Sunday, June 21, 2009
Week one
I sadly only have time to share a few thoughts about last week because I only get about 22 hours off per week and most of that was spent doing laundry, a little sleep and helping a friend fix his car in another town. Anyways, this last week was truly powerful. I felt the Holy Spirit moving and speaking through me, and in the community that we were in, a little town called Grafton. There were about 80 people on the trip from two different churches. We helped do projects 8 families houses as well as a variety of different outreach activities everyday. I was given the chance this summer to lead the morning devotion for whoever wanted to get up a little early. Truly it was all the Holy Spirit moving as He spoke through me and it was perfect and exactly what everyone needed to hear because it was not of myself! :) The very first day I was all ready to work, get out there and serve, but the night before I had a bad fever and was up all night with it into the next day. So I laid in bed......while everyone else was serving..truly a humbling experience and a perfect thing to happen to me to keep my focus on God's work and not my own!!! I saw lives change this week, people impacted by people whom they had just met, roofs patched and a variety of other truly amazing things. I will go into more detail the next time i get Internet. Please pray that I will continue to DAILY surrender myself to the cross and let the Holy Spirit indwell within me. Thank you my friends God Bless!!
Friday, June 12, 2009
the last few days
Well I am finally in West Virginia in a little town called Phillipi, where the World Servants offices are located. I will be staying with a family who is on staff for World Servants, and Stephanie is also the intern coordinator for World Servants. So I am staying with her family off and on while I will be in West Virginia. I am really excited to see what God has in store for me here, but yet at the same time nervous because with growing situations come ups and downs. But I know simply that I must work everyday to please and honor God first and foremost, living in His full and complete Grace. I start tomorrow at 7 am that's 4 am for all you people back home :) and will be working in a community called Grafton for the next week learning all about my job and how everything works.
I truly have already felt the Holy Spirit and His presence on the way here in a variety of ways. A few days ago i have the longest drive of the five days of driving. Over ten hours of driving and almost 700 miles I needed to do. The weather forecast was for there to be a severe thunderstorm which would produce tornadoes, huge hail and strong winds. It was predicted for the exact path I needed to drive that day. Now granted I have driven through bad weather before, but really nothing like they were predicting and I was hearing about, and if I had to drive through that all day I would have never gotten even close to where I needed to be. I start driving and can see dark, black clouds all around me, feel the wind and see lightning, literally everywhere except directly where I was headed. So i drove the entire ten hours literally with the storm in my rear view mirror the whole time. I could see the lightning the whole time. And as I started to listen to the radio was getting the emergency signal every once in awhile stating the tornado warnings, and severe storm warnings. As i went through different cities an counties, as i was passing them they would tell of tornadoes on the ground and the freeway being closed. No joke a few times i would just be through them and hear the emergency alert thing tell me if i was on the freeway there to seek substantial shelter. I got to where I wanted to stay checked into a hotel, and then it poured and poured, tons of thunder and lightning all around and tornado warnings. Thanks for that God, seriously I needed that and You knew it.
So now tomorrow it all begins. The groups start coming in, tents are set up and work areas are prepared. I will update you guys as often as I can. Thank you so much for your prayers and support I CAN feel it!!
I truly have already felt the Holy Spirit and His presence on the way here in a variety of ways. A few days ago i have the longest drive of the five days of driving. Over ten hours of driving and almost 700 miles I needed to do. The weather forecast was for there to be a severe thunderstorm which would produce tornadoes, huge hail and strong winds. It was predicted for the exact path I needed to drive that day. Now granted I have driven through bad weather before, but really nothing like they were predicting and I was hearing about, and if I had to drive through that all day I would have never gotten even close to where I needed to be. I start driving and can see dark, black clouds all around me, feel the wind and see lightning, literally everywhere except directly where I was headed. So i drove the entire ten hours literally with the storm in my rear view mirror the whole time. I could see the lightning the whole time. And as I started to listen to the radio was getting the emergency signal every once in awhile stating the tornado warnings, and severe storm warnings. As i went through different cities an counties, as i was passing them they would tell of tornadoes on the ground and the freeway being closed. No joke a few times i would just be through them and hear the emergency alert thing tell me if i was on the freeway there to seek substantial shelter. I got to where I wanted to stay checked into a hotel, and then it poured and poured, tons of thunder and lightning all around and tornado warnings. Thanks for that God, seriously I needed that and You knew it.
So now tomorrow it all begins. The groups start coming in, tents are set up and work areas are prepared. I will update you guys as often as I can. Thank you so much for your prayers and support I CAN feel it!!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Reasons I wanna move to Texas....maybe one day...
Reason one: Giant Boot Store
Reason Two: beautiful sunsets!
Reason 3: FIREWORKS!!!!!
Reason 4: GIANT Christian stores
Reason 5: Target lol
Reason 6: Free upgrade in my hotel room to a suite! Totally not necessary but sweet!
but it did smeel like cows outside....like alot
Monday, June 8, 2009
flagstaff, AZ
So after about 7 hours of driving I am in Flagstaff Az. Sadly i didnt get that much sleep last night do to the fact that i had many many things that still needed to be done before I could sleep. Arizona is truly so beautiful, if you have never bee here you should come. I saw a beautiful sunset, tried several times to take pictures, but utterly failed at that. :) Anyways i need to rest up, long drive tomorrow and not yet sure how far i will get, but i will let you know. God bless you all, i am so excited to see what he has in store for me tomorrow. Goodnight friends.
