How Beautiful are the Feet...

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” –Isaiah 6:8.

My heart beats the same as Isaiah’s here. My constant prayer is for the Lord to send me out to make His name known. He has been so faithful to do so, and I am incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to go on mission again this summer. The time is finally here! Our team leaves in the morning to head to Costa Rica for a week. We’re asking you to please join us in prayer as we embark on this journey. We know that nothing is possible without Christ, and we need your prayer support! Here are some things that you could pray for on the trip overall:

·        Pray that this team of missionaries carries the love, grace, mercy, and compassion of Christ and that they will be accepted by the people of Costa Rica.

·        Please pray for Aby Prado of Score International in Costa Rica, an amazing church planter that we've partnered with in the Dominican in the past, that God would truly speak to him and use him to start a wildfire for the gospel in Costa Rica.

·        Pray for God’s favor and provision over the Church plant efforts in Costa Rica, and please pray that He raises up Costa Rican disciples to become pastors.

·        Please spend time praying specifically for each team member…

o   Monica Aleixo

o   Savannah Harrison

o   Trina Hurt

o   Natalie Hurt

o   Meredith Hurt

o   Jeff Killian

o   Jena Killian

o   Jarrod Skinner

o   Jordan Skinner

o   Hannah Smith

o   Michael Stokes

o   Madison Taylor

o   Mike Taylor

o   Miranda Taylor

o   Seth Wood

o   Dustin Wilbanks

o   Shannon Young

Below is our specific prayer calendar for the week:

Saturday, July 13: Psalm 27. Pray for safe travels as we head down to Costa Rica.

Sunday, July 14: Psalm 91. Pray for us as we begin our first day in the village of San Lazaro.

Monday, July 15: Luke 10. Pray for our evangelism, construction, and village ministry VBS with the kids.

Tuesday, July 16: Psalm 23. Pray for evangelism and VBS. Also pray for our movie night taking place in the village of Guatil.

Wednesday, July 17: Acts 4:31. Pray for our continued ministry with the people in San Lazaro.

Thursday, July 18: Romans 10. Pray for our evangelism strength when using the evangecube. Also pray for our movie night in the village of San Lazaro.

Friday, July 19: Acts 2. Pray for persistence and strength in our evangelistic service.

Saturday, July 20: Romans 10:17. Pray for safe travels as we head home from Costa Rica.

Your prayers are very important to us, and we are so thankful to have such a strong support system lifting us up back home.

“For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and yourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” -2 Corinthians 4:5-6.

Please pray that the light of Christ would shine bright in our lives to anyone we come in contact with. Thank you so much for all of your love and support. I am so excited to see what God has in store this year!

A Dream Come True

Everyone wants to hear the story, and we really want to be able to share it with everyone! So here goes our two versions put together with tons of actual proposal pictures to see the story progress!

On Monday at work, I was told that I had a meeting to go to at 4:00 the next day. I was pretty upset because Loren and I had plans to go to the Braves game with my sister and her husband. But I tried to work around the scheduling with Loren to make sure it would all work out. Little to my knowledge, Loren had actually talked my boss, Steve, into making up that “meeting” so that I would be ready to go when he showed up on Tuesday afternoon. About 3:30 on Tuesday, Loren walked into work with Steve. I was obviously very shocked and pretty confused as to why he was there. Steve said that Loren just wanted to steal me for a couple minutes but I need to be right back for our meeting. All that Loren said to me was, “Let’s go. Come on.” So we got in the car, and eventually he told me we were going to the park. When we got there, I started to complain about how I couldn’t walk around the park in heels. He said, “I got it covered,” as he pulled a pair of my flip-flops from a bag he had packed. How thoughtful! We started walking down the trail, and I asked him what he had in the bag. I didn’t believe him when he said it was towels… but he wasn’t lying! We walked to the first bench where he sat me down and pulled out two small towels and a bottle of water. He then explained to me that he was going to wash my feet. As he was washing my feet, he told me how much he loves me and how much he wants to serve me forever. Of course, the crying started. When he finished, he handed me a letter, turned me to face the water, and asked me to read it out loud. I read it aloud through the last two words which said, “Turn around.” When I turned around he was on one knee with the ring and asked, “Will you be my wife?” At this point in our story, Loren says that I just started crying without answering, and he didn’t know if that was a yes or no. So just to clarify he asked, “That means yes, right?” I said, “Yes! Of course!” Then he put the ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS ring on my finger and kissed me! As we stood there hugging, he asked if I would sing with him (something we love to do together). When he let go, he magically was holding his guitar! Loren had set it up earlier with my friend, Hunter, for him to walk by at just the perfect time to hand it to him. So we sat down and worshiped together for the first time as engaged-to-be-married. We sang (I tried through the tears) Revelation Song and Lead Me to the Cross. After this he told me to turn around and wave to my sister whom he had set up earlier to take pictures the whole time. She came out and continued taking pictures as I walked to hug her. I couldn’t stop crying. Everything was so perfect. Then Hunter came back to talk with us as well. I just kept looking at my handsome fiancé in disbelief with tears streaming down my face. Once I got a hold of myself, I started to make tons of phone calls. Loren told me that he has arranged for his family to come in town so they could celebrate with us and my family. I was so excited to see everyone! We made many many more phone calls and got home to hug our families and all spend time together. Everything was so wonderful, and I could not have asked for anything better! We are blessed beyond belief by everyone’s support, and we could not be more excited for our future together!

God is so good! He has given me the man of my dreams, and in our relationship we have found that the Lord has done “immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine.” To Him be the glory!