::Jamaica::

My first mission trip, Jamaica has a special place in my heart!  I went with the Salvation Army where we repainted an orphanage and played with the sweet children.  This trip confirmed my passion and desire to be a foreign missionary in a huge way.  It felt like home.  Not the place, but the project.  I had such an idescribable feeling come over me, and it has stayed ever since.

Reyando

yes.. that is a severed chicken head

::Uganda::

For as long as I can remember, I just knew I was supposed to be a full-time missionary in Africa.  Well, I don't know a thing!  I even once said, "God will NEVER send me to Mexico!" and sure enough, He has! 


I tried for a long time to move to Africa, and every attempt I made was shut down.  I was in Mexico when I got the phone call to go to Uganda, and needless to say, I was excited!  It was Wade who met the leader of the group going to Africa, and he immediately told them about my desire to go.  It was just a week-long trip, and I had been wanting to go for a year!  I'm so glad God knows me better than I do.  While I loved the trip and grew in a huge way, it was confirmed for me that I was not supposed to be a full time missionary in Africa, at least not for know.  I definitly dont know the future!


We spent the week doing "hut-to-hut" evangelism, which was one of the hardest things I've ever done.  The first hut I approached housed a girl of about 15.  I started by asking her if she had ever heard of Jesus.  She said "no."   No??  I wasn't prepared for that.  I thought surely these people would have at least HEARD of Jesus, even if they had the wrong idea of who he was!  I didn't even know where to start. So I started at the beginning.  I was faced with the reality afterwards that the women in Uganda don't feel free to make a salvation decision with out the approval of their husbands. 


At one home, where I spoke with two women, the man of the house loomed around us, giving them warning glances the whole time.  Satan had such a hold on this land.  But even so, I also got to see a huge Christian community gather for an incredible worship service.  We also held a women's conference for a few days, and women walked to it from miles away, sitting on the floor because there were so many of them.  What an amazing sight. 


I approached one man who was mending his fishing net, just like in the Bible! I felt so led by the Holy Spirit to tell him the story of Jesus commanding his disciples to put down their nets and follow Him -- He would make them fishers of men. The man told me that this scared him, and I imagine it scared the disciples too.. giving up everything they'd ever known to rely on a man they just met.


I must admit, I cried every night for the first several days.  It was the hardest foreign mission trip I've been on.  (New Orleans is the hardest overall!)  But by the end of the week God had shown me much about his miraculous power, which is so often forgotten in America. 

::India::

Jemisee! 

That's a Christian greeting in Nepali.  India is one of the most beautiful places we've ever been to!  In 2009 we joined a medical team on a journey to India, where we treated over 1,000 people and experienced about 200 lives changed through hearing the truth of Christ!  Wade was one of the pharmacists on the team and I worked in the prayer room.  On the last day, we were honored to go to a leprosy colony where we simply walked around, hugging and touching the deemed - "untouchables."  One of the hardest parts of the trip was hearing the women's response to the gospel -- much like in Africa, when presented with the gift of salvation, many women wanted to accept Christ's freedom but were too fearful of their husbands.  What was different in India is that surrendering to Christ often meant being disowned from their families and communities. In some villages, to be a Christian was to be lowest in the cast system.  You may as well be a leper -- you would not even be able to enter a Hindu's kitchen for fear of making it "unclean."  To give your life to Jesus in India is often to truely give Him your life.  There is much persecution in India, and I hope you will pray along with us that the nation will be confronted with the gospel and surrender themselves to the One True God.

The most beautiful women I've ever seen

Indian transportation

Wade in the "pharmacy"

A line of villagers waiting to see the doctors

My friends for the week

One of the women at the Leprosy colony

Beautiful Hindu Women in Darjeeling

To see my posts on India, go HERE.

::Mexico::

"Gloria a Dios" for the work He has done in Mexico!  Wade first went to Reynosa in the summer of '05.  At that time, "the canal" - as we lovingly call our village, was full of palet made houses with tarped roofs and dirt floors.  The Canal is a village with no running water or electricity, where the roads are made of dirt and rock, and work is hard to come by.  It is squatting grounds for all who live there, the poorest of the poor.

I first came in December '06 and together we have continued to minister in the same village, visiting two or three times a year.  For the last half decade we have been blessed to watch the children grow, the men step up at the spiritual leaders of their households, and hundreds of families relocate to safe and stable homes that we, and groups like us, have built.  God has poured out his love on this village, miraculously keeping them safe from the violence wreaking hacok on their country. 

It's my dream to one day live amongst these people that have become my own friends and family as a full time foreign missionary. Until that day comes, if God chooses for it to, I know in my soul it is a place we will continue to frequent for the rest of our lives. This is the place where God introduced us to eachother as well as itroducing us to a people group and ministry we love so much!

To see my posts on Mexico, go HERE.