One year of being in Guatemala!

Today celebrates exactly one year of living here in Guatemala, and it has been a good year. God has blessed us in so many ways it's impossible to try to describe them all.
He has helped us start up our 4-wheel drive ministry, has helped us to find many families close to home to help out, He has helped us build such incredible relationships, He brought us through the scarey and hard, He has brought us(me) through times of unfaithfulness on our(my) part, has taught me a little bit more of His wisdom and love, but most of all, He has been with us. He has never left my side-even though I didn't deserve that back a long time ago. He has continued to be faithful and He has continued to love me anyways. For that I am SO thankful.
Living in a different country than the one you've spent your whole life living in can change your life; it has, perhaps, changed mine forever. It has taught me what it's like to be uncomfortable and out of place at times. It has helped me to understand a whole new culture and a new type of people. It has taught me to speak another language and help me to better understand my own language. It has taught me to think outside of my world and see what it's like for others. And it has taught me to get out of the American mindset, to reach the "American Dream," and to learn to appreciate the things that really matter in life.
And living here, seeing so many new things, new circumstances, new resources, and a new  faith has taught me, I think, the most valuable thing about life. It(or He, rather) has taught me why I am created. He has given me a purpose and a passion. He has given me a drive in my heart that I won't stop until I have done all that I can to accomplish it. And that purpose is to love.

In the United States, you are taught that in life, you need more. You always need better. You need so much that you have so much stored in basements, attics, and garages and are having regular yard sales to get rid of it... so you can get more. You are taught to be comfortable and get what you need and want and that will make you happy. They feed you the lie that you're fine where you are and you don't need to get up and help someone else because there's always someone else who does that, right? Life is all about "me." Life centers around "me" and I always deserve the best.
While being here, in Guatemala(a place very different than the US) I have learned something completely different. Partly because of the culture here is so basic and practical and more appreciative of things over-all, and partly because it was just a time to get away from the American mind-set so I could focus on God's mind-set. And to my surprise, I have found that the point of living, the reason we were created, is the simplest and yet the most complex thing out there. And that is love. Love.

Love completely changes everything in life. Whether you have love or not determines your character, who you are, and as a result your actions. Love changes your out-look on life and the way you see things. Love can completely consume a person, or the lack of it can completely drive a person to bitterness. Everything comes down to love.
Love can come in many forms and can come from many different places. And it can easily be confused with many other things. It can mean the way you see and treat your family or your friends. It can come in the form of being completely filled with it towards another person, which drives you to want to spend the rest of your life with them. You may feel it towards someone, or someone may feel it towards you. It is easily confused with lust, a feeling anything positive to make you feel something other than emptiness, it can be confused with someone who makes you feel special for just a moment, it can be confused with butterflies in the stomach, it can be confused with the lie you blindly believe that says you are needed only physically but not anything else, or just the basic the need of some kind of physical pleasure. It can come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Sometimes it comes stronger than other times. Or sometimes, it doesn't come at all.

Many people are confused with what love means because they have never been shown what real love is in the first place. Some people have never felt real love for anyone or have never felt it from someone else. Real love in its purest, rawest form is very, very rare to find. And you can only find it by searching our incredible God who gives it freely to all.
1 John 4:8 says:
"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

If God is love, then how do you get to real love without God? The answer is that you can't. You can only find love by knowing God because, like the verse says, "God is love."

I Corinthians 13:1-8:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love NEVER fails."

1 Corinthians 13:13:
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Mattew 22:37-39:
"Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"

If you have God's real, true, deep love in you, you will be joyful. You will be happy. You will know His Will for your life-to ultimately bring Him the most glory. If you have real love in you, you will see everything with a new perspective, you will see everything through a new pair of eyes. If you love, you will serve everyone with humility because of love.

Philippians 2:5-11 says:
"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

He did all of that because of love. He loved us all so much that He would humble Himself and give all of Him, so that we may someday know our God intimately. He spent His life loving people and showing them that love by the way He lived. It wasn't just lip action. He helped thousands because of His love for the people and because of His love that He had for His Father. He help the lepors, He helped the broken, He stopped for the one. He loved with all of His heart and with all of His being, so God honored Him and "exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every other name." Jesus had true joy in His heart and was directly in the middle of God's will for Him because of love.

If you love and if you are filled with love, you won't stay there where you are, in your comfortable-ness. You won't continue to let that someone else do the work. Because there aren't many of those. There aren't many people who have given all they are to God and are doing that work. If you love, you will choose to understand what it's like to see things through God's eyes. If you love, you will care about those who have literally less than nothing. You will change how you act with people in general. You will let it completely consume you until there is nothing more of you left.
If you love, you will have reached your purpose in life. You will have accomplished and completed the reason you were created. If you love, you will no longer look to humanly pleasures and you will look to our incredible God for all you need.

I must admit that I fail at this sometimes. I don't get it right the first time, and sometimes not even the second, third, or fourth time. But over this last year, God has never once left my side. Though there were times where I felt that He was so far away and didn't want to listen to my cries for help, I know He was there with me the whole way. Though I don't deserve it(and have never deserved it), God is still here, by my side. He has always been, still is, and forever will be holding my hand as He takes me through His plans for me.
This God who provided me with such a beautiful family, this God who brought me here to do this ministry, this God who literally moved mountains, and this God who promised to never fail is still the same God today. He has never changed, nor will He ever change. He is the same yesterday, today and always. This God still moves mountains, this God still promises to never fail, this God still loves His people.
This love is far more than I could ever try to comprehend. This love is too complex and SO big that I will never be able to give it in it's purest form.
His love, it surrounds me. His fire, it consumes me. His power, it humbles me. His grace, it covers me. His faithfulness, it overwhelmes me. His hope, it enables me.
He has been all I needed in the past. He has been all I needed this last year that was filled with so many new things and so many what-if's. He will always be all I need wherever I go this next year. Because He loves me. And He loves all those He will touch through me in my future. He loves, so I will love. I will go wherever He leads me to love His people wherever it is needed. I will say "yes" to Him because I love Him and want to understand more of what that love really is. I give all of me to Him so that His love may consume me so that there may not be any part of me left.

"We aren't really called to save the world, not even to save one person; Jesus does that. We are just called to love with abandon." -Katie Davis