Heather to Mexico!
The Beauty of Community
Provision
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6:25-26
If you have spent any amount of time in Church, there is a good chance that you have heard this verse a time or two. Growing up, I heard this verse and just knew that I was supposed to trust God and not be anxious about anything. Simple, right? Well, it is definitely easier said than done.
I spent years wrestling with anxiety in high school and college. For several months, I was going to a Christian counselor to walk through the depths of my anxiety. It seemed like it was something I would always struggle with, but through a series of events in 2018, God broke a lot of the chains of anxiety in my life. However, there are still moments where my anxiety will pop up and reveal when my heart is not trusting in truth about who God is.
A few weeks ago, God, in His grace, allowed my anxiety to pop up, requiring me to look to Him instead of myself. As I was waiting for a paycheck, thinking about housing for next year, and hoping that God would provide more support for the upcoming year, the Lord gently reminded me that my anxious thoughts were because of a lack of trust in Him and His goodness. Immediately after realizing what my heart was doing, I stopped and prayed, asking God to help my heart believe truth where it was believing lies.
You see, in me confessing my disbelief, I was then professing my need for Jesus. I need Jesus. As I was praying, I felt a deep peace, believing that God would provide for every need, even if it did not look like I had originally planned.
In everything that I was anxious about, God showed up and provided more than I could have imagined. Not only did I get my paycheck, but my tax return came back, giving me an extra cushion of money. With housing for next year, a group of girls here in Puerto went to look at a house, and unanimously, we all knew that God was providing this house for us to share next year for cheaper than what each of us are paying this year on rent. Lastly, God has given me an incredible support team that is so quick to jump in to support where needed!
God provides. He always has, and He is faithful to who He is. Therefore, He will always be faithful to provide, and I can trust in Him. After the past two weeks or so, I have been so encouraged by God’s provision in my life. He so graciously reminded me of His character in reminding me of my need to rely on Him and Him alone.
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.”Psalm 23:1
-Rachel Hill, GEM Missionary
If you’d like to support Rachel as she serves with GEM in Mexico, you can do so HERE. You can also contact her directly to talk further about what it means to be on her support team and find out how you can be praying for her!
Our Growing Disenchantment
I have had the incredible opportunity and privilege to travel to a few different parts of the world. There is something amazing about seeing and experiencing different cultures around the world. The biggest thing that sticks out to me is the way in which people lived in their communities. For example, in many parts of the world, people don’t have stoves to cook on. So the way they cook every day is building a fire and cooking food for their family. There are many more examples, but you get the picture. All of us have a “normal” way of buying groceries, transportation, and living.
The way I grew up living is completely different than the way people in Africa, Europe, and Mexico grew up. As I grew up, there were many things that I grew accustomed to: having air conditioning, dishwasher, washer and dryer, and easy transportation of a couple of vehicles. In many ways, my experiences inform what I believe is or what should be normal in my life. What happens when I don’t have what I grew up expecting to have? How does my attitude change? What does my heart believe about the goodness of God?
Puerto Escondido, Mexico is hot. When we first moved here, we had to adjust to not having a car, air conditioning, and trying to buy things when we didn’t even know the language. Early on, I remember complaining about the heat, the difficulty of getting around, and becoming disenchanted with the beauty of where we had moved to. When your plans go different than expected, challenges arise. When you encounter something that you are not used to, it is easy to wonder why these circumstances are happening and complain.
My point is this: God, in all of his incredible goodness and love, has given us everything we ever need in Him ( 2 Peter 1:3). In His grace, he sent His son Jesus to die for me so that I could escape the slavery of my sin and walk in the freedom of the cross. This is the greatest gift and anything else that we receive is an extension of that gift. A car, air conditioning, a home, a family, and a job is all an extension of God’s incredible goodness to us. Let us look out and be reminded of the incredible blessings given to us and know that every moment is given by God as a gift.
