It's here!

Today is the day! I'm still in a slight state of amazement, but I'm getting to do my student teaching in Cologne, Germany! I am so thankful. I'll be teaching English at a boarding school for 5th-12th grades. I don't know the details of the students or the school, but I am fully confident that God has great purpose in it. Through the process that started last spring, I know God has directed my steps. There's no other way to explain why I'll be on a plane tonight going to a country I've never been too, and truthfully, never had a burning passion for. I have a feeling that could change this semester. Yes, I'm going so I can graduate and be certified to teach, but there is an eternal purpose that is undeniable. These students may need to learn grammar and literature, but way beyond that, they need the love of Jesus. Last semester I was reminded that Jesus' heart is for the lost. He left the 99 safe sheep to find the one. There are students and teachers in Cologne who need to know the arms and rescue of the Shepherd, and the Shepherd deserves all their praises. Already God has graciously provided another believer who I'll be rooming and traveling to school with. Her name is Rachel, and she's a student from Kentucky. I'll meet her tomorrow morning, but I'm amazed by how God has already provided. These last couple weeks, I've been overwhelmed by all the people who have said they're praying for me. THANK YOU! It has been cool to see how the Spirit unites us and how he desires for God's name to be known. If you are praying, would you please pray for the students I'll be with this semester and for me and Rachel that God's glory and love would be demonstrated in jars of clay and that we would teach and work with eternal purpose.

In preparing to go overseas, I kept being reminded of a passage in Acts 17 that a friend once wrote in a card for me as I was trying to figure out where I would be the next year. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth...he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives ALL men life and breath and everything else. From one man, he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live." He did that so people would seek and find Him, even though says he is not far from each of us! Then it keeps going to say "in him we live and move and have our being." Claiming his truth!