Update from the Bronx!

Just to update my readers on what I've been up to...I've become a missionary with LAMP Ministries. I'm committed for a year but if I/ we discern that I'm called to stay longer I could- you commit a year at a time. LAMP Ministries serves the materially poor in the NYC area, with a focus on evangelization.

I am very blessed for God to have been brought me here, it's good to see God providing for me seeing as how this past year I really didn't know what I was going to be doing after college. I came across LAMP in my research toward the very end of this past school year. I think God sort of likes to not let me know exactly what is going on until I really need to know in order to keep me dependent on Him. I've been reflecting on God's love for the poor before coming here and as I've been here...and I've come to somewhat of a better understanding of it. God is drawn toward the poor because they naturally tend to be more aware of their own need. We are all poor before God; we are all totally dependent on Him for all we have and all we are. It is to those who are aware of their need- those who are humble-those who are under no illusion that they have it all together by their own power- who are able to receive God. I'll write more about this later I'm sure but I just wanted to mention it here to tie it into an increased awareness I've been gaining of my own poverty and my dependence on God. In my poverty I don't understand exactly where my life is going or where God is taking me, which forces me to hold on tight and trust that he knows my needs better than even I do and desires to provide for me all I need. Even when I think back to where Christ revealed Himself to me in a deeper way, it was when I was broken down and deeply conscious of my own need for love, and longing for this love- that I found Christ providing His very self to satisfy my need. And then during times when I was at my weakest- when I was most conscious of my poverty and need, it was then that Christ most tangibly became my strength. A big thing with LAMP is being with the poor, in realizing that we too, though we are not materially poor, are all poor before the LORD. It is this posture of being with that helps us to relate to the materially poor as our brothers and sisters.

I'm enjoying being in New York City. The female missionaries I live with and myself were invited over for dinner last night at our pastor's rectory. Father is from Nigeria and I asked him how he ended up in New York. He got into it and was explaining how he wanted to come to New York City because "that's where all the action is!"

Please pray for me as I continue to get settled into this phase of my life.