CCP Prep Update 5

^TWENTY FIVE DAYS! Time is flying so fast!

Just wanted to post a quick update for those of you who have been following our team as we continue to prepare for our summer overseas!  If you are viewing from the link on the www.iamplusone.com website, I'm so happy you have chosen to follow our team and I pray that my blog is able to bless you as my church family.

Here is where we stand regarding support --

Currently Raised: $ 73,401.62 (71.96%)

Still Need: $ 28,598.38 (Total of $102,000)

If you read my last post from our retreat in March, this is a huge blessing for us.  We only had 30% of our support raised last month were significantly behind our goal for March 31.  In the course of 3 weeks, we have been able to raise an additional $27,000.00 as a team.  SUCH an example of the Lord's provision.  I have not currently finished raising my own support and am still earnestly seeking people who would like to support us either via prayer or financially though, so please, please do not hesitate to email me (katlyn.yoder@yahoo.com) if you would like to be a part of this.  I would love to talk to you about our trip and answer any questions we have.  Know that anything you do to support our team is immensely appreciated, and will bless not only us but those that we will be working with this summer.


Instead of just giving you a support update, I wanted to tell you a little bit about why we are going to Johannesburg for the summer.  I'll start off sharing Matthew 25:14-30:

My D-Group this spring has been reading Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and so far I have loved it.  One of the passages it referenced was Matthew 25:14-30, which is also known as the Parable of the Talents.  If you can't read it in the picture above, (click here to read it).


All throughout the book of 1 & 2 Timothy Paul consistently reminds Timothy to "guard the good deposit that has been entrusted to you." (1 Tim 6:20, 2 Tim 1:14)  The deposit that Paul is referencing is the Gospel of Christ, which is also what the talents represent in this passage.  However, this is where man's responsibility comes in.


Now that we have this deposit, what are we called to do with it? INVEST IT.  Our team believes deeply in this; our lives were created to be given away for the glory of God.  If the man with five talents had buried them and still presented those five to his master, he would have still been rebuked over a man who invested all he was given and only presented one or two on the day they settled accounts. God does not look on the quantity of the results but the evidence of investment and faithfulness in our lives.  


Paul was not telling Timothy to hoard the deposit, but to protect it so that it was possible for it to be reproduced in the lives of others.  Each of our team members has invested our lives on our campus' here in the United States, but now we are seeking to learn what it is like to invest our lives in the nations.  It's funny; the more that we learn how to do this the more we hunger to do it even more.  Don't ever mistake your role as a Christian; Christ is not satisfied with mediocre complacency when it comes to making His name known.  It is what we were created for.


Just like the servants who invested their "talents," I pray that I will look back on my life and present it before God and have him say, "Well done good and faithful servant...enter into the joy of your master."  


Katlyn

"Verklaar sy heerlikheid onder die nasies, onder al die volke sy wonders!" (Psalm 96:3)