thank you.

Hi sweet friends,

I just wanted to start this out by saying thank you. Since I have graduated high school (2 years ago, woof.) You have helped me raise around $12,000 dollars. I know I don’t tell you thank you enough, and I’m sorry for that. Maybe that’s because I’m not sure I could ever find the words to just simply say how I feel. None of the words I say seem like they exactly explain how grateful I am for you and all you have done.

I wish you could be here with me to see the fruits of your labor. I wish you could feel the love when you walk into the CGA room. The eagerness to learn more about the Father. The family that we have become the last 5 months. I wish you could hear the loud laughter literally bouncing off the walls at the cabin, the Monday night dinners that we cook, or smell of early morning coffee brewing before we head to school. The couple yoga. Movie nights. I wish you were here to sit in with us in class and see how the lord is teaching us, bringing us into the leader He has called us to be. I wish you were here to see the tears as they hit the ground and that you could understand the exact place they are coming from. I wish all these things and so much more.

But instead, you are living all over the country, fulfilling a calling that you often don’t understand, or even get to see the fruit of right away.

You see every moment you spend at that desk, the factory, the nursing home, allows a missionary like me the moments to impact someone with Kingdom. When I say I couldn’t do this without you, I mean it from every part of me. Every deadline you meet at work is the chance for someone to come to know Christ. The work you are doing now is the work I was not created to do, but the one you were created to do. The work that we need to help us do our work comes from someone like you. We are all called to different things, but we are all called to love one another and to make disciples across the nations. And that looks different with each person.

I love our partnership. I love the way when I come home to WV, you ask me how I’m doing. You ask me what I’m learning, how I like my housemates, how classes are going, if I’m loving it.

And to answer that question, yes. I love it here. I love the community I’m in, my classmates, Monday morning worship, the teachings, house dinners. Every part of CGA has impacted me and my heart is literally hurting at the thought of leaving my new family. But how good is the Father, that He gave me an opportunity to learn, be discipled, and really find out who I am to Him. It has been a sweet and beautiful season. Even though it hurts to leave, I’m ready for the next season.

You are a fulfillment of a calling much greater than yourself. You are the backbone to missionaries like me. And sometimes, I must confess, I wish I could be you.

Thank you for doing the hard thing. You are our heroes and our greatest gifts. 

Thank you for saying yes and for loving me well.