Bring About...

When Sean and I were in Asia, our team stayed 3 nights in a very rustic mountain village. There was no running water so that meant no showers. Using the toilet consisted of a trench in the ground with two beams of wood to squat on. There was little room for error! And did I mention there was no door? Living conditions were sub-standard to say the least. All of the adults were out in the fields working all day so when the kids realized they had Westerners in their village, we became their new playmates. These kids were precious, but they were not behaviorally trained. They grabbed things from our pockets, they hung on us, and they were very dirty. They demanded your attention and they didn’t understand the meaning of a “10 minute break.” We would play with them for hours on end and it never seemed to be enough. I share all of this because during a time when we were feeling completely zapped, God birthed a new song through Sean.

He was trying to play his guitar when one of the rowdy boys came up and started banging on his guitar. Despite the fact that his acoustic guitar is very expensive, Sean decided to bring it on our trip because he felt like it was a tool God had given him, and he didn’t want to be stingy about it. Sean tried showing the boy how to be gentle, but that was obviously not a word in his vocabulary. In the midst of feeling trapped and overwhelmed, Sean had a poetic prayer that entered his mind that would eventually turn into a worship song that we have been using here at Holmsted. The lyrics go like this…

Bring about joy
Bring about passion
Bring about everything that I cannot imagine
Bring about mercy
Bring about love
Bring about everything that can only come from above
Bring about life
Bring about hope
Bring about faith
Bring about truth
Bring about grace
Bring about peace
Bring about Your Holy Spirit in me Lord

There are times in life and in ministry when you feel like you just don’t have the joy or passion that once fueled you. There are times when it’s hard to extend grace or mercy or love. There are times when you lack the faith that things will change or the hope that they’ll get better. We have gone through these emotions recently. Not all at once, fortunately! But over the past few months we’ve felt the pain of struggle and being out of control and just being plain tired. But praise God that when our strengths and abilities end, His continue. So we would like to share some specifics of what we’ve struggled through and where we’ve celebrated recently. Let’s celebrate first.


:: NEW ROLES
We’ll start with Sean. Sean has played a huge role in leadership here at Holmsted. We have a leadership team that is responsible for making any major decisions that form and shape Holmsted. Sean was asked to be a part of this team and has faithfully been serving. He has also recently joined a team that has been working on Holmsted’s core values. Although we fall under the umbrella of Youth With A Mission, Holmsted has been reevaluating what God is specifically calling us to focus on. This will keep us from spreading ourselves and our resources too thin. He is also co-leading one of our schools called the School of Worship which started September 20. It will focus on developing both the heart of a worship leader and practical skills such as songwriting. With worship leading being a personal passion and gifting, he is stoked! The most recent responsibility he has stepped up to is Training Director. This means he is now responsible for overseeing all of our training schools. He will be discipling leaders while also maintaining and improving the quality of our schools. It’s an exciting role, but one that comes with a lot of responsibility.

As for me, I have been a part of a few projects. I am leading a team that is responsible for overseeing any special events that take place at Holmsted. I am also a part of the same team as Sean that is working on our core values. My more consistent role is that I am the registrar for our Discipleship Training Schools. This means that I help register and keep in communication with students as they prepare to come to England. It’s such a neat way to help others and get to know the students before they arrive. But since I feel God has also called me to mentor and disciple others, I will help part time staff our January 2009 school.

Both Sean and I have also been serving with our new home church, The Point. We are playing with the worship team about once a month. Through the summer, we were also able to lead worship a few times for a smaller venue and Sean even gave the message. He used a Lego demonstration and everything!


:: PARTNERSHIPS
As we have continued to be a part of the Discipleship Training Schools, Sean and I have really celebrated the fact that since we have been in England, we have had such a healthy partnership with Canyon Ridge. We’ve recently seen 4 young people from Canyon Ridge take an interest in these programs. Kyle David was on the September 2007 school, Erik Johannessohn just graduated our April 2008 school, Emily Bowles will be starting our September 2008, and Kayla McGill will be joining our January 2009 school. We love that even from overseas, we can continue to disciple the youth from Canyon Ridge!

Another great partnership was initiated from Canyon Ridge through Garett Fay. He has assembled a team that will be doing some ministry work in Germany and then will head over to Holmsted to serve our community through a room conversion project. This is such a Godsend, because we are in a financially tight place as a base, but we have been desperate to take care of this project but don’t have the manpower or funds to do so. Canyon Ridge is providing both. It will be great to see familiar faces from home.


:: OTHER CELEBRATIONS
Sean and I had an amazing time celebrating our ten year anniversary! It was a time to disconnect so that we could reconnect. And we got to see some beautiful places as well.

