Long Time, No Blog! Wanna Know What's New??

Welcome back to my blog, which I seem to have neglected for the past two years...oops! Well, now I'm back in action, renamed it, and even gave it a rainy background. The reason for that being that when I went on my one week mission trip to Honduras a few years ago, it rained, like, every day. When I think of rain, I smile as I think of Honduras. So, now when you read this, you can think of it, too. =)

I thought I'd start the new blog off by putting my support letter up here so you can understand what brought me to this huge change in my life. Enjoy!

Hi Again, Friends,

Have you ever had your plans change within just a matter of a few hours in a way you really just never saw coming? That's kind of what's happened to me in the last month or so. But, then again, it's really been a long time coming. Remember back in 2010 when I went to Honduras with my old church? Well, my heart never really left ever since I got back. Then, a friend of mine, without really even knowing he did, gave me a wonderful reminder that I really do want to go back there, and for more than just a week this time. I Google searched “teaching English in Honduras” and guess what? I found an incredible opportunity waiting for me there!

I researched the school for a couple hours and just kept talking to God, continually asking Him to open these doors for me to do this if it's where He wants me. Well, He opened so many doors that I got all the way through the application and interview process and was offered the position of teaching both English and Spelling to grades 7-9! Crazy, right? Yes, but only in the very best way possible! I've always felt like God gave me a heart for long(er) term mission work, so why not start embracing it now, rather than waiting until it may not be an option for my life anymore? I do not think it was a coincidence that God sent me to Honduras at the time He did. Nor do I believe it's a coincidence that I found the school off of Google (of all places!) and it is a Christian based one, AS WELL as an English speaking one at that. Sure, Google may not be the most popular place to discover a missionary opportunity like this, but since when has God ever limited ANYTHING He does? So, here I am, writing to proudly and excitedly tell you that I will be moving to Siguatapeque, Honduras from this August to June of next year!

Now, I know you're probably wanting to know more information about the school and kind of get a raw picture of what my life there will look like, right? The name of the school is Comunidad Educativa Evangelica (Siguatepeque Bilingual Christian School). Siguatapeque is known as a wealthier city in Honduras, but in no way does that mean that the students and community members don't need people to love on them and to show them Jesus. The school teaches grades K-11 and the students learn half of their days in Spanish and the other half in English. I've been blessed to have many conversations already with the other women teachers I will also be living with while there and I am overjoyed at the amount of time outside of school they get to spend with students who go to the school! There are so many opportunities for ministry and for discipleship that I just can't hardly wait to get there and get started! It's so amazing to think that my very first year of actually teaching and having my own classroom will also take place in a third world country that goes by a whole different rule book with the way they live. But, that only gets me more excited to see the ways God could use this time to grow my faith and really help me “grow up” in a sense.

Like I said, I will be living with three other ladies, all of whom are returning English teachers. I've spent much of my free time looking at their pictures on Facebook and seeing all the Honduran faces of the lives they've been able to impact because God has chosen to use them there in Honduras. One of the girls actually has a story much like my own, as she just finished her first year ever of teaching, and has chosen to take on yet another year because she loved it so much. I know from student teaching that we will be extremely busy, and after reading all of the teachers' blogs, I now know that we will be even busier than the average teacher because of all the extra time many kids spend at the school, and therefore, have even less time for relaxation. Even with all the craziness that I know will happen as soon as I step foot off the plane, I could not be more excited for it! It's an amazing feeling to be done with college and be in a place where I really can do just about anything, and go anywhere. I'm going to take that saying seriously and go to Honduras, and I'm so excited to begin forming friendships with my students (that's why I LOVE this age!!) and helping them dig deeper in their own faith.

I've been so well equipped with discipleship while I was in college because of the incredible campus ministry I was part of, Christian Student Fellowship, and I've seen what it really means to be the hands and feet of Christ. I'm not saying that everyone should move to a third world country in order to be like Jesus, but He does call some of us to that life. For me, I know that He has called me to Honduras, at least for this year. It is a position where I can go just a year, and I also have the option of staying on longer if I choose to do so.

