The Lord Turned My Sandals into Jordans

First I need to give a shout out to Praiz.  I listen to his CD, as some of you may know, over and over and over and over.  One of the songs on his CD is called On Jordan's Stormy Banks,and a few songs later there is a song called On Jordan's Stormy Banks, part II.  On Jordan's Stormy Banks is a hymn that was written in the late 1700's.  I think but am not sure, that Praiz put some artistic rendition stuff in there, especially in part II, but I don't in any part own any rights to this music, I am just talking about how it has impacted my first week as a missionary.

On Jordan's stormy banks I stand/ and cast a wishful eye, is the first line of the song, and that is how I felt when moving to 433 Russel, home of the Cal Aggie Christian Association, which serves students at UCDavis.  I was standing on a sort of metaphorical river bank, just looking at what place the Lord had prepared for me.  Jesus is already present on the University of Davis campus, so what do I need to do to allow ministry to happen through me, that is the question that I was wishfully trying to answer.

After my first week here, I realized that the Lord had turned my sandal into Jordans.  (which is a line that you can find in On Jordan's Stormy Banks, part II.)  My sandals that I had brought from Missouri with all my love. wisdom, and passion for the gospel, have been turned into infinitely cooler shoes (personally I prefer Nike or Adidas) when I put them with the "sandals" that everyone else has brought here too.

What I offer to the table is important, and with what the other people that work here offer, we are amazing.  I am excited to let Jesus work through us and see how this school year goes.

Did this really happen?

This is my first post from my new place!  For the past 3 weeks I have been training in New York City with the General Board of Global Ministries.  Then my Dad and I drove half way across the country in 2.5 days. Yesterday we arrived in Davis, California.

This morning I took my Dad to the airport in Sacramento and then drove back to Davis and to the CA House.  Today I met a lot of people who do a lot of things to make the CA House work.  After I met lots of people and had lunch with a cool coworker, I met a few more people and then went to unpack my room and set it up.

I did just like they told me to at training, I unpacked and claimed the space as my own by putting up pictures and setting out my nutcrackers. I plan to hang my Sporting Kansas City scarf like a banner in a few days.  After I did as much unpacking as I could, I laid down on my bed and fell asleep.

When I woke up from my mini nap I thought, "Did this really happen?"  I had to think through everything that had happened in the past few weeks.  I have been to training, and I have been commissioned as a Missionary for the United Methodist Church, I traveled from coast to coast, I met my co-workers, and I moved in.

I really like it here, I like this town, this state, the CA House, and all the people that go with it.  

I Command My Hands

Training is a lot to process.  A lot of concepts, mostly not new, but still a lot to think about.  So I really haven't been keeping up with posting as often as I should have, but bear (bare?) with me, I will start posting more regularly after I get to my placement and get settled.

In the midst of learning about being a missionary, and hearing call stories, I had written a date down incorrectly.  I had signed up for a date to do the morning devotional, and then written in my planner that I would be doing it a day later than I had signed up for.  

Today was the day I was supposed to lead.  Five minutes before I was supposed to lead, I was told that today was my day.  So with no preparation time at all, I was told to just go for it.  I sang I Command My Hands To Praise the Lord, had a volunteer pray, and we read John Chapter 7, aloud together and then we prayed.  

Everything worked out really well. I know that in the midst of this season of a jam packed head, I know that the Holy Spirit is with me.  I haven't been able to keep in touch with everyone in the way that I would like to, but I want you all to know that I am just fine as I journey with Christ through this amazing time.   Oh, and the poem is still coming.

Saying Goodbye

This is the last post that I will write from my computer desk in my room that I know so well.  This is the last post I will write while listening to the sounds of my 3 nephews playing with toys above my room.  This morning was the last morning that would wake up in my bed to my alarm clock.  Yesterday was the last Sunday I attended worship at Mexico United Methodist Church.  

Thinking about all this makes me sad, but then I think about my first post in my new place, the first night I spend there, and the work that I will be doing for the kingdom of God.  And thinking about my new place in California makes me so happy. 

So to everyone from Mexico, I say good bye and I will miss you a whole bunch, but I am going to follow God’s call on my life.

Important stuff:  My advance # 3021843

My commissioning ceremony will be webcast live!  It will be on August 12, 2013 at 10:00 AM Central.  The address is www.umcmission.org.

Goodbye everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please continue to pray for me! 

Is It For Naught?

A black pants suit with a lavender shirt hangs in my closet.  It is my missionary commissioning outfit.  Directly below it on the floor is a pile of dirty work clothes waiting to be washed.  The work clothes are from a recent mission trip where I was a youth leader.  The mission work was all for good, and I saw God so clearly so many times.  The lasting relationships and inside jokes I built with the nine other people on the trip are priceless.

An unforgettable experience came on a afternoon when we had decided to visit the Cherokee Heritage Center.  While waiting for the whole group to be ready to leave, A woman entered the air conditioned lobby with 5 children under the age of 4.  She and the five children looked very tired from the heat.  I couldn’t resist talking to the lady, holding a child and talking to the children who could talk.  I spoke to a girl who was 3 and she was trying to tell me something I couldn’t understand.  I told her that I was sorry I wasn’t sure what she was saying.  The mom then told me that she was telling me about her siblings that had been lost to a miscarriage and that the family hoped they were in heaven.  I told the mother that I think they are in heaven, and she had a huge smile on her face when she said thank you, I told her I didn’t have a doubt at all that the babies were in heaven because all people are born with God’s grace and all people are given God’s prevenient grace before we are even formed in our mothers’ womb.  The mother was elated, she smiled from ear to ear as she told me that rarely did people argue about unborn babies going to heaven, but that she had never had anyone give her a definite explanation that unborn babies do in fact go to heaven. 

