Today is the day!

We leave today at 2pm and get to Tanzania Wednesday morning at 7:45am their time (Tues. at 11:45pm your time)

I think we are beyond excited and ready for God to use us in huge ways. We are going to be visiting orphanages, playing with children, and helping women make beaded bracelets for them to sell.

We are thankful for this opportunity and ready to go!

Leaving in 14 days

It has been a year since I asked the missions coordinator if we could go on a mission trip to Tanzania with Asbury. It has been a year full of prayer, fund-raising, excitement, anxiety, shots, medicine, expectations, senior business, and anticipation for this trip! God is good.

We leave in 14 days.

My prayer for this trip is that our eyes are opened wider, our skin becomes tougher, our hearts become softer, our minds are filled with knowledge from the Lord, our lives are changed for the better, and that God is glorified in all that we do.

Last night in the sermon, 1 Thessalonians 4:3 was mentioned, "It is God's will that you should be sanctified." That's my ultimate prayer for this trip. That we will die to ourselves and become sanctified. That God will be lifted high in the lives of the leaders and the college girls. That we will "Seek first His kingdom" like Jesus says to do in Matthew 6:33.

We leave in 14 days.

I am excited =]

He provides

In 2008 I was approached by a few moms at church and they asked if I would lead their soon to be 10th grade girl's small group. I hesitantly thought about it because I was already committed to another small group and I was not sure how I could do 2. But, after some thought I thankfully said yes and began a relationship with girls who have blessed my life.

Shortly after meeting for a couple months I decided to go on a mission trip to Kenya, Africa for 5 weeks. Although I missed the girls, I had an incredible time and knew those 5 weeks were not the last of me going to Africa. But, little did I know it would affect our small group in such a big way...

When I got back the girls asked if we could go to Africa as a small group. I told them it would be awesome if we could get to do that someday (thinking, "yeah right, how will we pull that off? It would cost 20 grand to do that!") and then said, "Maybe when you graduate we can look into it."

Anyways, a year and half went by and we started thinking and talking about it again. We realized how much money it would take for us to go and how much we would have to rely on the Lord to provide. So, the girls, their parents, my co-leader, and I, fearfully said, "we trust you Lord, send us to Tanzania so we can be your hands and feet."

We knew we were committed, but we also knew we had a lot of work to do. We had to put our thinking caps on- we thought of multiple ways we could raise money... We sold t-shirts, hosted a "Wild Game Dinner", raked hundreds of bags of leaves, cleaned an office, wrote letters to ones that we felt would support us, and we prayed. We waited and prayed and trusted.

As this process of raising money to go to Tanzania went along there were times of fear, joy, hard work, untrusting hearts, trusting hearts, and stretched lives. There were times when we weren't sure if we were going to get full support and there were times when we were so blessed by all the generous hearts around us- And then, it happened. More than enough money was given to this team to go love on the people of Tanzania, Africa!

God is good. He is faithful. God deserves all glory and honor for this trip and the process to get there. He is and will be working in the lives of our team, the lives of the people who gave to this trip, and the lives of the Tanzanians. He is Jehovah Jireh and will always provide.

Thank you to all who gave and thank you Jesus for allowing us to be your hands and feet in Tanzania.

The girls going to Tanzania are: Megan Crum, Abby King, Avery Hufft, Shelby Boaz, Mollie Stansbury, Katie Wise, Frances Brower, Ruthie Brower, and myself. We are beyond excited and pray that the Lord will open our eyes, help us listen, and use us to His desire.

*P.S. Another incredible aspect of God's provision is that He has also provided more generous people who gave money for the first 5 girls on that list above, plus Kristin Fitzgerald, Ruthie & myself to go to Guatemala on the youth group mission trip over Spring Break. He is good.

Cheque Leque

We are having such a wonderful time! It has been so fun seeing Jon and Emily and getting to see how incredible they are with the people of Mogote. The Lord is doing huge things in this ministry, in Honduras, and in our hearts.
As a team, we have laughed, prayed, cried, built a house, loved on kids, made a lot of crafts in kindergarten, fed a village, sorted clothing to give, and seen Jesus in many many ways. We are blessed to be here and are so exctied for the next few days! Thanks for praying... You would be very impressed with this team team, I definitely am.

