I Confess!

Caution: Confession Post! 

I want to be honest. Being a missionary is hard! Being a missionary wife is hard. Being a missionary raising a family is hard! News flash, right? I think people tend to think because you are living in a different country and because God called you there, you are automatically closer to God. Well, in all honesty, that's not true! I think satan attacks people who are doing God's will and that includes missionaries! 

I have struggled living on the mission field over the last several months. Many factors play into that struggle, but as I have struggled. I have drifted further away from God. It's my own fault because I didn't take the steps necessary to keep my relationship with God where it needed to be, and I made excuses for not taking those steps too! As I continue to pick up the pieces and build up my relationship with God, I can see it. I can see it now, when I couldn't see it then. My faith was weak because I was not taking the appropriate steps to build it up. My faith wasn't working properly because I wasn't seeking God properly. 

Don't misunderstand, I was still praying and still had a connection to God, it just wasn't deep. There were even times when all I knew what to pray was, "God, I need help. I don't know what that looks like, but I know I need help." I am just thankful I could still pray to God and that He did know what I needed. Prayer is our lifeline to God, and even when we don't know what else to do, we can still go to God with prayer and ask for help because He knows what we need even before we know we need it. 

Thankfully, I had friends during this time that I reached out to. To be honest, I didn't want to reach out to them. I didn't want to face the truth about me drifting away from God, much less tell anyone else about it. But after many sleepless nights of God pushing me to reach out, I did. I didn't just reach out to anyone though. I reached out to the women I knew would be prayer warriors for me. I reached out to women, who would understand my struggles. And their prayers worked! I began to feel better! I began to come out of the darkness I felt! I am so thankful I reached out to them! 

I say all of this to say, if you are struggling, make sure to reach out. Reach out to God. Don't give up on him because He will never give up on you. He will relentlessly pursue you (hence the many sleepless nights). Reach out to friends or family, who you know will pray for you. I know sometimes it is painful to let others in the deep, dark of our innermost being, but ultimately God created us for community. God created us to be there for one another in prayer. God gave us the Holy Spirit as a way to communicate with Him and communicate on the behalf of others, even when it is too hard for them to communicate with Him themselves. So please reach out to God and to others, even before you don't know what else to do. 

I'm even going to take it a step further. I'm going to tell you to reach out in the opposite direction. I'm going to tell you to reach out to the missionaries in your life. Missionaries often feel isolated and even forgotten about because let's face it, life goes on when we aren't there. So this often makes it hard for us to reach out to others. Satan lies to us and tells us things like, "They won't understand." or "They already have too much going on." Pray for the missionaries you know. Don't just pray for them, but ask them how you can specifically pray for them. It will help them so much. It will help them confront the lies satan tries to tell them too! So, maybe even selfishly, I ask you to reach out for the missionaries God has placed in your lives. 

For those of you who do pray for us, we are so very thankful for you. We feel your prayers. Thank you to each of you who pray for us. Thank you to each of you who read and share our blog. Know that we pray for each of you here. I, myself am trying to be more intentional in asking the people in my life how I can pray for them more specifically. To me, everyone is on the mission field, so we can all be more intentional in asking those who God has placed in our lives how we can specifically pray for them. 

We love each of you! 

Happy Easter!

Hey guys,

I hope all of you guys had a great Easter. We went to church this morning and had a great time of worshipping God. We were also greatful that the church only went two hours. Haitian churches are known to go five or six hours when they get excited about something. With Sharles that can be difficult. 

This week was good for us as our Pastor, Pat Hood, and executive Pastor, Kyle Goen, came to visit us along with Kent Jones who runs an organization that serves orphans and vulnerable children, called the 25 Project. It's was a great visit as they all three gave us good advise about living on the international mission field. They gave us some things to pray about. We are very thankful for their wise counsel. Check out Kent's website to see the amazing things he is doing at www.25project.org

On Saturday Brittany, Sharles and I took a family day to Karibe Hotel pool. We really enjoyed it and Sharles really loves the pool. 

This upcoming week we will be doing our ministry at the children's home along with our discipleship classes. We also have two heart patients staying with us this week. Yanick is preparing approximately 20-30 children to have heart surgery in May. 

Easter is an amazing day.  Jesus dying for us to take our punishment for our sins is truly amazing, but him rising from the dead really adds to it.  When he defeated death, he gave us the ability to defeat it also. He gaves us the chance to have everlasting life. Truly an amazing gift. We should be praising God everyday for that gift he gave us. Thank you Jesus. 

Making Disciples

Hey guys,

I hope all of you are doing well. Hopefully the warm weather is coming for you guys and you can get out and enjoy God's creation. It has been really nice here even though it has been raining a lot. Rain makes the driving very interesting with the conditions of the roads and the lack of a drainage system. I also got pulled over for not wearing my seatbelt this week which is hilarious since I see people riding on the top of dump trucks all the time and the fact their is no car seat law.  I argued for a while since every car that passed didn't have their seat belt on but he was getting mad and he had a AK47 so I let him win. The government here is very amusing to me. 

Well everything else is going well. The children's home is going well. They are starting to learn some work ethic. Our efforts are starting to pay off. The discipleship program is going great now. We have ten Bible classes going now with many of them being led by Haitians who we have discipled. God is good. 

Over the last month, I have been teaching a discipleship class on the book of Acts. I just finished it yesterday. The great thing about this study is that not only did we study the whole book of Acts, but we spent three hours yesterday talking about how we make disciples. We know that is what Jesus asked us to do, but what does that phrase mean?  We say it all the time, but what does it mean? So I want to make a few points about that phrase in this blog.

How do we make disciples? Well the Bible shows us a few things that we must consider. First of all, lets look at the word disciple. A disciple in Jesus' time meant a student. Discipleship must have teaching involved: teaching the Bible, teaching about life and modeling what a disciple should look like. The disciple must be teachable.  To be able to teach someone you must be with them.  Jesus was with his disciples and Paul spent plenty of time with his too. 

Discipleship must be done within a relationship. Discipleship is friendship with a purpose. The couple men who disciple me know that is the purpose of our relationship. They know they are discipling me, and I know I am being discipled. 

Discipleship must be done over a long period of time with lots of patience. It took Jesus three years, and He was Jesus.  We need to be patient. 

I would encourage all of you to think about who you want to disciple. Talk with them about your intentions and spend time with them on a regular basis. This was Jesus' plan to reach the world. He could have done it without us, but He gives us the opportunity to serve Him. GET IN THE GAME.  Understand the amazing opportunity we have to work for God. 

Quote

"Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter"-Spurgeon

God bless,

Josh