Travel

We love to travel. Up until now our travel has been limited to work or pleasure. We are now adding LAMb activities to our travels! This blog will hopefully allow you to follow our adventures. Our thoughts, our views, dreams, and adventures. Follow along if you wish. If no one follows that's fine as well. It's just a place for us to remember . . .

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Missions and the life of a consultant

Today was my last day at the clients site in Buffalo.  It was a sad day. I am a relationship oriented person. I establish connections with those I work with.  I focus on building relationships. When I leave it can be hard. These folks are my friends.  They have depended on me to help them, I have depended on them to let me know how I can help. What's even harder is that I think there is more I can do there but the decision makers are moving me to a different location - not even sure what I am going to be doing next.

I'm finding out this is the life of a consultant.  I enter their lives for a short period of time then I move on.  Different city, state, even possibly country.  Different client, people, culture.  They continue in their daily lives trying to learn a new system, on to a new project, whatever the situation is.

Have I made a difference? Have I made a mark?

These are the same feelings I have experienced during my two missions trips. We come in, bring money to use, gifts to give.  Often worth more than a moths salary, in some case even a years worth.  We pray we can make a difference.  We pray we can make an impression.  But have we? What do they see I us? Do they see Gods love? Do they see that there is a Savior to bring them through? Do they see Him and not us?

We have been blessed to become board members of LAMb International, USA.  It is an honor but I feel inadequate.  I have NO IDEA HOW TO DO MORE.  How can we help to raise funds to help meet the needs that the missionaries come across? How can we raise funds to help them be come more full time?  How can we make a difference for the Kingdom of God? Where is our place?  What are we to be doing?  How can we get more motivated?

I am perplexed.

I see what the missionaries do.  The energies they exude, the resources they exhaust.  I see how tired they get, how overwhelmed they are.  They want to do more but sometimes the energies and resources elude them.

The burdens are great. People are hurting, suffering, crying out for just a chance to survive.  Children are abandoned, abused, forgotten. And the missionaries see all of this. Experience all of this.  They carry this burden late into the evenings, in the early mornings.  Crying out to God to show them how the can do it, take the next step, meet with the next person, conduct the next training.  Many times feeling like they are alone in this eternal battle. A battle for souls. All for free, all to make a difference in the Kingdom.  All without complaining.

This week Randy and I will join them at a conference in Nashville.  A conference focused on children.  On orphans.  Focused to bring us together to figure out how we can make this a World Without Orphans. How we can make a difference in the life of an abandoned child?  Around two thousand like minded Christians in one place.  Will we find our calling?  Will we figure out our role?  I don't know but I hope so.  I don't like not knowing.  Not knowing feels like a failure.  Feels like I am letting them down.

My prayer?  Please pray for these missionaries.  They are once again giving of themselves to shine light on the plight of the worlds abandoned children. The orphans that feel forgotten.  Left to fend for themselves.  Please pray that God uses them to touch one person who in turn will change the life of a forgotten orphan, to make that child realize they aren't forgotten.

My prayer for this week?  For God to show us how He can use us.  To help us not make an impression for just a moment but for a lifetime.  To make a difference in the life of a missionary.  To make an eternal difference in the life of an orphan. To make a difference in the life of the hurting. To make a difference in the life of the forgotten.

Both Randy and I feel a calling on our lives. We just don't know what it is. We want God to reveal himself to us. To show us what He has planned.

Anyway, there's my heart today. Sitting in an airport headed home ... To pack and head out tomorrow to the conference, into the unknown, wondering .....

Blessings,

Kim




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