Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 8, 2019 | Expresso - Miranda Collins

Transcript

January 8, 2019 | Expresso - Miranda Collins · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, my name is Miranda Collins and I have the privilege of sharing my testimony with you today via Expresso.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It may sound a little bit different as you're listening today because unfortunately our live version did not record correctly.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I am coming to you via recording just one-on-one as you listen from your computer or your phone or some other method.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you taking the time to click and share this special time with me as I talk a little bit about myself and my journey with Christ.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: As I said last night at Espresso, I think one of the best things that we can all do, whether or not we ever share our stories at Espresso in front of a large group, is to really sit back and take some time to write out your story, write out your testimony, even if it's just between you and God, just taking time to look back and to see all the different areas and moments where the Lord has been faithful to you and to your family.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Reflection is always such a great thing, and it shows up so many times in the Bible as reminders of God's faithfulness through times when youth probably thought we're never going to get through this, and yet here you are.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So just want to encourage you to take a few moments to do that as well, even if it's just in a journal or a special piece of paper.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also nice to have just in case Connie says, Hey, would you like to share?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks so much for listening today to my story.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know how many of you listening are type A personalities.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you're not sure what exactly that means.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, those friends and family that you may have that just kind of come into a room and like to take over, um, maybe seem a little bit bossy, uh, maybe like to have control.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, as my mom likes to joke, I came out uh uh in the nursery barking orders at everybody else.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I came to this world with a type A personality from birth.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um definitely like to be in charge, definitely like to uh control things, and that was very evident in my younger childhood.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a great family, uh two very hard-working parents who did their best to provide for my brother and I.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh unfortunately, just because of um lack of opportunities and uh not being able to further their educations, uh, we did not have a lot of money growing up.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: We uh were able to do some experiences, uh vacations and things, but just that daily struggle of uh making ends meet, uh, I clearly remember having times of moving a lot and even living with relatives.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um I know that we were blessed by others who gave to us so that we could make sure all of our needs were provided for.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So because of those struggles, um uh one thing I really appreciate about my parents is their passion for education.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so from an early age, I remember my parents uh noticing that I love to read and that I was blessed with um pretty good smarts.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I I'm not gonna brag on myself, but um they they they knew that I uh was self-driven and self-motivated and and school came pretty naturally for me.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: They just constantly put into my head that college was the only option and the only way to really um provide for a stable and better future than they gave me at the time.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um along with that, I had a mom who um just unfortunately had some rough times growing up and uh had a father who wasn't really um around and dealt with some alcoholism and things.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So she also um instilled in me the uh need for no one, especially the male presence in my life in terms of boyfriends and husbands, um, just wanting me to be self-reliant, to be a strong woman and to know that I didn't need to um hope and pray that I married someone uh with a lot of money in order to be successful and secure in my life, that I needed to work really hard to provide for myself.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that was um through hard work, going to college, and really setting goals for myself so that I could uh do well and do better than they did.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I really appreciated that um as as I grew up, and I I definitely felt the pressure to succeed, felt the pressure to perform.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um it wasn't so much from my parents, but just kind of an inward pressure that I put on myself to make them proud.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I was definitely driven as I um grew up and moved into high school.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh growing up in the church, um, my family and I went to church from as far back as I can remember.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we went to a small Southern Baptist church in our town.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And like a lot of those wonderful Southern Baptist churches, there was some uh issues that happened um when I was maybe nine or ten years old that caused the church to split.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, and when that happened, my parents decided that they were done with church.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, the people that they encountered and the people that they uh saw as this split was occurring, they didn't want to be around people like that anymore.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't blame them for sure, but it was definitely difficult to no longer have a presence uh in the church, especially because I did become a Christ follower in the Iwana program as a young child, probably seven or eight years old.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it was definitely a weird time for me, and I struggled through those years before I returned to the church as a high school student.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Once high school hit, I was very, very involved in pretty much anything and everything you could think of.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I joined as many clubs as I could, took as many hard courses and AP classes as I could, tried to perform hours and hours and hours of community service, all because of wanting to make sure that I could get a college scholarship when I graduated.