Heading Out

After 6 months of planning, I (Julie) am two days away from leaving for Poland again! I am still amazed that God has given me this opportunity to go back. The ministry will be the same format as last year, but we know that God is going to surprise us in many ways. He's always got something new to show us! Andrew's parents are going to drive the two of us down to the cities on Friday morning. We will fly from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, and then from Amsterdam to Warsaw. In preparation for this trip, God has been teaching me a lot about brokenness. Not what our culture labels brokenness, though. Our culture would call someone stricken by grief, depression, addiction, or a myriad of other sins to the point of not being able to function as their normal self, broken. This kind of brokenness leads to self-absorption and ineffectiveness. But the brokenness that God esteems (isn't that a wonderful thought, God esteeming something?) is the kind that leads to total surrender and trust. It is being totally aware that our sin separates us from our holy God, but that He sent His only sinless, beloved Son to take the punishment we deserve and reconcile us to our loving God. It is humility, but not self-hate. It is knowing who God has made us to be and knowing that we can't be that person without His presence and power in our lives. It is clinging so closely to Him that we go where He goes. The dangerous thing about going again to the same place and doing the same ministry as last year is that it is easy for it to become safe, to think we've got everything under control. My prayer is that our team would come, each and every one of us, with a broken and humble heart, willing to do whatever God leads us to do, and not let ourselves get in the way. I will probably have some down time while I am there, at least the first week, to be on my computer, so I'll try to update once or twice. It will probably be more on Facebook than on the blog, so if we aren't friends yet and you would like to keep up with what we're doing, send me a friend request. If you don't know me outside of this blog, send me a message along with the friend request, because I probably won't friend you if I don't know you! This is going to be such an adventure - I'm holding my breath to see what God's going to do! (Well, not really, because I'm partial to breathing as a daily habit, but you know what I mean.)