“To pay attention is to attend to something, to be present. We attend because the world isn’t cold and empty but filled with the presence of God. Every moment, every encounter, is meaningful and numinous. All ground is holy ground.” – Mike Cosper
-Daniel McDonald, GEM Missionary If you’d like to support Daniel and his wife, Kristen as they serve with GEM in Mexico, you can do so HERE. You can also contact them directly to talk further about what it means to be on their support-team and find out how you can be praying for them!
Unexpected Blessings
Now being in my 4th year as a GEM teacher, one of the sweetest connections I have made since moving to Mexico is with the students. Even though my first year was very challenging, God softened my heart over the summer after my 1st year. Since my 2nd year here, I have felt called to reach out to a few of the middle school girls and to also be genuine with the students I am teaching and tutoring.
God has blessed me so much by being able to connect with them and get to know them, and even their families more and more each year. Having students over to my house for dinner and playing games or being silly with them during class or getting hugs has been so sweet.
However, I have felt called to be more intentional in my interactions with them because I want to be a light for the gospel in their lives. So when I was given the opportunity to lead a small group of girls through a Bible study I was so excited! I would have never imagined four years ago that I would be in such a pivotal role in these girls’ lives.
I was also asked unexpectedly to teach 5th grade for a whole semester due to another teacher’s health. My time teaching the 5th grade had its difficulties, but I can see how God was using me in little ways in those kids lives. I was very nervous and felt very unprepared for both of those roles, but I knew God had a plan far greater than I could imagine and I knew He would give me strength in my weakness.
I have been so thankful for the different conversations I have had with several students! I can see how God is working in their hearts and I’m looking forward to what else God will do in their lives. I am even amazed at how God is using these students to show me how loved I am by Him. I write this as a reminder for myself and others – that God can use ANYONE to make a difference for the gospel. And He will often call you to step up in unexpected ways to lead others, and through Him, we are completely qualified for these important roles. I am thankful for this semester of unexpected opportunities to step outside of my comfort zone for Jesus!
– Tracy Frohlich, GEM Missionary
If you’d like to support Tracy as she serves with GEM in Mexico, you can do so HERE. You can also contact her directly to talk further about what it means to be on her support team and find out how you can be praying for her!
Jesus Knows
I’ve been living here in Puerto for almost 4 months now and survived my first semester as a real teacher! I feel so blessed to be a part of Manantial and what God is doing with this ministry and most importantly, I feel so blessed that Jesus chose me to be my students’ teacher. Every day I’m reminded of Jesus’ faithfulness and goodness in both the mundane and simple things of everyday life here as well as the cool and exciting trips and adventures we’ve been on. But if I’m completely honest, it has been a daily fight to choose to see God’s faithfulness and to see beauty and joy on days that are long and hard… and there’s been a lot of those days for me right now.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how Jesus knows how to relate to us. He can truly empathize with us and our sufferings. He knows our sorrows and has felt our pain. I think about all the places that Jesus traveled to in order to bring the Good News to people in foreign places. Even with cultural differences and feeling at times misunderstood, I think about the biggest cultural difference of them all: Heaven and Earth. Jesus went from a place that was perfect, sinless, paradise and seated at the right hand of His Father to being born in a completely far off and upside down world. Full of sin, full of sorrow, and full of pain.
I can’t imagine coming here to earth, knowing Who you are and Whose you are, proclaiming to be the Son of God and being the hope for the world and then having people laugh, spit on you and mock you for what you have to say and bring. I can’t imagine knowing where you came from to now being surrounded in a place that’s far from familiar and comfortable to you and surrounded by people who reject you. So when I start to feel some of these things too, I can rest knowing that Jesus has walked this path before me and knows how to meet me exactly where I am.