That lady and I had an interaction that was less than 5 minutes. I don’t even remember her name, and if I ever see her again I won’t recognize her.  I still made an impact in her life, one she will remember forever.  I just wish that I could make that big of an impact in the lives of everyone that I interact with.

Maybe I do, or at least I mean something to people, my church had a going away dinner for me, and that was an extremely touching day, especially seeing everyone who came to wish me good luck and tell me they will miss me. 

A couple of years ago, an 8 year old in my congregation got to wrestle in the state wrestling competition.  The competition was in a nearby town, so of course I was going, who would pass up an opportunity to watch 8 year old children wrestle.   So late one night, after a soccer game I ventured out to Wal-Mart and walked the aisles to find painters tape and paint to make signs to cheer for the boy.  I am sure that the friend who was with me was thinking that I was one strange person.  It is too bad wrestling is no longer an Olympic sport because that kid might as well have packed his bags and headed for the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. 

During my going away dinner, I had to make a speech, during my speech that boy who is now 10, jumped up on stage and gave me this huge hug.  It was so awesome, it was like Jesus was giving me a sign to keep on being Cindy, because I had done something right, I had been a blessing, and I will be a blessing wherever I go.

With my commissioning suit ready, I hope that I am also ready, and then the pile of laundry reminds me that I am already witnessing, and although things will be different in California, I just need to keep being “Cindy” because what I do does make a difference, even if I can’t see the difference right away. The title of this entry is, “Is it for naught?” The answer is, it is absolutely NOT for naught.  

A Misinterpreted Calling

Sometimes I think of God evaluating my life.  God looks at where I am, a Christian with assured justification trying to live as Christ would want me to live.  Then, God looks back on all the times I was given signs on where to go with my life and when God thinks about how I have misinterpreted all those signs, God slaps his forehead with a palm and laughs and laughs.

Perhaps Bishop Thomas Bickerton said it best when He described that he thought God wanted him to help people see better.  So he set his mind around accomplishing that goal and prepared to become an optometrist. He reflected that his calling was to help people see better, but it wasn't by putting a pair of glasses on them. 

As a young girl with extraordinary faith, a similar situation happened to me.  I know that Christ called me to help people live better more fulfilling lives.  I thought that the way to do that would be to become an occupational therapist, and through all that, I would fulfill my calling as a Christian.

Fortunately, occupational therapy did not work out.  With a little over one semester left to become an occupational therapist, several professors got together and decided that I did not have the clinical reasoning skills to be a successful occupational therapist.  They dismissed me from the master of occupational therapy program at the University of Missouri-Columbia. 

It was a really strange felling, I was so relieved not to have to worry about making the grade, acting just right, and not crying from the frustration of the program everyday. However, I was so sure that helping people to live a more fulfilling life by being an occupational therapist was what God was calling me to do. Then again, John Wesley thought his first trip to America was what God was calling him to do.  He returned to England considering himself a failure.

Right after the "dismissal", I knew I was going through something that Christ had planned for me, and that as unfortunate as the previous events had been, Christ had never let go of me, through that storm, and I could feel his hand holding me until the darkness cleared.  It was a few days later when I asked an old friend from Truman State University, how a person got a job with UMCOR.  Her response was to send me a link to the young adult mission and service programs through the General Board of Global Ministries. 

I kept that link, and the thought in the back of my mind as I pursued other job opportunities.  Finally just before the deadline, I applied.  That was one of the best choices I have ever made.Now I am headed to be a missionary, and I will spend these two years to growing in my faith, and discerning my calling, which will be in some manner clergy.  I realized this during the laity session at the Missouri Annual Conference, while trying to keep my mind on my district lay leader instead of the Confederations Cup soccer game that was on TV in the background, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me saying that I shouldn’t be in a laity session when I was clergy material.

For the next two years I will be stationed at the University of California-Davis in Davis, California.  I will work as a United Methodist representative in a multi-faith community, with goals of increasing understanding among faiths, and to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. 

College ministry is an area that is important to me.  It is always heart-wrenching to hear a story about a child who hears the good news of Jesus Christ for the first time after having lived his whole life not knowing.  My story doesn’t involve an adorable little kid, in fact the main character in my story is a college aged girl, from a small town in Missouri. I was a junior in college, and she was a freshman.  She had started attending church when she came to college because it was something she had never done before.  Then one evening after a bible study she came to me, and said, “hey Cindy, do you know those lyrics in the song In Christ Alone, that say ‘there on the cross when Jesus died/ the wrath of God was satisfied” I replied that I did know those lyrics and then she asked the real question. “How did Jesus dying satisfy the wrath of God?”

I am confident that there are many other college students who have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ.  I intend to lessen the number of people who become adults never knowing the love of Jesus Christ.  I very much appreciate your prayers as I begin this mission.