I am beyond excited and incredibly humbled by the news I am about to share with you. In December I sent in my application to serve as a Buckner intern again in Honduras. Last Thursday I had my phone interview and they let me know that I have been accepted. This is a huge answer to prayer for me. I am overwhelmed with so many emotions. I was thinking back to last summer, over the past few years of school, and to the summer approaching. One thing I kept coming back to was how sweet it was to be so far from comfort. He brought me to a university of 24,000 people. He placed me in relationships with people I may have never met otherwise. He asked me to give four weeks of my summer to serve Him in another country. He gave me a calm heart and a patience that could not have come from me. He is once again taking me far from comfortable with another summer in Honduras- this time for the entire summer.
I am so excited for this opportunity. I am so humbled that God would chose to allow me to be apart of His awesome plan. Although He doesn't need me, He choses to use me. God is so faithful. He is already showing me so much. He has been so sweet to let me see a glimpse of His plan for me in Honduras but also to remind me that I have a job here as well, and that job is to love Him, love others and bring Him glory. The Jesus that is with me at Auburn is the same Jesus that is with me in Honduras.
"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." -1 Corinthians 15:10
Last summer I spent my time in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. As you know from my blog post about them, I fell in love with the children and people I met there. They have such a large part of my heart. This summer, Buckner's greatest need for interns is in Tegucigalpa and Roatan. This means I will be in the same country but not city as my precious niños. My heart both aches and rejoices at this. (Is that even possible?) While of course I will miss my niños in San Pedro, I am so excited to share the love of Christ with the people in Tegucigalpa and Roatan.
One thing that we do so often here in the States is talk about the orphans and afflicted in the world. We even have compassion for them. But oh how different it is to hold them in your arms, to hold their hands, to look at their beautiful faces and stare into their eyes. It changes everything.
This is going to be a journey for me. I want to share it with you. I don't want to sugarcoat things. I want to be vulnerable about my life, my feelings and my relationship with my King! I pray that you will be able to see Jesus in my weakness. As I begin this journey I ask that you would join me in prayer. Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive. -O.Chambers Pray that God will first and foremost prepare my heart, that He would continually remind me of my need for Him, that He will rid me of all my pride and selfishness, that I would be obedient, that I would love and love well, that I would be disciplined, that I would aggressively attack the sin in my life, that I would give Him all the Glory and that I would honor Him. Since picking up my life and moving it to another country for over two months is quite expensive, today marks the start to a long support raising journey. I trust that the Lord will get me where I feel He is calling me this summer. I trust this and I know it; however, when I am alone with a lot of time to think, my flesh comes out to get me. When I flesh think, nervousness, fear, worry- they all come at me. Friends, I ask that you would pray for my thinking, that it will be Spirt-thinking.
Thank you so much for taking time to read about something that is so dear to me and an irresistible passion in my life.
-Mary Elizabeth
PS... the title of this post means... "I am returning."
"so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." -Ephesians 3:17-19