Honduras here we come!

January 11-18 I will be leading a team of 8 from the "Casual Twenties" community at Asbury to go see/help Jon and Emily Odom with Hope for Honduras Ministries.

We will be building a house, teaching in the school, leading a women's class, helping with the food and clothes program around the village and doing some prayer walks around the communities.

The team members are: Robert Neely, Emily Sharp, Rustin Heflin, Cavett Binion, Lyndsey Campbell, Krissa Cummins, Melissa Martin, and myself.

Please be in prayer that we will grow closer as a team, give encouragement to the Odoms and the Joneses (other missionaries at Hope for Honduras), and be a light to all around us. Thanks for your prayers and support!

Click on "Jon & Emily Odom" on the side of my blog to read more about what God is doing through them in Honduras.

Asante Sana!

"Thank you very much"

Thank you for all your prayers, concerns, and encouragement throughout this entire trip. Here are some more fun highlights of my time here in Kenya...

The Kindergarten Class

The Second Graders

Emily and I ran in a "Fun Run" (4K) and watched all the incredible Kenyan marathoners, including the Olympic Gold medalists run their race. (FYI: We did not run in our skirts... haha)

We showed the movie, "Cars" on a projector and the children were in awe and thought we were magic because we made "talking cars show up on the wall." My favorite quote of the night was, Brian Chibet saying, "Auntie Kori, that movie was saweeet!" (Not typical lingo from a Kenyan) I laughed for awhile about that one!

Stefany, Mary, Sharon, and Tabitha getting ready to perform a song at church. Adorable. :)

There are many more stories and pictures of my trip, and when I get home I plan to post an album. But, for now you can look on Emily's blog at and another mini missionaries blog where there are excellent pictures and videos. Their blogs are listed on the side of my blog. 

See you soon!

Flowers of Grace

There are many flower stands along the roads of Kenya and the flowers are more than beautiful. So, last weekend Emily and I stopped to buy some for a friend’s birthday. We were amazed at the beauty and happy that we had money left over after we had bought such a big bundle.

As we were walking back to the car I noticed a girl around my age who was sitting quietly and seemed as though she was weary and tired. I felt like the Lord was telling me to hand her the money I had left over and talk to her about Him, but I disobediently kept on my journey and went on my own way. Needless to say, I beat myself up for the decision I had made the whole car ride home…

Later on this week I was doing the Asbury Journal and was answering the question, “Where has Satan attempted to ‘stop’ you recently?” based on 1 Thess. 2:18, when Paul, Silas, and Timothy are trying to get to the Thessalonians so they can speak with them and encourage them, but “Satan stopped (them).”

As I was thinking back on my weeks here I immediately thought of the precious girl at the flower stand and could not get her off of my heart. So, I decided to confess my disobedience to Emily and told her what had happened, when Emily realized which girl I was talking about, she too confessed that she had felt like the Lord was telling her to talk to the girl as well.

Once we realized how disobedient we were and how we had given into the enemy, we knew we had to try to go back to the same flower stand and find the girl.

Fortunately, we were able to get to the stand this afternoon. But to our dismay she was not there when we arrived. So, we asked around and her co-worker, Edward, informed us that she was just on her lunch break and would return very soon.

As, we were waiting for her to return we decided to look for some flowers and asked Edward what the girl’s name was… And, of course, her name was Grace…

Grace returned to the flower stand and we were able to talk to her. We also were able to give her an envelope (that she opened after we left) with some money that she greatly needed. 

Although we went to bless them, we were by far, NOT the ones that were doing the blessing. We left the flower shop with bundles and bundles of flowers that were given to us without them even knowing why were we there.

In the midst of our disobedience, the Lord “Flowered us with Grace” in so many ways.

So, how has Satan attempted to "stop" you lately? Ask the Lord to reveal it and then let the Lord shower (or flower) you with His grace…