I recently heard a quote that life is no more than a collection of stories. If that is true this is sure to be one of the best stories our lives will represent. In early 2010 we were just a group of girls in a Sunday school class who wanted to do something “big” with our lives. During this time we were presented with the question “if you knew God was behind you 100% and you could do anything and time, money, friends, family, etc… couldn’t hold you back what would you do?” This was a hard question to answer but after several weeks many of the girls opened up and began to share their deepest dreams. “I’d move to Africa to help orphans” said one, “I’d become a famous designer and show girls that true beauty comes from their relationship with Christ not their clothes” another mentioned and still another said “I’d adopt terminal, special needs children and for the last few years of their life show them the unfailing love of God.” Soon enough we realized that not only was God showing us some big dreams, but we also had several areas that overlapped each other in our passions. We began praying that God would use us as a class to do something for Him. We began discussing ideas such as helping orphans and underprivileged children and tossed around the idea of going on a mission trip. A few months later a representative from SCORE international came to visit our college ministry and was talking about a mission trip to Alabama. After this one of the girls in our class went up to him and asked if they ever had need for a group of girls to go on a trip. The rep said yes specifically to do orphan outreach in the Dominican Republic, when could we leave. We knew this was exactly what God had laid on our hearts and we began to pray about when to go.
We had tossed around some dates but the only one that worked for everyone was to give up our Thanksgiving turkeys and go during that weekend. So we began to make plans. We quickly calculated that the trip was going to cost us around $900 each ($8,100 for 9 of us to go). This made us nervous as we are all in college, working part time or just starting out our full time jobs. However, we were constantly encouraged that God would provide. We made a decision at the beginning that we were going to do our fund-raising differently. Yes we were going to send out support letters but we were also going to sacrifice on our own. We wanted to give God our best for Him for this trip and we wanted to get over there knowing that we had given up part of ourselves in order to go on this trip. We began to plan over 6 fundraisers we would put on along with making contributions out of our personal paychecks. We knew this would be hard. It would mean not being able to buy that shirt, that lunch or maybe even selling something we already owned. However, during this time God used this trip to teach us about our trust in possessions. You see during this time some of us were so convicted about what we put our trust in. It was hard for us to keep that $20 in our wallet and save it for the trip when we visited Target and wanted to buy that new scarf but slowly God developed a habit in us for giving up for Him. We learned the different between giving and sacrificing. Giving is giving away something you may or may not need but sacrificing means giving until it hurts. Would we really be willing to sacrifice for these orphans? We were constantly encouraged by many scripture that talked about helping the orphans and by others that spoke of God providing for you. We knew it was God’s will for us to go so we knew He would provide.
Fast forward 6 months. We knew God would provide but we weren’t sure how. About 1 month ago we met for our bi-weekly meeting/bible study at Barnes and Noble to discuss the trip. We went around and each spoke about how much we felt God was lying on our heart for us to give. Later on we found out that we had already met our goal for our money for the trip. Through last minute giving, a change in ticket prices, and an unpredicted scholarship we would now have more than enough money without the money we were still planning on giving. When we talked about what to do with this money we decided that we should still give what God had told us. After all He had taught us so much about sacrificing and He had personally laid this amount on each of our hearts. So now we’re up to date. We know God wants us to use this money for Him so we are planning on going out next week and buying socks, diapers, wipes, shoes and more for these orphans. Our goal at the beginning of this trip was to be able to give all we are and visit these orphans and see them as God sees them. We’ve studied the verses that talk about giving to the orphans and now we are going to be able to do that with our time, efforts and finances. God is so amazing. We all knew He would answer our prayers but never imagined that this same group of girls that “wanted to do something big” would end up being part of something even bigger by the time one year was over. We are excited to see the next step in where God personally leads us while in the Dominican. Please continue to pray for our trip and check back for Part 2 of this story…
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