Psalm 116:7 says, “Let my soul be at rest again for the Lord has been good to me.” Every day when I wake up it is a real battle for me to choose joy and optimism. In the past, I’ve struggled with pessimism and anxiety and allowing my thoughts to dictate and cloud my judgments on my world around me. And in this season right now, it’s been easy for me to fall back into those temptations again and every day I beg the Lord to “take this cup from me” … Take this cup if it is your will, God. But if this is what keeps my knees bent and my arms lifted high, then God go ahead and keep chipping away at me. Keep refining me because I know in the end suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.
Jesus went before His Father in prayer and asked if there was a Plan B. To take this cup from him if it was his Father’s will. But if not, then He would choose to obey and trust His Father and go through with the original plan of giving up his life sacrificially for humanity. And that He did. So then, Jesus went back and saw that the disciples were asleep. Rather than staying awake, keeping watch, and praying, they fell asleep almost unbothered by what was taking place. Unbothered by the weight that Jesus was beginning to feel which was the wrath of God for all the sins of the world. The disciples fell asleep unmoved and unbothered by what was being cast upon Jesus’ shoulders.
Jesus was more concerned about their sin than I think they were. How often is that me though? Far too often I’m asleep and “dead” in my sin I’m apathetic towards my sin and fail to recognize the weight that Jesus had to carry for me. I fail to see just how detrimental it is when I tiptoe back into sin that I’ve already given to Jesus. Things that I’ve already been saved and forgiven from. In this season that I am facing right now, I feel like every day is a spiritual battle and instead of choosing to feast my mind on things that are good, true, and holy, I’m giving in to the lies that Satan uses to trip me up when I’m fatigued and tired. When I feel like I have nothing left to give, instead of running to the One whose arms are outstretched for me, instead of clinging to truth, I run right back into sin that is comfortable and familiar to me.
When Jesus was baptized He heard the Father say “This is my beloved Son,” and knew that God was so pleased. Everyone wants to hear this from their father. Knowing that when He looks at me He says, “This. Is. My. Daughter. And wow, I am so pleased with her.” His love is unreserved, unrestrained, and unashamed to be seen with me. Ephesians 5:8-14 says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. Test and prove what pleases the Lord. Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that is illuminated becomes a light itself. So it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Coming here and being thrown into a new culture, a new job, I feel like I’ve had to crawl…no… drag myself across the halfway point towards the finish line. These past few months have been so difficult for me but I know in the end, Jesus is using this to break me but not destroy me. In Genesis, it talks about “from dust you came and dust you will return” and I feel like God has been taking me through a “dusting period.’ I feel like I’ve been stripped of everything that was once comfortable and familiar about myself, home, friends, and family, and in a way slowly being turned back into “dust.” But we know that God created each of us from the dust of the earth and I believe that the work He has started will be brought into completion in His perfect timing. We will never see this work in full completion until we reach heaven but in the meantime, we are being refined and sanctified every day. In time, we have hope that God will repair what is broken and until that time He is forming me more into His image and who He has created me to be here on earth.
-Shelby Davis, GEM Missionary
If you’d like to support Shelby as she serves with GEM in Mexico, you can do so HERE. You can also contact her directly to talk further about what it means to be on her support team and find out how you can be praying for her!
March 8
On March 8, my family and I woke up with a message from my sister Sarah saying she was pretty sure her water had broke. It was 2 and a half weeks before the due date and the most exciting surprise.
About an hour later, it was confirmed that baby Sophie would be coming later that day. My mom had a ticket to come the following week and so she asked Brett and me if we could go that day to be with them.
The excitement that ran through my bones was crazy. I kept breaking into random dance. (Ask our team here in Juquila, they definitely got to see a special side of me!) Our team was amazing, they encouraged us to go right away and so we gave them our lesson plans and started the journey to Huachinango.
We started with a bus to Rio Grande, then a bus to Puerto Escondido followed by a flight to Mexico City, a subway to the bus terminal and then a 2.5-hour bus to Huachinango. I think the leg that felt the longest of all of them was the 10-minute taxi ride to the hospital once we had arrived in Huachinango.
