Partner with me

I would like to invite you to join me in my ministry to the students in the Great Plains Int'l Region, (Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Serbia, East Asia, Mexico, Spain, and Chile). I believe God is calling me and thousands of others to provide a network and set of relationships that will give every single student an opportunity to be part of a Biblical community. I am trusting God to train and raise up thousands of laborers who we can coach, train, and send out to their communities to plant spiritual movements in every nook and cranny of these states and nations. Ultimately I aim to fulfill the Great Commandment and Great Commission in this generation through passionately following God and making Him known.

Your prayers and financial support are crucial. God called me to help develop staff and students supernaturally and I believe He will provide supernaturally all the necessary financial support and prayer laborers to make this about Him and the Gospel touching every single life.

If God is leading you to join with me, then you can partner in a variety of ways.

• Commit to praying for me daily.
  
• Giving a special needs gift. (See below)
  
• Joining our monthly financial support team. (See below)
  

You can support me financially in the following manners:

• Send a check by mail and payable to:Campus Crusade for Christ Contributions P.O. Box 628222 Orlando, FL 32862 Please include a note that reads: Amy Brink #0574116.
  
• Make a contribution by phone using your credit card: Call 1-888-CRUSADE (option 1) Direct the person to make your gift toward Amy Brink #0574116.
  
• Give via the web using your credit card Give To Amy Here you can give special gifts or set up monthly gifts.
  
• Give via monthly bank transfer (EFT) Each month your gift will be transferred directly from your bank account to my Campus Crusade for Christ account. A record of each gift will appear on your bank statement. To set up an EFT click here to download a Bank Account Direct Giving Form. Under the "Please divide my gift this way" Enter "Amy Brink #0574116". Follow the other instructions on the form and mail to Campus Crusade for Christ.
  

Thank you for laboring with me!

hello from the adams mark

It is relatively late and I am pretty tired, but I have many thoughts floating around in my head that I wanted to share.

First, yesterday my director called and asked if I wanted to be on the DCC (Denver Christmas Conference) planning committee. DCC is a conference Campus Crusade puts on each year that over 2000 students in our region come to. (check out dcc2007.com for more info) I felt honored to be asked to be a part of that team! So today I headed down to the Adams Mark hotel in Denver, where the conference is located each year. Because we use so much of the hotel each year during our week long conference, we have accrued something similar to frequent flyer miles. So each year the hotel provides everything we need for this planning weekend. This means I am staying at this 5 star hotel for free and eating at places like Maggianos. And I am surrounded by wise Crusade veterans. It has been refreshing, visionary, honoring, humbling, and a joy to be here!

My next thought is about a discussion my team had earlier tonight. We ultimately decided that the phrase "blind faith" is redundant. If faith is not blind, then it really isn't faith. The only thing we know for sure is God exists and that we can have a personal relationship with Him. Outside of that, faith is blind. We step out each day with a thousand unknowns, all the while trusting God. More thoughts on this after I have had time to process it more...

And the last thing I want to share are my thoughts regarding my future. The last week or so I have felt a sense of urgency in regards to determining what the next year holds for me. My biggest decision has been if I should join staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, or if I should pursue other things with my life. The most difficult thing has been determining what the Lord wants me to do. (Not that I really know what I think I should do or want to do even...) A good friend asked me what verses I stand on that affirm the Lord's calling on my life (whether for full-time ministry or not). And I humbly had to tell her I had none. There are no scripture passages that grab my soul and encourage me to press on when it is hard.

So the next day, during my time with the Lord, I asked Him to give me verses that would affirm His call. So I did my normal quiet time and tried my hardest to read into every passage I read in order to find my "call". And, of course, nothing magically appeared. One of the passages I read that day, however, has stuck with me. I don't think it was until a few days later that it came back into my mind, but once it did it has stayed there. And it was really not what I expected. In fact, so much not what I expected that I kept telling myself that it wasn't the verse I have been given to stand on, it's just a random verse that keeps coming into my mind. I expected a very clear "serve me with everything you have" or a "follow the desire of your heart and i will give you everything you need" or even a "go ask your best friend and whatever they say is what I want you to do". Something clear :)

But instead, the verse that keeps coming back in my mind is Psalm 105:4 which reads "Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always". So what is my calling? To walk with God. To be so intimately in tune with Him that my every step is clearly shown to me because my heart is so aligned with His.