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were very clear that there was no money for college for me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if I was going to go, it was going to be up to me to try to find a place that would pay me to go to college, or I was gonna have to take out loans, and I really didn't want to have to do that.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I worked very, very hard to do as much as I could in high school.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: There was also this kind of uh underlying theme for those of us in in high school who were bright that we not stay in this county, this um area where we were growing up, that it was better for you if you could get out of Polk County as quickly as possible when you graduated, or if you stayed behind, you weren't successful.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So uh kind of the combination of needing to go to college, wanting to go to college, and then just wanting to escape the area really pushed me on a path of overachieving.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't sleep very much over the course of my high school career and ended up graduating in the top 5% of the class and was voted most likely to succeed, and and all the things that were going on in my life were under my control.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: That type A had kicked in and I definitely had made plans and things were going exactly according to plan.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I did still believe in the Lord, um, and I was a very moral person.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I did not make hardly any poor choices when it came to drugs, alcohol, sex, any of that stuff in high school.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I did not struggle with that because I didn't want to do it.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it was not really because I was trying to please the Lord or trying to be obedient to the word of God.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was more because I knew that there were consequences for those actions.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if I were to get caught or were to get in a situation that was kind of the point of no return, I wouldn't be able to continue the path that I wanted to go on, which was going to college and being successful.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it was probably more out of control and fear of those consequences that kept me out of trouble.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, it really wasn't because I was trying to please God.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I clearly remember um being in high school and it being my senior year.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: My parents had actually, um my dad had gotten a job out of state and had left me in Florida my senior year because um I didn't want to leave the high school.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I was kind of floating between family members and friends and where I stayed and where I lived.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just a really rough time.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember being in Washington, D.C., I was there for a special convention that I had gone with my high school and getting the phone call from a uh private university in Florida and the gentleman telling me that I had been selected for one of two scholarships that they gave that year to to uh female students in the college, and I was going to get a free ride, a complete full ride, room, board tuition, everything from the college.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, um I clearly remember just kind of a punch in the gut from the Lord.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I I believe the Lord sometimes just has to to knock us down before we really realize what we're doing.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember in that moment thinking uh that the Lord just woke me up and said, Look at all the things that I've just given you, look at all the things that I've just done.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is nothing of your doing, this is everything of my doing.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to remember that.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're not in control, I am, and yet, even though you think you are, I've blessed you with all of these blessings.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I expect um, I I want your heart, I want your relationship with me, I want you to think about me in these times and not pat yourself on the back.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that was definitely a humbling moment, and it drew me closer to the Lord and led me to a uh summer camp that summer with my best friend at the time.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: She invited me to go with her youth group because she wanted to spend time with me before we parted ways and went to different universities.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I believe in everyone's life there are turning points and times at which you can look back and say, wow, I really thought I was gonna go this way, and yet the Lord sent me another way.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, um it was, I I think of them more as pivots.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think it was a complete 180.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't going down a completely wrong, undesirable path as some people have the experience of doing.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but for me, I was going down a path that I had made.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was going down a road that I had created and that I had in my mind as the vision of what I wanted to do.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that path was pursuing broadcast journalism.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was my goal, that was my dream.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I had done that in high school, received many awards from it, uh, received our full county award for journalism.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so my my goal and my passion was to be on the news and to be able to uh, you know, travel around the nation, going place to place until I could get as high as I could, and also kind of had a passion for politics.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I was interested in perhaps, you know, covering the White House at some point of my life.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I had all of that planned and ready to go and didn't need anyone, didn't wasn't planning on, you know, preparing myself for any kind of relationship.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yet uh that summer before I left for college became a pivot point in my life that really changed the trajectory of everything that I did from that point forward.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I attended the summer camp with my best friend, and uh there happened to be uh a gentleman who was uh volunteering with the youth as a youth leader, and um because we were helping kind of be in charge, I spent some time hanging out with him in different groups, and uh he was a little bit older than me, about seven years older than me, so he was already well established and already um graduated college and had a plan for what he wanted to do, and and that person was Tim Collins.