Right before we got on our flight in Puerto, we received news that Sarah hadn’t progressed in labor since her water had broke. They knew that Sophie’s umbilical cord had been double wrapped so assuming that was what was keeping Soph from dropping, they made a decision to do a c-section. Our flight to Mexico City was filled with emotion. We knew that whole time that Sophie was being brought into the world in those very moments. The fact that my very own sister and best friend was experiencing something so precious and so holy was so overwhelming to me. A life entering this world is completely a miracle and it is so beautiful. God’s design is wonderful.
The moment we landed in Mexico City, we switched off airplane mode on our phones with such anticipation. And in flooded so many messages, photos, videos, and many tears. Brett and I sat on the plane crying in joy, awe, and wonder of this perfect babe.
When we finally arrived at the hospital we were led to my sister’s room. It did not feel real to see my sister with a tiny little baby sleeping on her chest, who earlier that day had been INSIDE of her! She literally grew and carried this baby in her for the last almost 9 months. A few months prior I had kissed Sarah’s belly so eager to meet the little baby growing inside and now here she was so perfect and so precious.
March 8 was a day I will always remember. A day full of excitement, awe, and thankfulness.
-Annie Balsley, GEM Missionary
If you’d like to support Brett and Annie as they serve with GEM in Juquila to share the gospel with this unreached town, you can do so HERE. You can also contact them directly to talk further about what it means to be on their support team and find out how you can be praying for them!
A Love Like Hosea’s
It seems like no matter where we go or what we do we’re always bombarded with love. Just turn on any radio station, flip to any tv channel, or open up any book and you’re likely to find that the main theme is love. With the way love is often portrayed, it’s no wonder that everyone is trying to find it! Most of us long to find that one person that will understand our quirks, remind of us why we’re special, support our dreams, commit to us and only us, stay when it gets hard, encourage us when life becomes impossible, and even more (if your list is like mine!). If God is love and is always working for the good of those who love him, isn’t that what He wants for us too?
In the book of Hosea, God gives us an up-close picture of what his love looks like by giving the Old Testament Prophet, Hosea, an extraordinarily strange command: Go and marry a prostitute.
Hosea 1:2 “When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, ‘Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness…’ “
What? Can that be what God said? Right when we think we’ve gotten to know the character of God, he throws a monkey-wrench in our neat and tidy Sunday-school theology. Oddly enough, God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. But then he goes one step further, telling him that though she will be unfaithful to him and go back to her life of prostitution, He wants Hosea to keep pursuing her and buying her back. So, Hosea marries Gomer and they have children. Not long after, she returns to her old ways and even has a child with another man while still being married to Hosea. Yet Hosea, being obedient to God, finds her and buys her back from prostitution.
If you’re like me, your first response to this story is to shout, “God! This is so unfair!” How could God command Hosea, his own prophet, a man who probably sought God and loved Him more than the majority of Israelites at the time, to live this kind of life married to this kind of woman? How is this working for his good? How is this rewarding his servant for all the time he devoted to God? But my shouts for justice are only loud because without realizing it, I’m identifying myself with Hosea – the one who does right, the one who loves God, the one who is obedient to Him.
It might be hard to see at first, but in Hosea 3:1 we discover that through this impossible command, God is allowing Hosea to get a first-hand glimpse of what His love for him and the Israelites looks like.
“Go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is adulterous. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods…”
Immediately my shouts for justice start to quiet down when I realize that I shouldn’t be identifying myself with Hosea… I should be identifying with Gomer! I’m the unfaithful wife who was once enslaved to sin. God is the faithful lover who has a Hosea-love toward me and has bought me back with the blood of His Son and given me a rich inheritance. Even now when I try to live my life independently of Him, He continually pursues me because of His great love for me.
