Posted on

No Tournament, No Problem

Hey everyone! In case you don’t know me, I am Rachel Ellzey and I am GEM’s Sponsorship Coordinator. My title doesn’t really explain much of my job other than the fact that I coordinate the sponsorship program. I also manage all of GEM’s social media, communicate with donors and I’m in charge of fundraising events here in the States!

Over the past two years, our golf tournament fundraiser, The GEM Classic has become our biggest fundraiser of the year! It has been really cool watching this fundraiser grow since the first year in 2016!

The first year, everything was new. I was learning about golf tournaments in general as well as large fundraisers. Every part of the event felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants, uncertain of how everything would turn out. But God was in control! We had a solid turn out for the first year and raised a good amount of funds! We learned a ton of what to do better the next year, but overall we received good feedback. Thanks to Jesus!

The second year (as you may be able to guess) was even better! We had experience under our belts and grew the event significantly. We had more golfers come out, a professional band to play music and fancy trophies for our winners! We raised more money than the year before, and we knew God was all over it.

But year three… that’s when I felt we were really going to hit our strides. We learned so much from year one and two. I had a whole list of things I knew NOT to do and another list of things we needed to do in the future that we’d never done before. As I started planning this year’s tournament, I truly felt like I had it all together and that we were really going to host an impressive tournament that was going to help us raise significant funds for our students in Mexico.

Then mid-September came around and Hurricane Florence hit the east coast. Did I mention that GEM’s headquarters are in Wilmington, North Carolina? Yeah – it was hit pretty hard. Once the storm passed and all the city’s damages were being assessed, it became clear that we were not going to be able to host the GEM Classic come October 23rd. The course was still flooded and we had no way to know the condition it would be in once the water drained. So many of our supporters live in or around the Wilmington area, and we knew it would not be the right time to ask this community to give.

I was so confused. This was supposed to be the year. We were ready to put everything we learned over the past two years into action and host the best tournament ever. GEM was counting on those funds for various ministry needs. Why did this happen and how were we going to get by?

I really had to remind myself that anytime I am surprised by anything – God is not surprised. He knows everything that is going to happen and has a perfect plan and purpose for each detail. He gave us the idea to host an online fundraiser and be totally honest with all of our supporters. We decided to just tell everyone what was going on and explain the financial needs that we had due to the storm. To me, this was so unique. I love being a part of a non-profit ministry that isn’t afraid to just be transparent about our needs. And I love that we have supporters that genuinely care about what those needs are and that are eager to try and meet them! We had such an overwhelming response of love and concern, and God really used that to show me His steadfast love.

The online fundraiser that we did in place of the tournament lasted three weeks, and we were able to raise a little over $8,000 for GEM. What a huge praise!!! Nothing about this year’s fall fundraiser went according to plan (well, our plan) BUT God’s plan was always unfolding and He provided everything we needed as He always does. Even though we didn’t host an actual golf tournament this year, I still learned PLENTY that will be of great use when it comes to planning year 4. Hope to see you on the course next year!

-Rachel Ellzey, Sponsorship Coordinator

Rachel lives in Wilmington, North Carolina with her husband and their golden retriever, Chester, the best dog in the world. She loves baking, watching old reruns of Friends and going for family walks. If you have any questions about GEM or would like to talk about sponsoring a student, you can reach her HERE.

Posted on

Give Me Jesus

Sitting down to write this blog post, I feel like I have very little to offer. It has been a week where I have just felt like I have so little to give those around me, and if I am being honest, I feel like I have even less to offer God.

Last week was a really busy week. It was a week spent preparing for International Cultures Night, which went really well. However, it was a lot of work beforehand to get ready for that night. With how much work there was to do, I found myself cutting corners with my time with God each day.

Now, I know that might not seem like a big deal. How noticeable could it be? After all, it was only a week, right? Wrong. In moments where I neglected to run to God with my worries and stress, I was proclaiming to myself and others that I have got everything in the palm of my hands and that I did not need Jesus as much as I needed to complete my work. In reality, I was trying to control and maintain things that I was never given the authority to control, instead of relying on the God who has dominion over all.