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And just uh from the time I met him, I just really connected with him.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh definitely obviously older, so he was more mature, and I felt I had always been more mature than most guys I had encountered in high school, so I just never really had that connection, but he was definitely more mature, easy to talk to, uh witty, very funny.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and at the time I just thought, well, he's a really, really nice guy and uh seemed to have a lot of of character, and he was a Christ follower, and I knew his walk with the Lord was pretty strong.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so as we hung out over the summer, because he was friends with my best friend's boyfriend, who is now her husband, uh, we just were together a lot over the summer in different situations and really, really liked uh hanging out with him.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so before I, right before I left for college, he asked if we could continue to talk over the phone.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said yes, not really knowing what was going to happen, just knowing that there was something different about him.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so a few months into our relationship, if you can call it that, we didn't see each other much because I was about three hours away.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: But just uh as our relationship grew and as we talked over the phone and really got to know each other better, um, it was starting to become apparent to me that this was something more than what I had anticipated.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that scared me.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It scared me a lot.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and one of the reasons why it scared me was because um Tim had shared with me that he was going to become a pastor, that he felt the Lord had called him to preach and that he was going uh to become a pastor when the time was right, that he really wanted to be married before he went to a church.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, in this time of waiting, he was just preparing himself for that role and just waiting for the Lord to provide the right person to come alongside him.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I clearly remember laughing at him and just uh saying, the Lord is really playing a joke on you if you think that I am the person that is going to be a pastor's wife, because that is so unlike my character.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I, you know, I don't play musical instrument, I cannot sing except in the shower.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I typically don't have a whole lot of a filter.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um what you see is what you get.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a hard time kind of hiding things that I know sometimes it takes.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and so as as our relationship progressed, I just realized, oh my gosh, if I am going to go all in with this person, the Lord is calling me to do something that is so opposite of where I thought I was gonna go.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, not only that, but uh he thought that maybe he was called to stay in the area that we uh that he was living in, which was the same town that we grew up in and that I graduated from.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so this idea of not only um possibly changing my career or my future plans, but also the thought of staying in the same town after being told for so long that you're not successful if you stay, uh was really frightening.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so after prayer, after prayer, after prayer, and um finally a moment when, you know, Tim just asked me, Are you serious about this relationship?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I, you know, we kind of need to know what we're doing at this point.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: We either, you know, continue this path and it will probably lead towards marriage, or we part ways.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, after a lot of prayer, um, I knew that God was telling me, This is the guy, this is the man you're supposed to marry, and this is the path that I want to give you.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so, so hard.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was so hard.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, lots of tears.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I went down to the guidance counselor at the college and I changed my major.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my other love, obviously, growing up with parents who really instilled in me how important education was, um, I chose to change my degree to become a teacher.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that is definitely a lot more conducive with someone who was going to pastor a church.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously, less travel, less uprooting, and a little bit more stability in the ability in being allowed to uh work alongside my husband in a church.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I graduated a year early because Tim was waiting to start his ministry and I had enough credits.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So um at the age of 20, I got married in May.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I got hired by the school system in June, and Tim was hired by a small church in our town in July.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't turn 21 until August.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine in three months all of those huge life changes and just how overwhelming everything seemed at a young age of already being married, uh becoming a pastor's wife, and starting my career.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um things were great.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this little church that we got called to, uh, Tim just started as pulpit supply because their pastor had left and they asked Tim to stay.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very small church, 40 to 50 members, um, probably 95% of them over the age of 65.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so here we were, these 20-something year olds uh leading a church of all these older saints, and um, it was definitely a struggle for me at first, but uh that time was so sweet to just um learn from these people and to glean wisdom from them and their life experiences.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it uh Tim, I know Tim learned a lot from just hanging out with some of the older men in the church, and um obviously I'm a little biased, but my husband definitely has a wonderful gift of communication and speaking, and the Lord has just blessed him with that ability.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so over time the church began to grow and really, really picked up momentum.