Now, this doesn't answer the question of whether or not to join staff. But it does answer the question of what to do with my life. I could be a teacher, a staff member, a doctor, a trash truck driver, a bum...it doesn't matter if my heart is aligned with Him because I seek His face. So, for now I will seek His face, trusting that He will show me what to do tomorrow, and the day after that, and the month after that. This is the verse I will stand on that will affirm the decisions I make and the work that I do.

please pray for me

What a whirlwind the last week has been! I moved out of one house, into another, and then into another! Tomorrow I move the rest of my things in, but I officially have a new house. I will be here for a year, which is a great feeling. I can't wait to finish settling in and making it home. The Lord has moved in incredible ways to provide this apartment and great roommates. I can't wait to get pictures of us and our new place up.

But it hasn't just been a moving induced whirlwind. My heart has been all over the place. As I have continued to seek the Lord during this time of support raising I have been trying to determine His will. Does He want me to join staff with Campus Crusade after this year? Does He want me to teach? Does He want me to work for a church? Something totally different? I have no idea, but I want to follow His will. I was thinking last night that part of me does want to know for the sake of knowing, but a large part of me wants to know because I want to honor Him. I want my choices and my decisions to be glorifying to Him. And with support being so difficult this time around I am feeling that desire even more. I suppose I question whether or not He wants me here this year...or if my support being so low is an indicator of Him not wanting me here. Yet my heart leaps when I think about working with this ministry!

Perhaps all of that is to ask for prayer. Would you pray with me that the Lord would calm my heart and speak truth into my life? I want so badly to be walking in His will, to be hearing His heart speak to mine. Please also pray that He would bring in my support or make it obvious that He has other plans for me. I am not quite sure why, but the last hour or so it has felt very important to me to ask for prayer for myself. We will see what the next few days bring! Thanks for praying.

Amy

He's Gay, Amy

wow...two posts in one day!

Today has been an interesting day. I don't want to write a whole lot about it, but after I wrote on here earlier I went to my brother's birthday party and then caught up with an old friend. He is a guy I dated in high school and I nearly haven't seen him since. And we talked for a long time. And I remember the reasons I really liked him. Only he's gay now.

I also spent a long time with the Lord. As I was packing things yesterday I came across my one-year Bible that I used for two years in college. So I read today and it was so good. It was from Jeremiah chapters 30 and 31. The absolute mercy, grace and hope that it describes were exactly what I needed to hear. I will give you some of my favorite parts, but you really should just go read those two chapters and remember how much God loves you.

Chapter 30:10-11, 17
"So do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant; do not be dismayed, Israel, says the LORD. For I will bring you home again from distant lands... For I am with you and will save you, says the LORD. I will completely destroy the nations where I have scattered you, but I will not destroy you. But I must discipline you; I cannot let you go unpunished. I will give you back your health and heal your wounds, says the LORD."

Chapter 31:1-6
"In that day," says the LORD, "I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they will be my people. I will care for the survivors as they travel through the wilderness. I will again come to give rest to the people of Israel." Long ago the LORD said to Israel: "I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself. I will rebuild you, my virgin Israel. You will again be happy and dance merrily with tambourines. Again you will plant your vineyards on the mountains of Samaria and eat from your own gardens there. The day will come when watchmen will shout from the hill country of Ephraim, `Come, let us go up to Jerusalem to worship the LORD our God.' "

Ring Around The Rosie

I played ring around the rosie many, many times today. And each time I laughed harder than the 2 year old and the 3 year old I was playing with. They crack me up! How can running in a circle until you get dizzy and fall down so fun?