While this is a missionary position, the school pays their English teachers a stipend of $325 a month, and they also pay for your apartment you share with the other teachers. In other words, it's enough to live on while in Honduras. However, the school only pays for flight costs for me to get down there, we are responsible for paying the rest of our flight costs, which is around $750 one way and I would be going there and back twice during my contract. Then you add on the cost of medical expenses every month and you come up with quite a bit of money needed. That doesn't mean it's an impossible amount, though. One of my most favorite aspects of missions work, and I've said this probably in every support letter I've ever sent, is that it allows the missionary to invite other people in on their experience. This is not something I plan on doing by myself, nor would I ever want to! One of the beautiful things about experiencing something is that you get to tell others about it!

 I want to invite you to come along on this journey with me! This is going to be a HUGE life change for me, and I am going to need a lot of support. I would love it if you could join me in praying for this trip and the time I'll be in Honduras. If you would like to give financially as well, I would also really, really appreciate that. The breakdown of what I will be needing includes food/water, health costs, flight costs, cable/internet/phone, and classroom necessities and averages about $650 support needed per month. If you feel willing to give to this trip, you can do one of two things. I have set up a PayPal account which you can go on and donate to at this link: brennab29.blogspot.com. There is a "Donate" button at the top right of the page. If you do not want to give online, you can also send a check in my name to my home address in Rochester,IL and my mom can have it deposited into my account. You can give a one time gift, a monthly gift, or just whenever you feel like it, really! Honestly, anything you choose to give would be so GREATLY appreciated.

 As I write this, I trust God fully that the money I need will come in, because God is God and He can do anything He wants to do! I've been pleasantly reminded many times in the last few months that “Now, to Him who is ABLE to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to HIM be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21. Not only can God give us even more than we could ever think up on our own, but He does it to bring glory to His name! Ahh, that gets me so excited!

Oh, and don't worry, while I am gone, I plan on regularly updating my blog, Living My Honduran Dream! (found at the same link for online giving that I mentioned above), so you can follow me and keep up with all the latest happenings in Honduras! Many of you who are reading this have read support letters of mine in the past, too, and I want to take this time to thank you so much for any and all support you showed. It is because of all of those previous trips I took and all the heartbreak I experienced along the way, from not being able to go on a trip or the way I saw people living and wanted to do more to help them, that has enabled me to even get to this point in my life where I feel God more clearly than ever leading me down this next path. 

I don't know how long He has me on it for, but I do know that He's faithful and He works every thing out for the good of those who love Him. That doesn't just mean me, it means you, it means your family members and your friends. It means the random people you meet in your life. God has a beautiful plan for each one of us, and not only that, but He knows, better than anyone, what trials will have to be faced in order to be molded into the people He created us to be. I recently read Kisses From Katie, (read it if you haven't!!) and she said something I keep coming back to when I think of the hard things I've had to face and the things I will have to face in the future. “Nothing is a sacrifice in light of spending eternity with Christ”. I want to live my life in such a way that this is totally evident to others who meet me.

God Bless and Thank You!