It is ironic that during a week where I needed more of God, I chose to busy myself with working in order to check things off my list. Looking at last week, I feel so much like Martha in Luke 10, worrying about things that are not mine to worry about. Jesus said to Martha,

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42).

Martha was running around, “distracted with much serving” as Luke puts it. However, Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to his teaching, and Jesus says that Mary chose the good thing. Oh, how I need to just sit at the feet of Jesus, listening and learning from Him instead of distracting myself with good things. I wonder how often I miss out on knowing more of Jesus because I will not just stop and listen.

“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

Right now, I choose to know Jesus more instead of distracting myself with what needs to be done because tomorrow will worry about itself. Today, I choose to sit and rest in my Lord because He is worthy of all of my time and affection. I encourage you to find time today to simply be still and know that He is God.

-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!
Posted on

Change Happens in the Desert

Prayer is hard.
 
As a young girl growing up in a Christian family, I went to church (on many occasions more than once a week) and attended a Christian school. So, you can imagine just how many times I was told I needed to be disciplined in reading the Bible and prayer. Naturally, after hearing this I would go upstairs in my room and try. I can’t tell you how many times I would tuck myself away, try to quiet my thoughts, and pray to this invisible and inaudible Being. But I began to notice the more I tried to will myself to pray, the more I disliked it. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t have much to ask for, and besides, did God even care about the things going on in my life? If He did, it’s not like he responded audibly to my requests anyways.
 
Though my idea of prayer and God changed as I grew in my knowledge of and relationship with Him, I still struggled with prayer. What about the many times I had called out to him – no, begged – for him to change a situation or give me something and He hadn’t? Was He really who He said He was? And if He’s so powerful, then doesn’t He have the ability to do these things? So why isn’t He? Those are just a few of the many doubts I had (and still have) that kept me from reaching out to Him. But God was working in my heart and, about a year and half ago, I asked God to transform my prayer life and give me a desire to pray. No, it definitely did not happen overnight. I tried to read books on prayer, ask friends for advice on prayer, etc. As a matter of fact, many times I got so frustrated with not seeing any changes in my prayer life that I would sit in my room and force myself to be quiet and pray. Of course, this only led to me being hard-hearted with the Lord and forcing an outward prayer that my inner self was not praying. It was then that I decided that if God was big enough, He could and would change my heart in regards to praying and it wasn’t up to me to force it. Ironically, that was actually making things worse.
 
So, I stopped praying. And God started working.
 
Several months into this process, circumstances in my family’s life and my own personal life brought me to a place where I had absolutely no control. I was desperate – I could do absolutely nothing to change the situations – so I began to pray.
 
In his book, A Praying Life, Paul Miller recounts he and his wife’s experience of having an autistic child. He calls the space in between hoping and reality a desert. “The hope line represents our desire for a normal child, reinforced by our prayers from Psalm 121. The bottom line is the reality of a harmed child. We lived in the middle, in the desert, holding on to hope that Kim could somehow be normal yet facing the reality of her disabilities.”
“The hardest part of being in the desert,” Miller says, “is that there is no way out. You don’t know when it will end. There is no relief in sight.”
 
This sounds utterly hopeless, doesn’t it?
 
But Miller draws our focus to what God is doing in the midst of our complete vulnerability and weakness. He explains that “The first thing that happens is we slowly give up the fight. Our wills are broken by the reality of our circumstances… The still, dry air of the desert brings the sense of helplessness that is so crucial to the spirit of prayer. You come face-to-face with your inability to live, to have joy, to do anything of lasting worth. Life is crushing you.”
 
“Suffering burns away the false selves created by cynicism or pride or lust. You stop caring about what people think of you. The desert is God’s best hope for the creation of an authentic self. Desert life sanctifies you. You have no idea you are changing. You simply notice after you’ve been in the desert awhile that you are different.
 