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we were moving towards uh multiple services, hundreds and hundreds of people attending uh over the weekends.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we just began this kind of rat race, but it was a it was a good race, but just keeping up with everything, um ministering to the people in our church, uh, working full-time jobs, uh, trying to meet the needs of everybody that we met, new people, people who had been there forever, um, just trying to juggle everything.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then along came our two boys, Noah and Levi.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were just, you know, moving right along.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um remot A thing I talked about?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the control part of me kicked back in and I started making further plans.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um I got my master's degree in educational leadership and went into the assistant principal pool, um, working towards getting that career path going.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we bought our forever home in Florida where we were gonna raise our kids.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Tim and I had planned on staying at the church that we were at until he retired.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had all the plans ready to go and things were going great.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we lived within 10 minutes of both sets of our families, and so everything that we had going for us, uh the Lord was providing and blessing.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, about that time, probably 2010, um, we had uh Brett Durbin, the founder of Trash Mountain Project, visit our church at the time his ministry had started in Florida, in the same town that we were in.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he met with Tim and kind of pitched to him this idea of the organization at the time they were just starting.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: So they were looking for a church who would take a team down to Honduras and build some houses for the people that were living on the dump.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so Tim thought that was a great idea, a compelling vision for helping people who are literally living and dying in the trash.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we put together a team and uh traveled to Honduras.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: That first year um I wasn't Tim and I, neither one was able to go because I was um about to have Levi.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second year, Tim went, but I wasn't able to go because Levi was still less than a year old.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So just didn't provide for that opportunity.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the stories that we were getting back and the amazing just uh experiences that our church members who were going on these trips felt just was it's just so exciting because I remember going on missions trips uh in my high school youth group and just really feeling how close to the Lord you get when you're in a situation that makes you uncomfortable and in places that are unknown.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was really excited to see that we were picking up international missions and and working with this organization that seemed to have a lot of great momentum.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Trash Mountain moved back to Topeka because that's where the core basis support was, that's where Brett was from.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we continued to schedule trips.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to go in 2012 down to the Dominican Republic, where we worked with a different site, and I was able to serve and build a home alongside my Rich Point friends and just was blown away by the need and the poverty and the things that we saw there, but also was blown away by how much the Lord blessed us in that time.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we just planned to continue to work with them.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Tim started to get a burden for these overseas pastors that he was meeting and really had a heart for leadership.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And for training other pastors and kind of coming alongside them and helping them learn how to run a church.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so he began to kind of create a plan for the ability for him to raise funds and start going on his own to these different sites and training the pastors on his own.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were working on that.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: We had all that going.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we were about to leave for the Dominican Republic over Thanksgiving of 2013.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Brett had called us and said, Hey Tim, I have a question for you.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Tim said, okay, thinking it was to talk about the trip we were about to go on.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, What if I told you that I needed to hire a discipleship pastor?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So someone who would be on staff that would go and visit all of the leaders at all of our trash dump sites and train them and work with them and teach them how to run churches.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: How would you feel if I said, I think that you're the guy to do it and I want to hire you?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, no pressure, but you're the only guy that I'm calling and asking for this position.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, Tim, you know, is so out of the blue, and he's a pastor, and he obviously believes that he has a calling and a burden for our church, says, Well, thanks, but I have a job and and I'm I'm fine with it.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm great with it, things are going wonderful.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you offering it to me, but thanks, but no thanks.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he came in from the conversation and told me what Brett had said.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, Mr.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pastor, don't you think we should probably pray about it before you say no?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he just started laughing and he's like, Yeah, I guess you're right.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we spent that entire trip over Thanksgiving praying and just really asking God to show us clearly if this was something that we were supposed to do, because what it would mean was a complete pivot of our lives again, the second pivot into something completely unknown.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not only would it change our church for having to step down from the ministry, we would be leaving literally every person in our family back in Florida to move to Topeka, taking our two small boys out of the family unit that they've been in with grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles all together, and moving somewhere where we know literally no one.