On life and missions

Honesty moment: sometimes I forget that "normal life" and "ministry" are the same thing.  Sometimes I forget that in the same way that God has called me to be a missionary, God has called me to buy groceries and have coffee dates with friends.  

I find myself constantly needing to be reminded of the fact that they are one and the same.  It isn't "normal life" and "ministry", but rather the fact that normal life is ministry.

As I write these blogs, I've tried to balance between posting about our personal life and our missionary life.  The more and more that I learn what it means to be a Christian, the more and more I learn about what it means to live as a missionary.  As God works on my heart, the lines in my head become more and more blurry between normal life and ministry.  

My prayer is that one day, there will be no lines at all.  I want to live in such a way that getting groceries feels just as much like ministry as talking to students about missions.  I want to see things in such a way that vacuuming the floor and debriefing a mission team fall into the same category in my head.  

I went through the most recent pictures on my phone and Facebook and I saw "normal life" photos interspersed with "ministry" photos and I couldn't help but smile.  God is changing my heart to recognize the thread that binds everything together - the goodness of our God.  In ALL things, he is good.

So, here's a glimpse into the last few weeks of our normal, ministry life:

My wonderful husband graduated from college earlier this month :)

 A prayer calendar we put together for each team while they are on the field.  It helps supporters know how to pray.

The Ghana team spent time before their trip at their "launch" where they did some team building exercises and final trip preparations.

Ghana was our first international YMI Team of 2014.

Baby Burres is becoming more and more noticeable each day!  This picture was taken at the end of the day, so my baby bump was a little bit bigger than it is without food in it.

 This is the look of first-time home buyers right after signing papers on our home.  We should get keys today!

Thanks for joining with us as we do life and ministry together.

5 Fun Facts About YMI

1. We pre-trip every location we send to.  What does that mean?  It means that before any team or intern goes out on their mission trip through YMI, we take the time to personally invest in their trip by sending a staff member ahead of them.  This person will spend at least 48 hours with the missionary the team or intern will be received by.  We believe that this time is more valuable than any phone call, email thread or Skype and it makes us confident that our participants will be doing Gospel-centered work abroad.

L to R: John + Brian (2 YMI Staff) and Keith (1 awesome volunteer) are currently traveling through Asia pre-tripping sites in the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

2. We have 2 main offices - One that is YMI's Headquarters in Tacoma, Washington and one that is BASE Sports Ministy's Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  In the last year, YMI added a specific division dedicated to growing sports ministry as a way to reach out to local churches and equip them to reach out to their communities.  Nathan is the Washington State Athletic Director for BASE.  Nathan is able to work remotely, since his main office is in Colorado Springs, but his ministry area is Washington.  

Last year, much discussion surrounded coming up with the BASE logo.  We're pretty pleased with how it turned out!

3. The median age of our YMI staff is 23 years old.  You know how we're YOUTH Missions International?  Yeah, well, we take that seriously.

L to R: Garrett (Bay Area Mission Mobilizer), Lis (Southern California Mission Mobilizer), Emily (YMI College Specialist & newest staff member) and Taylor (Executive Assistant)

4. Staff meetings currently involve three states & we have staff members in a total of 5 states.  The main office in Washington, Drew and Tim (BASE) in Colorado and me in Oregon.  The non-Washington people video chat in through Google Hangout and staff meeting proceeds as usual.  It's pretty incredible to study God's word together, pray with and for each other, and hear what God is doing not only around the world, but in our own country.  

These are all the areas where we currently have staff living and working.

5. The YMI office in Tacoma is located on UW Tacoma's campus.  We share a building entrance with their library and we get to have the beautiful view of their campus out our windows.  It's fun to be able to take lunch break outside on the HUGE steps or take a 15 minute break to stroll down to the waterfront.  We are blessed to work where we do.

The view out one of our many office windows.  Wow.