“After a while you notice your real thirsts. While in the desert David writes,
‘O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.’ Psalm 63:1
 
“The desert becomes a window to the heart of God… You cry out to God so long and so often that a channel begins to open up between you and God. When driving, you turn off the radio just to be with God. At night you drift in and out of prayer when you are sleeping. Without realizing it, you have learned to pray continuously. The clear, fresh water of God’s presence that you discover in the desert becomes a well inside your own heart.”
For so long I had only viewed prayer as a way to get things from God; an avenue through which I could change situations and circumstances; a tool to access His power when I am powerless. That view is not entirely wrong! In many ways, it is completely scriptural (Matthew 7:7, Matthew 18:19, Psalm 107:28-30). But often times, God chooses not to grant our requests or chooses to make us wait for years until He answers them. When we view prayer only as a means to get what we want, we are missing out on potentially God’s biggest purpose for prayer: bringing us closer to His heart and carving us into the image of His Son, Jesus.
 
I had always thought that through prayer I could change things, but I never realized that God was using prayer to change me. In my powerlessness, God has begun to show me aspects of Himself that I never would have seen unless I was desperate for Him. And slowly, but surely, He is changing the way I pray to become more aligned with His heart.
 
2 Corinthians 12:8-9 “Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me.”
 
Have your way, Lord.

-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!

Posted on

What do we truly need for a healthy spiritual life?

Getting healthy… fitness Instagram accounts, green juices everywhere, gluten-free, non-GMO, plant-based protein shakes, supplements, all the athleisure attire you can buy.

Health inspo is everywhere these days. Maybe it’s just me or the accounts I come across online, but I feel like these days almost everyone is on a health or fitness journey. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE healthy lifestyles and I believe it’s important to take care of the bodies that God has blessed us with.But have you seen all the “perfect diets” that promote healthy weight loss? What about all the processed food at the grocery store that has the word “healthy” “natural” or “organic”? What about the “skinny margarita” on the menu at the Mexican restaurants? Usually anything with the word “skinny” on it – isn’t going to be the healthiest option.

Of course getting the “diet coke” could be a better choice than the all-out sugar-filled drink BUT isn’t water the best choice? Isn’t straight up protein and veggies going to be better than all that processed food that has the words “natural/organic” written on the box? Usually, the best thing for our health is the simplest.

Too often we try to take shortcuts to try and stay healthy when we could just turn to the simplest options that would be the healthiest, richest source of nutrition. When we try to create these shortcuts to a healthy lifestyle is usually when things get complicated.

Before I get into writing some kind of nutrition blog, let me switch gears. Lately, I’ve been thinking about these ideas but in our spiritual lives and our walks with Jesus.

What do we truly need for a healthy spiritual life??

-Time in the Word with Jesus – 2 Timothy 3:16, Psalm 119: 105

-Time in prayer talking to Jesus – Matthew 6:6, Mark 1:35

-Community with brothers and sisters in Christ – James 5:16

It’s pretty simple, but again, too often we try to complicate and even compromise these values. Let me use an example I find myself guilty of often…

What do I want (in my flesh)? To scroll through social media mindlessly.

What do I know that I actually need? Time with Jesus

So what do I do? I follow Christian accounts that share scripture so that I can get a taste of it while I decide to scroll mindlessly.

Again, I’m not against uplifting Christian social media accounts, I’m just showing how we can sometimes use surface-level substitutes for what we truly need, which is simply time alone with God.

Here’s another example…

What do I need daily? Time with Jesus

How does my time get filled each day? Work, taking care of my family, church, helping with the youth group at church, a little Netflix and trying to start a Women’s Bible study

What gets left out? Time ALONE with Jesus

Bible studies are awesome. Working hard is GOOD. Serving your church body is awesome. But none of it can substitute for what I truly need to be spiritually healthy – time alone with Jesus. These are like the “natural” or ”organic” processed foods at the grocery store. These are great options but only on top of our basic nutritional needs of fresh fruits, veggies and protein, which is time with Jesus.

We can create Bible studies, programs, Christian chat groups, and do all sorts of “Christian” things – but there are no substitutes for our basic needs as a follower of Jesus. We need intentional time with Him, His word, and His followers to be spiritually healthy. Simply sitting at the feet of Jesus is good and necessary for my soul. Let’s not put too much importance into anything else.

– Rachel Ellzey, Sponsorship Coordinator