On of the biggest topics that we covered while at SPLICE was conflict. This can be a huge issue on the mission field because if you don't know how to handle conflict that can lead to many problems and many times as a result of unresolved conflict missionaries leave the field. This is just a snapshot of what we learned, but it was so good! :)
When we started to talk about conflict Robin told us that after the first year on the field, 84% of missionaries leave the location they are at, switch teams/agency or leave the field all together because of conflict with other missionaries from their home country. This stat is crazy to think about so you can see the importance of realizing how you yourself handle conflict but also how others handle conflict. So with that said here is a guess a head up to all who are missionaries or want to become missionaries: "If you are not willing to grow in your conflict management, Please: don't go to the misson field or find a way to the the mission ASAP" Learning how to manage conflict is a huge issue in cross cultural ministry and it must be addressed.
As we learned about conflict we learned about conflict handling styles...there are four main styles: the are the Sharks(who are the competing Style), the Turtles(the avoiding style), the teddybears(the accommodating style) and the foxes(the compromising style). We learned all about these styles and the advantages and disadvantages, but more importantly we learned how to relate to people with different conflict styles. When in cross cultural ministry you have to learn to exit your world and enter the other persons world, that means that you can't expect that they see everything just as you do and don't get me wrong this process is so hard and so against our culture but that is when you need to rely on God and cry out "God Help". You also need to suspend judgement and remember that different is just different not wrong. This sounds a lot easier than it actually is and I think that it is something that I am going to have to work at because I don't like to exit my world and my comfort zone but to be effective in ministry it will benifit me if I exit my world and enter their world.
This was so good to learn about and such a good learning experience and although it will be hard at times, I am so thankful that we learned about these conflict issues that will arise not only while we are still here in the States but also on the field.
I have so much to write you about SPLICE so here is a sneak preview and I will go more in depth later. SPLICE was wonderful...words can not express the blessing and encouragement it was to spend three weeks in a close knit community with over 40 other wonderful missionaries and learn about the heart issues of ministering cross culturally.
I came to SPLICE because GCM required it not because I really wanted to go...honestly to me it was just another thing that I had to do and check off of my checklist of things I needed to do before I could leave for El Salvador. I honestly came to SPLICE exhausted and spiritually drained because I had been so focused on support raising and getting things checked off of my checklist. I also came to SPLICE not really wanting to make friends or get close to people because I didn't want to have to say goodbye to them in three weeks, BUT God had a completely different plan.
On that first day when we arrived Robin(one of the lead trainers) said that SPLICE was going to be a heart surgery. When he said this, I really didn't think much of it/it didn't really register because I was so focused on guarding my heart. This is where God really started to work. I sat with a few other single ladies...they were Stephanie, Renee and Ashley. We started talking and getting to know one another and we just connected and bonded instantly. At this point, I knew that SPLICE wasn't going to be anything like I expected. God was at work. These three girls along with Oriana, Christina and Emma Cokenour were part of what everyone called "the posse" because we got so close to each other and would hang out together all the time. I thank God so very much that He brought all of us together! I was just amazed at how well all of us at SPLICE just formed this unique bond. I think that part of it was that we understand each other and what we're going through and the fact that we don't have to explain ourselves all the time...we understand each other. I was so incredibly blessed by every single person at SPLICE. I also have to say how incredibly encouraging it was to see the families interact at SPLICE many of the families had young children and it was such and encouragement to see the Godly parenting that occurred. Words can not describe how blessed I was to meet all of my new friends from SPLICE!
Here is the posse minus Christina and Oriana :)
There will be more about what I learned at SPLICE and more in the next few days. I do have a pray request though...Leaving SPLICE ended in many very tearful goodbyes ( I cried a good chunk of the day Friday and Saturday).I left Colorado on Friday and my heart is still hurting from the goodbyes I had to say...I never expected to get so close to people in three weeks...I feel like I left family :( so please pray for this transition back into "reality" as I am really missing my friends from SPLICE right now. I want my SPLICE family to know that I love and miss you all!
I'm sorry that I haven't blogged in forever (I am really going to start blogging consistently). I hope that you all have been well. A lot has gone on since I last blogged. I can tell you for sure that God has been doing some awesome things! Since I last blogged I have moved back to Minnesota since I subleased my apartment since I am planning on leaving for El Salvador at the end of June or the beginning of July. That has for sure been an adjustment in the fact that I haven't lived at home for almost four years, but it will be a good readjustment for moving to ES and living with a family. My initial support raising is almost finish, which I praise God for! I am still praying for the rest of my support to come in soon so I ask you to be praying for that. Finally, I got into an earlier training that I needed so that was a huge blessing, the training is called SPLICE which I am at currently in Palmer Lake, CO and so far it has been good and God has been really moving in my heart by convicting and encouraging me in so many things.