I feel...contemplative? melancholy? sad? I'm not sure what I would label it. I am sitting in the basement of my friends house, waiting to go hang out with the Lord and then go to my brother's slip and slide birthday party. It will be so cute to see all the kids playing in the water, sliding around, being silly. Who would have thought turning 30 could be so fun?!

Anyway, I just finished baby sitting and am working on support and thought I would take a break to write something here. I can't quite put a finger on what I am feeling. I don't feel happy, thought I don't think I feel sad. God has provided a place to live, rent for this month, and this amazing basement to stay in for free until I can move into my new apartment. He has provided support (and paychecks) for this month, thought next month is still waiting to be seen. I have all these things to be thankful for, all these things that were causes of stress but have now been worked out. I feel peacefull here in this place and I feel encouraged about what God is doing...yet something still feels off.

Maybe it's just the music I am playing...it's slow and thoughtful. Yesterday I went to my parent's house while they were gone and went through all of my things. In the last four years I have moved 5 times, and in the middle of that my parents moved too. So my stuff is all in boxes, and there are piles of boxes. "Mexico stuff" "Bustakappa stuff" "high school stuff". So my goal was to merge it all and then throw away everything I don't want anymore and pack the stuff I want into boxes to take to my new apartment on Tuesday. Maybe that is why I am in this mood. It was sad to go through all of my busta kappa things. I would stop and look at each thing, thinking about the house and the memories.

Then I went through my Mexico things, and that was even harder. The most difficult thing was looking through the cards and gifts the students gave me before I left. Adan made me a picture frame out of cardstock that says "friends forever" in English and in Spanish and then has a picture of him inside of it. Then there was the jellied goo thing Indira gave me which I haven't gotten around to eating yet. I just couldn't get myself to throw it away in April, so I stuck it in the closet and had to throw it away yesterday. And I cried. It was a stupid piece of nasty Mexican candy, and I cried when I threw it away.

Needless to say, I didn't finish going through my things. I packed all my clothes and books, and left the rest for another day. It was a joy, though, to come here to my friends house after that, and have her 3 year old son be waiting up for me in his pajamas. All day he knew that Mamy (what he calls me) was coming to stay the night and would be there when he woke up. He hugged me and promised to wake me up in the morning :). And today he said he loved me and he liked me.

Well, if you've read this whole thing you are a champ. I don't even think I am going to go back and proof read it...I just needed to write for awhile.

Goldfish

I am house sitting for a very kind family from my church. They have two sweet girls, a dog, two fish, a hamster and a neighbor that throws all the newspapers up near the house after the paperboy leaves them on the driveway. They have graciously allowed me to live here while they are on vacation, and they are returning tomorrow. Today I woke up and thought the room I was living in smelled kind of funny. I opened the window, sprayed some air freshener and went on my way. A few hours later I went by to check on the hamster and peeked into the smelly room and noticed a smelly, lifeless goldfish. Some little part of me was sad and thought this was really poor timing, but most of me thought it was really funny. So I cleaned the little dead fish out of the tank and gave him a 10 second funeral as the toilet flushed. Then I called the dad and advised him to warn the little girl about her loss.

I also have had some great time with the Lord the last few days. Here are some things I have learned...

2 Corinthians 4:7-10

Cause :
Verse 7 & 10 "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us...We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body."

Effect:
Verse 8-9 "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."

I don't think I really need to say any more, just read those verses one more time and it should start to sink in.

Here is the other passage that has impacted my life greatly lately.

Psalm 34:8-14
"Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing. The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it."

Right before I read this passage I was praying and told the Lord I needed Him to provide my financial support. I confessed that I was fearful that things would not come together and that He was not good. Then I read Psalm 37:34 "Hope in the Lord" and it cross referenced Psalm 34, so I went back and read that.

A friend asked me today how I was doing with my ministry partner development. I told her I felt hopefull, yet full of despair at the same time. I'm not sure how that is possible, but it is how I feel. The minute I quit meditating on these verses despair begins to sink in, then I turn to the Lord and He fills me with hope.

pictures to go with the last post...

