Around New Years I always like to spend time reflecting on the past year and looking into the New Year, setting some goals and hopes for the months ahead. As I look back at 2024 my heart is overwhelmed with all the many ways God has answered prayers for our family and done some pretty BIG things.
1. Healing Judah from an illness he was born with.
2. Providing free speech evaluation and therapy for Judah during these months stateside.
3. Carson loving school and making great reading progress.
4. Eli getting to walk/graduate for his PhD.
5. Judah finally got his Social Security Number (this was a very very long ordeal!)
6. Isaac and Leah got engaged!
7. Evan transitioned beautifully to college life and his faith is growing like never before.
8. We got to spend so much quality time with both sides of our family.
9. God has provided so many new supporters and one time gifts to boost our support which was gravely needed.
10. God provided savings to do some much needed projects on our house to get it ready for new renters again.
11. God continues to provide college tuition and scholarships for both boys in college.
12. Isaac passed his general written exam for aviation mechanics with flying colors!!!
13. We got to fly Joshua home to America for the month of December for a most special time as a family.
14. Leah, Isaac's fiance was able to come spend Christmas/9 days with us.
Friends, if you haven't paused to recognize all the ways God has answered prayers in your life in 2024, take the time to do it. What an encouragement it is to remember how Faithful our God is!
Reflecting on 2024, the 3 words that described the year for me were:
1. Overwhelmed 2. Letting Go 3. Answered Prayer
Overwhelmed because it was a really packed year of ministry, visitors, homeschooling Carson, raising a toddler and navigating our oldest son being in college in the States while our 2nd son finished his senior year of high school and prepared to transition to college as well. Letting go because I am a person who loves to be in control and I'm still learning at age 43 that I can't control everything and everyone. So I'm learning to let go of my children as I release them into the world to be independent. I'm learning to let go of situations that I have to say no to or things that I can't do. And then answered prayer because of the long list I shared above.
3 Words I chose to Guide me for 2025:
1. Abiding in Jesus
2. Trusting in Jesus
3. One day at a time
As I've committed this new year to the Lord and thought about what is ahead as we return to Uganda, leaving two of our grown children here in the States, I believe this is how God is going to carry me through. First I need to be abiding in Him - drinking his His Word every day, sitting in His truth and dwelling on it all day, every day. Second, daily letting go, surrendering everything to the Lord and trusting Him to work things out -for my kids, for our ministry, for all the decisions we make on a daily basis. And third, take one day at a time. When I look at everything that is ahead, a month or a few months ahead, it gets very overwhelming. I'm learning that all that is on the calendar won't happen all at once. It's one day at a time and I can only live one day at a time so I'm going to try to focus on the day in front of me, committing each day to the Lord to guide me and give me the strength and wisdom I need for each day.
As of today, we are 9 days away from flying back to Uganda for a new term on the field. I'll be honest, we haven't packed a single thing so we have a lot to do in these next few days.