I’ve been thinking about this story a lot since this past Christmas when my parents gave me a book called “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers. It’s a fictional re-telling of the story of Hosea that gives a more in-depth look into what Hosea and Gomer’s perspectives might have been like. After reading it, there were four specific characteristics of Hosea’s love that stuck out to me:
1. This love is sacrificial.
2. This love is patient.
3. This love is forgiving.
4. This love pursues.
The love songs of our culture, Hollywood’s romantic dramas, and even the best love stories all center around us. Before we know it, we begin to ask questions like these in our friendships and romantic relationships: What can I get from this person? How can they best love me? What can they do to lift me up or make me feel better? What kind of partner or friend will best suit my needs? How can I get them to support my dreams?
But a Hosea-love centers around the other person. It says: What can I give to my friend or partner? How can I best love them? How can I continually lift them up and encourage them? How can I make sure I’m meeting their needs? In what ways can I support them and show them that their dreams are important to me?
The love God gave Hosea for Gomer was sacrificial – he sacrificed his desire for a faithful wife and normal family in order to be able to show Gomer God’s faithful love to her. His love for Gomer was patient and forgiving; he didn’t blow up in her face over her adultery nor did he cast her out. On the contrary, he forgave her and took her back. Lastly, Hosea didn’t run from Gomer’s mess. Instead, the love God gave him for her drove him to pursue Gomer and buy her back from prostitution and adulterousness. In all of this, we see God’s heart: God was more concerned that Hosea got a first-hand experience of his love so that he was able to show it to Gomer than He was of giving Hosea a faithful wife and a comfortable situation. Instead of giving him a partner’s love, God gave Hosea something far more valuable and eternal – a taste of His own love so that he would be able to share it.
Hosea’s love ultimately foreshadows the example of God’s perfect, unfiltered love we see through Jesus. Through His life of obedience and death on a cross, we are able to clearly see the ultimate sacrifice, forgiveness, and pursuit of us. The love Jesus had for us was unparalleled because God’s complete love was in him and that love drove him to the cross on our behalf. He didn’t just sacrifice a comfortable life for you and me, he sacrificed his very life. He gave us his life and took our death so that we could give up our death and have his life. This exchange is the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate act of love.
When we experience this love it should change us and the way we love others. We’ll be so filled that we won’t need to look for love in anyone or anything else to fill the empty spaces in our hearts. As we are freed from needing others’ love, we’ll be simultaneously freed to love others with this kind of love. If God’s love is sacrificial, patient and forgiving, and pursues despite all obstacles then shouldn’t our love towards all of those around us be the same? It doesn’t take, it gives. It doesn’t look for what it can get, it looks for ways to bless.
Just like Hosea’s love for Gomer was a tangible representation of God’s love for her, is the way we love our family members, friends, spouses, and partners an accurate representation of God’s love for them? Let’s be imitators of Christ and love in such a way that people are brought to their knees because they see the beauty of our Father through us. This love is hard and other-person centered. It’s all about sacrifice. It’s far from the picture-perfect, fairytale kind of love our society teaches us to look for but so much more beautiful. This love acknowledges our deficiencies and restores us. It acknowledges our dead hearts and breathes life into them. It gets into the mess with us and despite the dirtiness and hopelessness, patiently loves us out of it. This is the kind of love that loves because it has seen and experienced the love of the Father. And those of us who have experienced it have the responsibility to show it to everyone we encounter just like Hosea showed it to Gomer and Jesus showed it to us.
Ephesians 5:1-2 “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
My Prayer:
God help me to love like you. My flesh is constantly battling to be first, but I know you desire for me to live a life of sacrificial love towards others. Help me because that’s not naturally my first instinct. This is a God-like love that I can’t muster up on my own. I need you every day, every hour, every minute to love like this. Would people see more of your character because of the way I love and would you change my heart every day to look more like yours.
-Maggie Addison, GEM Missionary
If you’d like to support Maggie as she serves with GEM in Mexico, you can do so HERE. You can also contact her directly to talk further about what it means to be on her support team and find out how you can be praying for her!
Love Your Neighbor
Through the Fire
