Freedom International Missions

Christin just recently returned from a domestic missions project in Jakes Run West VA where God did a work in her heart and used her to impact a family who desperately needed help.  Here is her story:

“Over the past week I’ve been thinking about how to articulate my mission experience in this blog.  I thought maybe I would write about how AMAZING the experience was or how I saw a family’s life changed through people actually BEING the hands and feet of God.  Maybe I would write about all the amazing people I met who go to Jakes Run, West Virginia EVERY year to help the families in that community.  Though these things are true, I decided to express the experience in a different way.  On this trip I saw a new side of God. I left with a new realization of how dynamic God is.  I thought I was going to Jakes Run to bless a family and serve God, and while these things did happened, God also used the opportunity to show me something so much BIGGER…

The night before I left Jakes Run, I was talking to Jeff, one of the World Servants Mission coordinators, and as he shared with me some of the things other people in our group were going through, I realized how small I had made God in my mind.  All these people where going through all these things and God used their obedience in serving to give them a piece of whatever puzzle they were tackling in their life at that moment (and I’m no exception).  Not only that, but he does this every second of every day.  I realized how small my perception of God was and sometimes still is.  Even as I’m writing these words, I know there are still some areas of my life that I shrink God and all His amazingness into something so regular and ordinary…so one dimensional.  God is humungous and through serving I got to see how multi-dimensional He was and is and will be.

On this trip God cleverly put together a group of individuals and families who were all at different places on their walk with Him.  He connected them and their brokenness with other broken people that would listen to them and love them.  He took these broken people and gave them the will to help families and individuals who were also broken.  He then connected these two groups of people in a way that both groups could be impacted by the other.  He took teenagers and created bonds with seniors that would impact them forever.  He passed out self-esteem to children.  He exposed people to his indescribable love.  He brought families together.  He taught people things about their own struggles, about who they are and who they need to be.  All these things came together in such a magnificent and perfect way…AND…He does this daily all over the world.  AmAzInG.

God has SOOO much to show us and SOOO much to give us and He’s doing BIG things and He wants us to see Him and He wants us to be a part of whatever He’s doing.   So yes, I can definitely say this trip has put something in my heart that wants to be involved in any mission opportunity that comes my way.  But more than that, I just want to be where ever God is working, where ever he is doing cool stuff (or even boring stuff). Basically, I want to be all up in His business, engulfed in him.  And I realize I don’t have to go to West Virginia for this.  

So my point is (I know, finally) my mission experience taught me to THINK BIG.  I pray and I hope that you and I will have God Sized thoughts, God Sized dreams, and God Sized impact in all we do.  God Sized = BIG….REALLY BIG!”

Christin