will share what God has in store for us so far, and from things that we have not even tried to do on our own but have just come about. But until then please pray for us as we have our first concert since the twins this weekend and we are super excited about it! Please pray that the Lord uses us to touch lives of people and bring people to redemption in Him. And also don’t forget just to sit at the Saviors feet a lot of times is the best place to be.
In Christ,
Jamie
