Week of Fasting Hopes

In about two minutes I begin a week of fasting.  Every year Immanuel Fellowship has a week-long fast.  Sound impressive?  Well this is only the third year we have had this tradition.  But I hope it sticks.  It seems time every time I do a fast (even some of the silly, alternatives to all-out fasting) God really speaks to me and things happen.

At the risk of waxing nostalgic I can't help but think of the spring semester when Jacque and I fasted every Friday.  I was 23 and feeling like a huge, broken mess.  Failure may have been a better word for what I felt.  Ruined?  Unfixable?  You get the picture.  Every Friday all I prayed was, "God do whatever You want in me, whenever You want to do it.  If You want to do noting and leave me as I am, that's okay.  If You want to change things about me that I am uncomfortable with, that's okay.  What You do is up to You.  Only please, please, let Your hand be free to work in my heart."  As the year progressed, I also asked God to have a free hand to discipline me if that's what it took to keep me from sinning against Him and dishonoring His name.  I now look back on that year as one that went from being very dangerous to very life-changing for good.

I had a boyfriend for a little while that year.  I dated him because I needed attention, and because I thought I couldn't do any better.  (Bad Jennifer, bad.)  He wanted to marry me and would talk about having kids and such.  At the time I thought all my dreams of ever being a missionary were over so there was a minute where I actually wondered if I should just go ahead with that guy.  I thought maybe I didn't matter anymore because I was a mess.  God really helped me see that He had other plans (and that anyway I'd be much happier single than with that guy).  I can't count how many times I've looked back on this situation with a heart full of thanks that I got out of that relationship. 

Later that year I ended up joining the MDS, or Missional Discipleship School, that my church did and moved to Mexico City on a church-planting team.  It was like my life began a new chapter the week I started that school.  God quickly pulled me out of a rut I'd been in for years.  Beginning then, and continuing till now I've been growing so fast spiritually that it makes me dizzy.  I feel like God's done so much in my heart I can't keep up.  So many things that I thought would never, could never heal in me are now problems of the past or dim shadows of the struggle they once were.  When I remember where I was four years ago, and remember how hopeless I was that I could change, I feel so amazed at God.  His redemption is more powerful than we think.

Hmmm....  I meant to write my hopes for this week of fasting, but my train of thought ran away with me.  Whenever I think of fasting, I remember that year, the prayers I was praying, and God's protection and faithfulness to work in me.  It always makes me excited to fast and see what God will do next.

Adventures in Tech

This week I:

• Started a Facebook for Immanuel Fellowship
• Read up on the ins and outs of Facebooking for organizations
• Linked the Facebook to our church website (Harder than it sounds for a semi-tech, I had to get my Grandma to help me.  Yes, my Grandma.)
• Put lots of photos on our Facebook.
• Read up on podcasting, starting from near-zero knowledge.
• Downloaded a podcasting platform, MediaCore, only to discover that it was not exactly made with windows in mind.
• Removed this platform.
• Signed up for a much easier, no-download-required podcasting platform called PodBean.
• Got our PodBean all set up and ready for Sunday's message.
• Began to look for tutorials on how to record both the English message and the Spanish translation simultaneously in Audacity with only one mic jack.
• When tutorials on this subject turned out to be hard to find, I called the sound guy who already knew how this is done in Audacity.
• Thanked the sound man for saving me hours of work trying to figure it out myself.

I didn't know that I had all these things to figure out until Tuesday afternoon.  It needed to be done by this Sunday, because of our up-coming week of prayer and fasting.  The short notice is the result of having these perfect (yes perfect, they solve many tech problems we've had) ideas suggested to us on Monday.

About midnight last night though, I hit a wall in everything.  I really thought there was no possible way that launching a facebook and a podcast were going to happen in the same short week.  So I went to bed and woke up with new solutions and ideas in my head.  They have worked, as far as I can tell.  We'll see Monday when I try to post it.  My job is never boring.