Sandals n NO doubt

Updates: Ladies at the center: We are at 25 girls coming to the drop in center and growing every day. We will be doing two activities during the next 3 months. We have one of the ladies Jennifer who has given up sexually exploiting herself and is trying to make ends meet, she has a 7 month old daughter and was really struggling, we were able to help her with giving some food for suppers and the baby. When we sat down with her we learned that she makes the beaded work for sandals. She only gets 1000 shillings per pair that is .34 cents. We have asked her to teach the girls at the center and what we will do is start a co-op of women who can come together w/ this product and we work together at selling to the wholesale market. As well as give her a little something for teaching a few classes, showing her that her skills can be taught to others. We will see were this leads us and may start making sandals ourselves.  This is just a little something the women can do to gain a little bit of income.  It’s not much, but it’s a start and something to add on as a second job. We will also be making crochet rugs from scraps of fabric; we see this as a means of extra income as well. 

Cross boarder trafficked ladies:

We were awarded a scholarship to pay for 5 girls from cross boarder trafficking to start our 16 week business course, please come a long side of in prayer as we raise the additional funds for teachers and a therapist to come in and work in the training. We are hoping to start and offer it for 10 girls.

We are taking our annual ½ marathon walk and turning it into a 10k that use to be a small event and taking it to the level of a huge annual event.  We are going to be asking a huge corporation to take on the event, please pray as we do a proposal and present this week. We will also do it during the month of July that is Anti Human awareness month in Uganda and use it as a huge campaign of awareness.  Please pray w/ us as we invite the color run and a bank to take on the event.

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

When I read and re-read this verse over and over I think, WOW, don’t be a wave anymore and what does that look like? . And I think I am the wave at times and I feel like I’m on a wave most of the time. I am not going to lie about it, I think that w/ all the needs and the struggles that I see on a daily basis some days I am not joking I am like GOD I have no idea how your going to do this. I doubt my abilities and I sometimes roll that over to how do I describe it, it’s like your cocking your head sideways and looking at God w/ this face of like really how are you going to do this.  Because God right now I have prayed and cried and prayed and cried and I have been on my knees and I hear all the struggles AND the need for your LOVE to pour out onto the broken world I work in.  I also think that the wave of emotions that I am challenged with, are another wave that can set you into a doubt, one day your celebrating a huge proposal that went through and realizing that the last year of traveling and networking just made your aha moment of that is why you had me there moment. And then the next moment your at the bottom of the wave and hitting the ocean floor because you just spent an hour w/ a trafficked victim and hearing his story. I get to this place of disbelieve of the WORLD and then its this moment of silence and you think GOD how how how are we doing to do this.  God loves me so much he’s like honey just wait I have a plan…. You don’t see it, your in the middle of the fire and just hold on it’s coming. And then these incredible God moments happen and you see lives being changed around you and people choosing GOD and ending the last 7 years of selling yourself on the streets and you hear a testimony of how “I cried out to God and I said I will not return I completely give up my past life and God I am trusting you for everything.”  Just to hear an echo of your own cry to God years past and this WAVE of his love rushes over you and your like he has kept his promise he has taken care of everything you needed. And the prayer you just prayed over this woman is true and he will do the same for her.  And it’s like this one verse makes since because you have been that wave and doubted and yet you have been able to see time and time again his incredible provisions.  I say thank you LORD for the mustard seed, because you new in creating me I was going to stumble and have doubts. SO I say all of this because I want to be real and transparent and honest. To me when I can be as real w/ God and say this is me and I do this, then it’s then that my faith grows and I see how much deeper I have gone w/ him in this relationship.  My prayer life gets stronger and more refined as these moments happen.  You see most of January and part of February it was spiritual warfare here w/ in the ministry. We were seriously under attack, I just keep saying guys the devil is mad, I think it must be that we are going to have an incredible year because we are in the storm.  We are not fully out of it yet, but again as I see God’s works and blessings I am renewed and made to really stop looking at that word DOUBT and start looking at the face of my savior.  He has completely ROCKED my world. 

I also have found a new church community and feel that they are and incredible family. It is a smaller church and called Freedom Church and are based out of the UK. I listened to the pastor today and all I could think about was Jeff Lucas. (a uk pastor who teaches at Timberline church)  The leaders of the church work with street children and have come in to do some discipleship with our girls at the center and it’s been a wonderful journey to watch.