Support Letter
Hey I decided before I leave I should post the support letter I sent out to answer a few questions about what I am doing so here is just the text version of it:
To my family and friends,
I wanted to share with you a little about what God has been doing in my life this past year and share about where I will be and what I will be doing the next few months serving the Lord. For the last year, my life has been going through a big transition. God has really been showing me so much about Him and that I need seek, obey, and please Him alone. I am currently working at Target as a Security Guard and attending The Rock church. There have been so many learning experiences, both ups and downs that I have been through this past year that have truly helped to teach me so much about myself and experience what true joy and freedom are, and where they come from. I have experienced the power of prayer and what it can do through events like The Call, fasting, small group and getting more involved at The Rock church.
The next two months I will be interning with a group called World Servants. World Servants is a Christian organization who works all over the world serving different poorer communities through a variety of different work projects, community picnics, VBS programs, sports camps and a variety of other different ways. I will be working in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia and Tennessee, in several small, rural communities. The communities I will be working in are: West Virginia: Grafton, Bretz, Richwood, Lost Creek. Tennessee: Jellico. I will be working in these communities for a total of six weeks, and I will be driving out there to help with logistics of getting me around once I am out there. Which mean that I leave June 8, 2009 and get back on August 8th 2009! This makes me both nervous and excited at the same time. I have never been on any kind of missions trip for that long, nor have I ever driven across the country! However, God has definitly led me to this place I am at in my life right now with Him and I am confident that this summer this is what He wants me to do.
Please pray for me. I know that sometimes I underestimate prayer and the power it holds, but I will need your help with this. I have seen God use pray to transform people’s hearts after years of being hard-hearted and personally have seen Him doing amazing things through prayer in my own heart. So please if you can remember to pray for me I will need it! I fully expect to be attacked by the enemy often and in ways I cannot forsee right now. So I hope that you will join with me in praying not only for myself but for the people I will interact with over there. Whether it be people in the community, or people coming to serve from places all over the country. I will also need to raise $1400.00 for the two months. I know times are challenging, but if God has placed it on your heart I would be forever thankful. If you would like to donate to me go to https://www.worldservants.org/donation.html?cat=Intern and just fill out the form putting in my name Jared McGowan.
For all of you who pray or support me financially I will be forever grateful for your help and thank you so much in advance!! God Bless you!!
In His service,
Ps. For updates check out my new blog http://jaredmcgowan.blogspot.com/
To my family and friends,
I wanted to share with you a little about what God has been doing in my life this past year and share about where I will be and what I will be doing the next few months serving the Lord. For the last year, my life has been going through a big transition. God has really been showing me so much about Him and that I need seek, obey, and please Him alone. I am currently working at Target as a Security Guard and attending The Rock church. There have been so many learning experiences, both ups and downs that I have been through this past year that have truly helped to teach me so much about myself and experience what true joy and freedom are, and where they come from. I have experienced the power of prayer and what it can do through events like The Call, fasting, small group and getting more involved at The Rock church.
The next two months I will be interning with a group called World Servants. World Servants is a Christian organization who works all over the world serving different poorer communities through a variety of different work projects, community picnics, VBS programs, sports camps and a variety of other different ways. I will be working in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia and Tennessee, in several small, rural communities. The communities I will be working in are: West Virginia: Grafton, Bretz, Richwood, Lost Creek. Tennessee: Jellico. I will be working in these communities for a total of six weeks, and I will be driving out there to help with logistics of getting me around once I am out there. Which mean that I leave June 8, 2009 and get back on August 8th 2009! This makes me both nervous and excited at the same time. I have never been on any kind of missions trip for that long, nor have I ever driven across the country! However, God has definitly led me to this place I am at in my life right now with Him and I am confident that this summer this is what He wants me to do.
Please pray for me. I know that sometimes I underestimate prayer and the power it holds, but I will need your help with this. I have seen God use pray to transform people’s hearts after years of being hard-hearted and personally have seen Him doing amazing things through prayer in my own heart. So please if you can remember to pray for me I will need it! I fully expect to be attacked by the enemy often and in ways I cannot forsee right now. So I hope that you will join with me in praying not only for myself but for the people I will interact with over there. Whether it be people in the community, or people coming to serve from places all over the country. I will also need to raise $1400.00 for the two months. I know times are challenging, but if God has placed it on your heart I would be forever thankful. If you would like to donate to me go to https://www.worldservants.org/donation.html?cat=Intern and just fill out the form putting in my name Jared McGowan.
For all of you who pray or support me financially I will be forever grateful for your help and thank you so much in advance!! God Bless you!!
In His service,
Ps. For updates check out my new blog http://jaredmcgowan.blogspot.com/
Last night in San Diego
So it is 2:00am and I need to get up early to finish packing before I am off to West Virginia for the next few months. I will try to update this as much as possible to keep all of my friends and family aware of that fact that I am safe and what God is doing with and through me. Thank you everyone in advance for your prayers and support!
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