We Could All Use Some Encouragement

To say that yesterday was awesome just doesn't seem to cut it. More like unpredictable, but still, absolutely amazing. I woke up feeling like crap. Pretty sure I had some kind of little flu bug, my head hurt extremely bad and I practically had to crawl because it was too painful to walk for a while. I had to go get my weekly blood work done, though, so I finally felt good enough to go do that. Blood work came back amazingly! My count has jumped again to 83,000 platelets! And that is since my doctoc lowered my prednisone by one pill a day, so it's even cooler. :) God has been working like crazy in my body and I am just so honored that he is using me through this, so awesome to see Him being glorified even in this. God seriously comes to my rescue every single day, in every situation, and that is AWESOME! Sunday night, I was talking with my best friend and told her I was going to write my Kenya support letter this week, but I wasn't going to send them until I had talked with my doctor to see if a surgery was still in my future. I don't want to plan this whole trip and then have it ripped from me. Well, then she quickly asked me "Do you still feel like God's calling you there?" Me -- "yes..." Deb -- "Then you should send them out whether you know about the surgery or not." Man, hit me like a ton of bricks! If God wants you to be somewhere, He will take every barrier out of your way to get you there. That's what I learned from the National Missionary Convention we went to a couple months ago. I can't shake the feeling that this is part of why God is healing me : because He wants me in the midst of all these things coming up in my life. He wants me to be there, to be apart of them, to be used for His kingdom. He is just so good, I can;t even believe how good He has been. Even though there are plenty of unknowns in my life, especially the huge hospital bills we have after the fact. I have no idea where that money is going to come from, but God does, and if He does, I'm okay with that. I will let Him take the reigns on that one. I trust that He will take care of me and all of the things I have no control of, which is, well, everything!
As I look at my class schedule for next semester, it would be easy for me to curl up and want to hide away for how busy I am going to be. It's overwhelming to see how much I will be doing next semester. Especially as I look at all my free time I have over break right now and how I've been able to draw so close to God already, I treasure it because I'm not sure what it'll look like next semester. Then, I think, that's silly! As long as I have this amazing passion for Him, I know He will continue to give me the time I need for Him. He is my priority and I want my time to reflect that. A group of us are going to do the 90 day read through of the Bible, 12 chapters a day, and I couldn't be more excited! It might be the biggest challenge in my faith, but lately I've been reading 9 chapters a day so I can finish it out in time to start it up again. I tell you what, reading huge chunks at a time is awesome! I can honestly say at this point that the Bible is my favorite book. I love reading it and it constantly opens my eyes to new things about my savior! God is all over the place and as long as I stay in His merciful presence for the rest of my life, I have all that I need. I'm not content with my life, I'm completely overjoyed with it! I can truly say that I haven't had a bad day in well over 3 months. I heard once of a man who hadn't had a bad day in over 20 years and I didn't understand why, until now. The power of God is just simply more than we can fathom and I am blessed to be able to witness it while on earth. I think of when I was younger and we were told about how even in your final moments, you can still find God if you truly believe in Him. You can have eternity with Him still. As amazing as it is that He literally gives us that chance until your final breath, I find myself feeling sorry for those people. Why? Because they missed out on God while they were here. They didn't get to experience Him in their earthly lives the way He yearns for us to. The best thing about God is that no one can take Him away from me. They can take literally everything I have, leave me with nothing, but not matter what, I will always have my Jesus, and that is the best gift of all. I heard a quote about Christmas which I thought was pretty profound. "Christmas for the nonbeliever is to feel for one day what the Christian feels everyday." What if we all had the spirit of Christmas every single day? I know for me, I've had that feeling for quite a while now, and you certainly won't see me complaining if that's the way I feel for the rest of my life! Life is not perfect, we are going to face a lot of bumps and bruises, we will be rejected and lied to and treated horribly and it will hurt, especially if it's from people that are close to us, which is usually how it goes, right? We're going to face death, financial troubles, busyness of work, school and life in general. Yet even in all of that, God is not going to leave us! All we have to do is cling to Him with everything we've got. When scripture said "nothing is impossible with God", we weren't being lied to, we were being promised that He would hold us. He's not going to let us go, even when the rest of the world does. If there;s one thing we can put our hope in, it's Him.

How Can God Be So Good When We Don't Deserve It?