SPLICE (which stands for spiritual, personal ,lifestyles, interpersonal, cultural and endurance/enjoyment) has been great, we have an amazing group of people here of 43 adults and we are going to 23 different countries. It has been amazing to meet new people and I do have to say that all the families here with kids have the cutest kids :) One of the big things that has been stressed is being one big community so this has been awesome because more and more everyday we are becoming like family here. There are so many stories of awesome and funny things that have happened here but I will just share a few.
One thing that we learned about was about the "yay duck" and the "yuck duck" it is a paradox analogy. When we talked about this it really struck me because the basis of it's meaning is that you can be really excited and really fearful about the same situation, especially in the realm of going overseas. For me this is so true, I am so beyond excited to go to ES but at the same time I have fears or concerns of giving up certain things so it has been really refreshing and encouraging to be able to see that it is alright to be both excited and concerned at the same time. Also along those lines we have been talking about the perception of missionaries and how they should be "perfect" and how it seems that a lot of the time we as missionaries feel that we need to be perfect all the time and not show the weak side of ourselves because we have that label as a missionary. It has just been really encouraging to be able to talk and discuss this with people who know exactly what your going through and such.
Another fun thing that I have done here since coming to SPLICE at MTI has been since we are in Colorado right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, has been to go hiking, running, etc in the mountains and on the trails as a time to not only exercise but also just to marvel in God beautiful creation. So the other day Ashley( who is going to Honduras) and I set out on the Santa Fe trail towards Palmer Lake. We had only planned on hiking the two miles from MTI to Palmer Lake and then chill at the lake for the morning, however that is not what exactly occurred. Those of you who know me well know that I have to explore/be adventurous. So as we got to the lake we saw this other trail that kind of lead up this hill and into a different direction so we decided to follow it and it then lead us to another trail that would take us a lot farther and up in some elevation, so we pressed on. I was great fun except for the part where I map was labeled backwards, but before we know it we had hiked a ton and realized that we should probably head back. As we headed back we realized that we hadn't been drinking enough water and my hands swelled up like "pregnant lady finger" so we kept pushing on and finally made it back to MTI, but completely exhausted and worn out. We had hiked over 15miles in 3.5 hours and up in elevation and it was actually a lot of fun and we got to see some views of God's amazing creation. Here are some of those amazing views like Mount Herman, Palmer Lake, other mountains on our trail and the view of Pikes Peak from our trail:
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.
The theme of Faithwalkers this year was: The Disciple: Are you willing to pay the price? It was such a convicting time but also really encouraging at the same time. I wish I had a ton of free time so I could tell you all, everything that I learned and got out of Faithwalkers but I will do my best in this post to share with you those nuggets of Truth that I got out of Faithwalkers this year.
As I mentioned in my previous post the beginning of Faithwalkers was really hard for me because I had a hard heart, but as I have gone through my notes and listened to the teachings again, I learned so much truth and I so want to share these truths with you.
Matthew 16:24-25:this verse was a common theme through out the conference. If you are going to follow Jesus there is a price to pay, you have to die to yourself a thousand times a day. Something that Brent Knox said really was very encouraging, he said that it is a privilege to give things up for Christ and the glory that will be shown to us and then Brent shared something that really hit close to my heart he said: "it's an honor and a privilege to be a missionary", this is so true to how I feel, when people ask me or try and say "oh Alyssa your giving up a lot to go and be a missionary in El Salvador", but in the depth of my heart I am humble and honored that God has decided to use me to help reach the people of El Salvador, there is a fiery passion in my soul for not only those people to know Christ but to all to know Christ!!!
There is another thing that really hit me at Faithwalkers and it was during Tim Rude's message on the cost of discipleship. He talked about how you can not be lukewarm and be an effective disciple of Jesus Christ. He had a great story about his friend from Pakistan, He had asked his friend what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus and his friend said to follow Jesus and Martyrdom and this is so true, following Jesus does have a cost, but there is also a price for not becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.
The biggest thing that I got out of Faithwalkers this year was I convicted by my prayer life and my lack of a devoted prayer life. If you would have asked me if I was faithful in my prayers for others and such I would have had said yes for sure, but Faithwalkers really was kind of a reality check for me. A couple things that Mark Darling said first he said "your prayer is a demonstration of your faith. If God where to show up on your phone bill, how many minutes would you use on Him?" This was really convicting to me, and really made me think am I talking my friends, family, etc more than I am talking to God. I should always be spending more time talking with God in my day, in my week, in my year than to anyone else. Another great bit of truth that I learned was a couple of things that Rory Whitney said, First he said that you should pray that you would love God more today than you did yesterday, that you would love your roommates more today than yesterday, etc. The Second, was that Rory said: "You have not because you ask not" God wants to bless us, God wants to hear what is on our hearts but we have to ask Him! Finally, Rory was talking about how a disciple prays for the lost, He gave the examples of Acts 4:23-31 and Luke 11:1. He said that our prayers need to be...1. Desperate in our pleadings. 2. Dependant on Him only 3. Disciplined in our practice. Prayer is hard work, so work hard. Then Rory said this " A sinning man will stop praying but a praying man will stop sinning" This quote hit me like a ton of bricks and convicted my spirit so much in the area of prayer, not in just the little things but also in praying for the lost. Rory's message really touched my heart and both encouraged and convicted me. The cry of my heart is to see all to come to know Christ and Rory's message was such a good reminder and encouragement to pray, pray and pray so more for those who are dying in this world because they don't know Christ!! Let's go out and make Christ know to this dying world!!