Another huge blessing was that we were given a car! A friend that used to live at Holmsted told us that she felt like she had been blessed with a company car and God had put it on her heart to give her car to us. We have had to put some money into the car because there were a few things wrong, but we had set some money aside to eventually buy a car and we’re still under our budget. We had to check our hearts though, because we had told ourselves that no matter how much money we had to spend to get the car operational, we would still consider it a blessing. As the bills started to pile up, it was easy to become frustrated that it wasn’t quite as “free” as we thought it would be. But as we looked at our situation, we realized that not only were we under budget, but we have an upgraded car to what we would have been able to afford had we just bought one. Our car is a 2002 Nissan Premiera. We are looking forward to having it road ready. In the meantime, Sean has his Provisional License and has to study to take his driving test. He says he feels like a teenager again.


:: STRUGGLES
It’s always easy to celebrate the cool things that we get to be a part of, but it’s always more difficult to be transparent and share the things we are struggling through. I guess there is the fear that our struggles may seem to overshadow the celebrations and we don’t want that to happen. But we also know that those of you who receive this update have wanted to be on our listing to celebrate as well as pray for us.

I think a burden that has been heavy on our heart has been our church family back home. Amidst the great things that are happening, there are several marriages that have been suffering. And several of those marriages belong to friends of ours that have been like family to us. I guess you never fully understand the distance between you and loved ones until you want to put your arms around a hurting friend and you have to settle for a phone call or email. And in all honesty, our marriage has recently been through the ringer. Some old wounds resurfaced and put up a huge brick wall between the both of us. And it seemed no matter how hard we tried to communicate and talk things out, it only intensified things and made the wall bigger. Fortunately, the community we live in is very loving and has tried to create a safe place for each of us to share our thoughts. They (along with several of you) have kept us in prayer, and we have been able to take quite a few of those bricks down. At times, I think we both had a hard time imagining things getting better any time soon, but we both believed that God was for our marriage and that he would restore whatever the Enemy had robbed us of. And He has been faithful. We have really been connecting well recently. Please continue to keep us in prayer as we continue to work on our marriage and communication.

Connected with our marriage has been our desire to start a family. We have been trying for a few years to no avail and have been patient to say that it’s just not the right timing yet. After our trip to Asia, we both felt an overwhelming sense that we are ready for that time to be now. We even looked into adopting an orphan we met on our trip. She is beautiful! She is 4 years old and she is deaf. Her basic needs seem to be met by the orphanage, but she doesn’t get the full love and attention she deserves. They won’t even begin teaching her sign language until she is 7 because the school that teaches it requires children to be able to be self sustaining. (They can feed themselves, hand wash clothes, etc.) Sean looked into an agency, but we had several things going against us. We are American missionaries living in England wanting to adopt a foreign baby. And the nation we want to adopt from has very strict guidelines as well. They wouldn’t even consider us as candidates until I was at least 30 and the process can take 3-4 years to complete. So here we are, ready to make the sacrifice to offer this little girl the chance for a new life and the chance to know the love and grace of Jesus, but as of now, our hands are tied. It really took the winds out of our sails. We only knew this little girl for such a short time, but she truly did capture both of our hearts. Please pray for patience and peace as we trust God’s timing on starting a family – whether natural or by adoption.

Probably the last prayer request that we have is regarding the transition here at Holmsted. As we are trying to redirect our focus, we have had to shift and change a lot of procedures, positions, and systems. Whenever there is change, it can bring a sense of instability. It doesn’t mean we’re heading in a wrong direction, it just means that it takes time to adjust to new ways of doing things and sometimes it takes some huge emotional and relational investment to make sure that the change isn’t taken personally. And sometimes, when something feels like it should change, the fear comes that it won’t change because “old habits die hard.” Right now, in the midst of all the transition, things feel really busy. Everyone seems to have multiple roles they are fulfilling and sometimes it leaves things feeling like they are getting done without excellence. This is a struggle for Sean and I because we came from Canyon Ridge which had spent a long time putting structures in place to help things operate smoothly and avoid mess, and we now find ourselves in the midst of “the mess” again. Please pray that we would have wisdom to offer during this time and that we would have patience to endure the “mess” as we implement new structures.


Sorry that this has been a rather lengthy update. It has been a few months so there was a lot to share! And we appreciate the fact that we can share the ups and the downs. Because despite our emotional and circumstantial inconsistencies, we know that God is still faithful. We know that when we have hit the end of our abilities, that he can still bring about whatever it is we need – joy, passion, mercy, love, life, hope, faith, truth, grace and peace. We hope to be able to share a recording of Sean's song with you in the near future. He'd like to work on a "better" recording. We'd also like to share it with a few pictures from our trip. Just bear with us a little longer! Be blessed and know you are loved. Not just by us, but most importantly, by our Heavenly Father who never fails us.

Cheers!
Sarah and Sean