You are strength in my weakness

Hey All,

Sorry that it has been a while since I last blogged. I am going to try and get better at this especially once I am in El Salvador, so you will know what is going on. I hope that you are all doing well. It is finally getting nice here in Iowa!!

I would have to say that this past month has filled with so many trials but even through these trials, God has been faithful and true, despite my unfavorable circumstances, God has shown me His faithfulness, His goodness and His love for me more than ever! I've had to lean on His strength more and trust Him more and He has been right by my side through it all, helping me get through trial after trail. One verse that has been amazing for me during this time has been:

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.”-2 Corinthians 4:17-18.

This verse has helped comfort me. So you're probably wondering what has gone on the past couple months. Well here it goes...first, about the second week in January my nephew, Cyrus, who is going to be two this month went into the hospital with seizures and an extremely high temp and they couldn't figure out what caused the seizures, so this was just a really scary thing to have happen, so I was for sure emotional in addition to having the stresses of support raising( that was beginning to not go well at all). Then a week and a half after that, my car( the infamous ghettomobile) decided to die. This was really not good at all because with support raising I really need a vehicle to be able to drive to appointments, especially to the ones that are not in Ames. However, my "Ames Family the McClanahan's said that I could borrow their pickup truck until I could figure out what I was going to do with my car situation. This was a complete blessing, and God provided even when I thought this was going to be really hard. That unfortuneatly wasn't the end of it last week, it got super super cold here in IA (and I really mean cold, I even wore my winter jacket, and those of you who know me know that I never wear my winter coat but it was like -30) and so I went to go start up the truck and it wouldn't start no matter what I did. I was like seriously, this really really sucks and then things got worse, my mom called and said that my nephew was in the hospital because he was having seizures and a super high temp., lets just say I was very emotional because I was super concerned about my nephew and had no transportation. However, God came through again in ways that I totally didn't expect...so my roommate Rebekah and I were going to attempt to jump start the truck (which was going to be quite interesting because neither of us had ever attempted to do this before) and then some guys that live upstairs from us came and helped and we got the truck started. Praise God!! However, things weren't quite back to being ok with the car situation...this past Monday, I was on my way to Des Moines for a support raising meeting when the truck started to shake violently, make weird noises and smell really bad, so I had to pull off to a rest station and have Craig McClanahan pick me up. Like I said before, even though this past month has really sucked in regards to circumstances I have seen God come through every time. He has reveled Himself to me more and more each and everyday and I've come to rely on Him more an more. One of the things I have really pulled out of all these trails is that God is my strength in my weakness, He wants me to totally reliant on Him and in those areas of my life were I am weak, it's His strength that pulls me through every time.

As for support raising, I am at about 54% of what I need to raise in order to go to El Salvador. It's going alright, it has for sure slowed down a bit, but I truly believe that God will provide in His time! Thank you all for your prayers, support and encouragement through this process.

Salu

Alyssa