I just wanted to share with you a little bit about what God has been teaching me since Faithwalkers, there are still many things that I have to share with you about what I have learned. I just ask you to pray and think about your life, are you willing to pay that price to become a disciple of Jesus? Praying for all of you and for you to know God more and more each day!!
So I leave you with this video that was shown by one of the speaker called the fellowship of the unashamed.
I had the opportunity to go to Faithwalkers last week, it's an amazing time where as an association of churches we gather together to hear teachings and to worship together. It's one of the most amazing times because it's so good to worship with two thousand other believers.
My prayer at the beginning of the conference was that God would break my heart for the things that break His heart. As usual God come through in this! From the drive to Omaha for Faithwalkers till the drive back to Ames, God broke my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh, I was drawn closer to Him! I'm still processing what I learned at Faithwalkers, so stay tuned for more updates, but for now here a piece of what God did in my heart during Faithwalkers.
As I mentioned my prayer at the beginning of Faithwalkes was that God would break my heart for the things that break His. He for sure did that. From the time when I started to drive to Omaha for the conference, I was for sure being spiritually attacked, I was being feed tons of lies (I'm not good enough to be a missionary, that I don't have what it takes,etc...). I was feeling really discouraged and my heart was hard. However, something struck me that first full day we met, Brent Knox talked a little bit about pouring your heart out to God and Mark Darling talked about it even more and I was just really convicted by that and that's exactly what I did, because it seemed like the only thing that I could do because I know that even though I was really discouraged and had a hard heart I knew and know that the only way to get out of the funk and become encouraged is to go to the one who gives encouragement, life and everything, which is God who is my Lord and Savior! It was Tuesday afternoon was when God really started to break through to my heart. I went to a seminar by Joy Whitney called "more than Enough" and everything in that seminar pierced parts of my heart and really encouraged me quite a bit. However, my heart was still a bit hard, but I continued to just seek Him and His face and then Wednesday God totally just broke my heart and softened my heart.
I also went to a seminar which was called "God in the storm" by Charlie Meyer and His father in law. This seminar also really pierced my heart, it was an amazing story of God, This man lost everything that he owned, his own wife was even ripped from his hands and still the first thing that he said when he recovered was he thanked God and just wanted to share Christ with people that just blew me away and convicted me so much. Then that night Rory Whitney gave a message that was probably my favorite of all of Faithwalkers because it not only pierced my heart and convicted me but it's also something is very close to my heart. His message was on loving the lost. This is an area where we can always grow in. One thing that Rory said was that "we have not because you ask not" and that struck me so much, and convicted me so much in the area of prayer. Are we asking God for opportunities to share the Gospel and to love the lost? I was convicted so much. Another thing Rory said was that you should pray "God I hope that I love you more today than I did yesterday, God I hope that I love lost more than yesterday, etc and that was again so convicting. The true cry of my heart is to see the whole world come to know Christ!!!
I also got to see God answer prayer and work in a miraculous way which only He can do. A friend of mine, Hui Zhou, came to Faithwalkers, even though he didn't know the Lord, but he was seeking. My prayer was that he would come to know the Lord. Slowly through out the conference I saw God working in his life and changing his heart. About half way through the conference he began to realize that he cannot live his life with out God, but wasn't yet ready to make that decision to give his life to Christ.I was blessed to have the opportunity to talk with him a lot about God and what it takes to be a Christian. Then God as he usually does worked in His awesome ways and while driving home from Faithwalkers on Thursday night Tim and I were talking with Zhou about what would happen if he were to die today and after talking with him, he prayed to receive Christ!!! Praise God!!
Hope you enjoyed and were encouraged by what I have learned and experienced in the past week. Let's go an reach this world for Christ!!! God is so amazing and He is so good!!! :) Praise Him!!!
I've been having some good thoughts and have a lot to share with you about but I have to quick finish up some work before Christmas, so I leave you with one of my favorite songs during Christmas, I celebrate the day! I pray that you all have a very Merry Christmas and remember the true meaning of Christmas!!
"And the first time That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior And the first breath that left Your lips Did You know that it would change this world forever”