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it was very, very scary.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um we didn't tell many people.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um we got some good, godly counsel, wise counsel for from a few of our mentors.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the consistent message that we kept receiving was that um this was what we were supposed to do.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and the theme that Tim and I kept uh going back to was something that God gave to us in that and I think it's something that would definitely hopefully resonate with you as well, something that you can take home from this talk, but that God requires big faith from us because he has big plans for us.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: God requires big faith from us because he has big plans for us.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we just kept thinking to ourselves, man, he's requiring so much faith, but this is gonna be something big.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: The plans are big, things that we don't even know about yet.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so after prayer, counsel, um, and after Tim felt the burden of the church lifted from him, we accepted the job that December, gave our notice.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Tim started with Trash Mountain in March, and then we moved here um in the summer.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so we literally packed up everything in our house, sold a lot and a lot of different different things, um, packed up a truck, said goodbye to our family, lots of tears, lots of hurt, um, lots of um guilt, obviously, on my end for leaving family behind.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we moved to Kansas.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, it's been five years since we've been here, and I love it.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love Kansas.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those of you who say, Can't I can't believe she came from Florida to Kansas.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just have to say I love Kansas.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Florida's great to visit, but with a thousand people moving in a day and Mickey Mouse so close by to where we live, um it just gets harder and harder to go back with the crowds and the heat.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I just really appreciate Kansas's beauty, the the seasons, um, the prairies.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a different change of pace, less people.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I we're really enjoying being out here and just kind of going back to a simpler life with our family.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So since we've been here, it's definitely not been all, you know, sunshine and roses and unicorn dust.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there have been definite low points in our in our walk here, um, definite times of loneliness, um, dark times of guilt, um, especially when Tim's mom passed away a couple of years ago and we weren't able to be there before she passed to see her, to say goodbye.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of feelings that you have when you move away from your family.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but Tim's uncle, great godly man in his 80s now, and and he was one of our counselors, and he said, you know, you're all of your family are believers.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna spend eternity with your family.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: But here on earth, you've got God's work to do, so you need to get it done.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just keep reminding ourselves of that, that we're gonna be together with all of our family in eternity one day, and we just need to keep the course and keep reminding ourselves of why we're here and what we're doing.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, since we've been here, we've just created such an amazing network of family and friends and people that we just um just love so much.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's through here at Topeka Bible Church.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I got a job at Care Paraville Latin School, and that was such a blessing for my sons and for myself just to get to know people and to feel like I'm starting to connect.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um great, awesome small group that we've been in for the past four years and got to have some deep relationships with people.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So even though it's only been five years, it feels like it's been a lot longer because of uh the amount of people and the community that we have here in Kansas.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So um some of you listening here today can relate to my type A.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to tell you that at the deep down core of my control issues that God just continually wrestles with me with is um deep down, I think it's fear.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh fear has definitely plagued me for a long time.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when I know I can control something, it it I don't feel as scared because I know what's going to happen.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make it happen.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so some of you out there who are listening today may be struggling with fear.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the Lord is telling you to do something or calling you to go somewhere, or um, you know, keep they just keep giving you a burden for a particular ministry or an area or a person, maybe a family member or neighbor or friend, um, and you're just scared.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're scared and you just kind of keep pushing it away.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to leave you with a statement that I hope resonates with you, that I hope you can be brave enough to pray.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because as I work through this journey of the Lord breaking me of my fear and of my control and just continually telling me, I've got this, follow my lead.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I hope that this statement can be powerful for you and can help minister to you today in whatever situation you're in.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: God, my answer is yes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's the question?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to me.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you have a blessed day.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um let me know if I can pray for you.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Reach out to me on Facebook or uh email me.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I would definitely love to chat and to hear your story.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: But have a wonderful day.