These past couple of months have been absolutely crazy. Seriously, who knew being sent to the hospital could completely change someone's life? Okay, maybe that's not too far fetched of a thought after all, but still, for me and my faith journey, it's exactly what I needed. The short story is that my platelets dropped to practically none, which, if you don't know, platelets are what makes your blood clot so you don't bleed to death, more or less. Anyway, I was put in the hospital for a couple days and had this globulin stuff pumped into me to pump up my platelets. It was the first time I had an IV put in me, which was painful all in itself because my veins are not the kind the nurses like, so I got pretty bruised up from all of that. The coolest thing that I realized while I was there was how many people cared so much about me. I had way more people come to visit and call me than I could have imagined. God showed His awesome love for me so much just through that. I got some good time to myself while I was there, and really ever since then, my faith has just shot to a completely different level.
I don't want to sit here and retell you everything in my life that has happened, you can just read my journal if you really want all of the details. I decided I would just give you a list of all the amazing ways I have seen God at work in both my life and those around me since then:

* One of the biggest things has been in Christian Student Fellowship, our campus ministry at UIS. God has truly been changing us and bonding us together in a way that I have never experienced before. He keeps bringing more and more people and actually getting them connected! We even had an international student give her life to Jesus and get baptized before she goes back to China! How AWESOME!
* I've had the amazing privilege of praying for some of my closest friends every single day for God to intercede in their lives, for them to open up their hearts to Him. I have seen God working in them as I pray everyday, knowing that He hears our prayers and that He is using me to reach them. Again, just super awesome.
* The biggest thing would have to be my relationship with my mom. For most of my life, we really just haven;t truly gotten along, that is, until I gave it all to Jesus, for real this time. I finally let His holy spirit overtake me and He has been ever faithful through it all. I have gone from praying nonstop that my mom would encounter God in such a new way that she would truly see Him for who He is to seeing Him shining through her. God has allowed me to show her to Him and He has completely saved our relationship. I was actually just telling my friend the other day that I actually *love* going home and talking with my mom. She didn't even know what to say because that is so not like me. That's the cool thing, though, it's not me, it's all God.
* Okay, this is long, so here's my last one. This whole platelet thing has been a crazy roller coaster ride, and today I found out they are going UP. Without having any of the globulin stuff going in me, they are going up because of God, not because of my medication or anything else. I truly believe that He is doing a Holy work in my body and it is so awesome to be a witness to it. Whatever happens, I just want this to bring glory to His name. He has been so good in ways I honestly do not deserve or understand. He is such a great God and I really just can't wait to tell the world about Him! That's a new thing for me, too. I didn't used to get that excited!

To wrap it up, God is really the best, and I hope and pray that all of you reading this one day get to experience that for yourselves as well. If you want more detailed descriptions of what's been going on in my life, don't hesitate to ask, I love telling about my life, especially when it has to do with Jesus. :)

A Helping Hand

So, it's been a while since I last wrote one of these things. I kinda forgot about it. Anywho, I wanted to share a little about my experience this past week. It has been one of those awesome weeks in general just because of a ton of little things. I started out getting to see my friends off to their Kenya trip, which is part of what has made this past week so great. Every single day, I just find myself thinking constantly about them and what kind of things they must be experiencing. I challenged myself to pray for them everyday, and especially for my friend, Debra, as she prayed so hard foe me when I was on my trip. It is so crazy when I think about the time difference. For instance, right now it is like 6:30 a.m. there. Weird! I know that the things they are seeing and dealing with are tough and I can't wait to hear stories straight from them. I am seeing how God has made me a part of this trip, though, in the way He has put it on my heart to lift them up whenever I think about them. Okay, that wasn't really the point of this blog, but I did also want to share that. So, one of my two goals this summer was to draw closer to God and to love my mom better. I have really felt God so much more than I expected to what with being away from mt college community of believers and all. I find it a lot easier to keep up with Him when I stay in His word and try my best to give Him everything I have. I've had a lot of babysitting jobs this summer, for two different families, and one way I have been able to bless them is just by letting them feel safe leaving their kids with me. When they get home, they know that their kids have had fun and I treated them with respect, while also disciplining them in the way their parents would. I thought it would just be a cool way to earn some money over the summer, but it's turned into a serious humbling experience because of the way I've had to adjust my attitude to be "kid- friendly". I also got to sing in church this morning and it was just really nice to finally have the time to do that again as it had been a few weeks. Afterwards, the pastor's wife thanked me for using my gifts and sharing them this morning. It felt really great to be thanked while also having God acknowledged. I have found it very hard to take compliments from people because it wasn't really me giving it in the first place. Knowing that she recognized God as the reason I got up there just totally made my day. Okay, so now I think I'm finally going to get to my point: I have been trying to love my mom better this summer because for the next 2 years (at least) I will be living with her 24/7. I was freaking out about it because we just don't get along! We have different personalities, although everyone tells us they are the same. Either way, whatever attitudes we have, they don't get along with each other! I decided this week I would do at least one nice thing for my mom everyday, whether she asked or even noticed it. The first couple days, she didn't notice until later. But once, she saw me unloading the dishwasher and she was just really excited to see me doing it without being told. Her attitude towards me has improved a TON and because of that, I am less defensive around her. We still have a long way to go, and trust me, we're obviously not anywhere near perfect, but at least we're on the right track! So I guess my question is, what can you do this week to improve a relationship? Whether it's with a parent or a friend or a coworker, is there something you can do to make things better between you and that person? It also kinda makes me wonder what other things God would want me to do to make it even better. Thanks for listening to my thoughts, sorry they were so long!!! :)

