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.