This is the picture of Matt and I that I mentioned in the previous post
The rest of these are from our first week in Durango
The bus...right after we left, and right before two of us started throwing up and the driver got drunk
The "home search" team, taking a tourist break :)
Random picture from the hotel room shower

I want a home!

[insert really cool picture that i can't make load - gggrrrrrr]

I found this picture while I was looking through pictures of Mexico. It makes me smile. It is Matt Mitchell and I during our first week in Durango, outside of an internet cafe/ice cream shop. I didn't have a home then, and I don't have a home now. I'll tell you the story of homeless Amy in Mexico today, and maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about homeless Amy now.

We arrived in Durango on September 10th, 2005, very late at night. We paid off our bus driver to drop us off at our hotel instead of the bus station and quickly went to bed. The next day we woke up, had team church time in the basement of the hotel, and then made a plan. We wanted to be moved into a house/houses by the end of the week. So we split up into teams, one going to campus to get things rolling with the ministry, and one team to scout out places to live. The latter was my team...

We poured over newspaper advertisements for housing, talked to every contact we had in the city, and finally drove around town with Gabriel, a student the summer team had met. For three days straight we looked at crummy place after crummy place. Finally we found an apartment complex that was right between the two main university campuses we would be on, was right in our price range, and was in a safe neighborhood. After the other team got home from campus we walked them over to the apartments and we all agreed this was the place for us. There were two apartments available...one for the girls, one for the boys. The girls were going to each have to share a room with another person, and it was on the small side, but we would be right above the boys. And regardless, it was the best thing we had seen so far. The landlord's son had shown us the place, so we had to go eat dinner and then go back to sign the lease.

As we walked into the lobby of our hotel, the receptionist said that Jen, my teammate, had a phone call right that second. So Jen grabbed the phone and the rest of us went to our rooms. I settled in for some time with the Lord, and quickly realized I didn't feel peace about signing a lease on the place. So I prayed about it for a few minutes and finally just asked the Lord to provide something better in the hour before we were to sign the lease if the uneasiness was from Him.

As soon as I had finished praying Jen came in and shared about her phone call with us. That summer our friend Marta (from UNC) had been in Durango and had met with a lady about us renting her house. When Marta got back to the States she lost the lady's info and we had just written it off. Well, about two weeks before we left, unknown to us, Marta had found the lady's info and had emailed her, telling her we needed a place to live and the name of the hotel we would be at. The lady had just checked her email that very day and had called the hotel to ask us to come that night to see her house.

We start walking to her house and one by one we each share that we had been very uneasy about the other place. We laughed as we all shared things about it we didn't like, but were planning on just settling with! Not a single one of us had been honest that we didn't like the place. We get to this house and it is huge, in our price range, enough bedrooms for us all to have our own (though Sarah and Steph ended up sharing anyway) and plenty of space to have students over. The best part is, it was two blocks from the apartment complex we had been looking at, so the boys were able to get one of the apartments and be very close to us. The entire year I had no complaints about the house - it was perfect for what we needed!

Yet we had all been willing to settle on something that we all knew were wrong, just for the sake of finding a place. I know that God could have still done amazing things if we had lived in those apartments, but our large house provided room for students to hang out, have parties and lead bible studies. We even had Christian neighbors!

So, I'm homeless. However, I know God has plans. I know that He will unveil them at the perfect moment, just as He did in Mexico. He won't let anything happen to me that is out of His plan. I just need to keep spending time with Him, following Him faithfully.

My heart is longing to settle into my own home. I have been living out of a suitcase, in someone else's room, since March 29. And the year before that I lived out of suitcases as well! It has been over a year since I have seen my own bedspread, used my own pillow, seen my photo albums...you get the picture. Pray with me that the Lord would move soon. Things seem to work out, then they fall through. Which, as I learned in Mexico, is only a sign to me that He has something perfect planned out.