Making a Change

So I'm sitting here at Panera, where I've been everyday this week so I can get the internet. I've been thinking a lot about my Honduras trip. It was without a doubt the most life-changing experience of my life. I think of my thank you letters I sent out and how I wanted to really give people an idea of what the trip truly meant to me. I am never going to be able to forget the people I met there and the things I saw and did, nor would I ever want to. I loved every part about that trip. What sticks out to me the most is the love. They loved us there like I have never been loved before. How could people who have so little love us so much? Then it made me think of my life here in Illinois. How can I show that love to the people I come into contact with in my OWN daily life? I realize that the best way to do this is to always be a helping hand. The times it's hardest is when I just don't feel like doing much of anything, yet those are the times that God is calling me to it more than ever. I don't want to walk away from this trip and have it eventually become a distant memory, I want it to be at the forefront of my mind all the time. What was the point of going if nothing about my life changes? There are still many things I am going over in my head about what I can do to reach the people there without actually being there, but for now, knowing that there is something I can do here is a great start. We were all meant to change the world, so how are YOU going to do your part?

The definition of entertainment

Hey there,
So I've been thinking about this idea of being Jesus-like. In my head, isn't that really asking that if Jesus were here with us in the flesh right now, what would HE do?? Well, lately I have been really convicted in regards to my movie collection. We had a garage sale yesterday and I was going through my things in an effort to "simplify" my life. I had some movies that are all about killing and I know have bad language in them. One of my friends posted a while back on this topic, too. I just can't seem to shake this feeling that there's more to entertainment than what entertains US. If Jesus were sitting next to me in the movie theater, what would He really have to say? Would he be okay with me listening to bad jokes that are directed at Him? I think of Talladega Nights and the scene where they pray to "precious baby Jesus" or something like that, but really, they're kinda making fun of Him. They're not honoring Him. Yet, we are human, and we think that's funny, even those of us who are totally in love with Jesus. Anyway, as I went through my movies, I looked through each one and decided, for myself, does God really want me to fill my mind with this stuff? I put them in the garage sale pile and as I sold nearly every single one yesterday, it hurt. I'm not gonna lie, some of those movies I love. But, if God doesn't love it, than I think I just got my answer on whether I should be watching it. It's been really hard, especially with the movies coming out in the future. Does God really want us watching sex scenes about couples that aren't married on television? I don't know, I really just don't know the answers to these questions, that's why I have them. But, I do know that there is a very good reason God's put this on my heart, so I just wanted to share this, who knows, I may not be the only one feeling this way. Also, if you have any thoughts, I would love to hear them....