Y what?

Some of you maybe wondering what is YWAM?  Can't say I blame you.  I did not know what it was either until a friend told me of her brother's missions work with the organization.  Youth With A Mission (ywam.org) is its full name.  It was the second largest missionary organization in the world just behind Wycliffe Bible Translators when I attended the Crossroads Discipleship Training School in the Spring of 2001.

It was a great experience for me.  I was 34 years old, and I learned to live life like a missionary. I had judged missionaries harshly thinking they were not technology savvy, not like what I was in the business world.  YWAM leaders proved me wrong in the first meeting.

I also learned to value the things God values.  I was so far gone in the ways of this world that He had to take me to missionary school to teach me the value of being a wife and mother.  I had no idea God would so quickly put that teaching to work.  When I returned from my six-week outreach in Ukraine and Bulgaria, I was planning to attend my next training with YWAM in Kona, Hawaii, at the University of the Nation's School of Worship.  That is not what happened next.  Two weeks after returning from Montana, I met my husband.  Seventy days later we were married.  Then a honeymoon baby on the way. 

Psalms 16:9 says that man makes his plans but God orders his steps.  My plan ... school of worship.  His plan ... a family plus the school.  He is so good!!!!  This is how His plan unfolded.  My job would not give me leave to go to Hawaii for the school plus I was now engaged.  I turned down my acceptance to the school, but I was sad.  I thought that desire was gone forever.  Life moved on for about a year until the Holy Spirit told my husband through a vision that we were to move to Nashville.  We lived in South Carolina.  What was God doing?  Many details later.  I was accepted into the YWAM School of Worship in Nashville.  We moved here in September of 2004.

Eight years later we are still here, and I believe God is soon to open the musical doors we are here to walk through.  A friend prophesied to my husband and I this spring that these years have been used to establish us.  I can believe that.  We have great friends here, wonderful homeschooling opportunities, a church home, and the list goes on.  I am finally moving back into songwriting, a task I started with YWAM's School of Worship, but have done little with until now.  I am gaining confidence in my singing thanks to YWAM leaders, my talented husband, an encouraging friend, and an all-knowing God. 

What He will do next I do not know.  Philippians 1:6 tells me "that he who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus."  2 Corinthians 2:14 tells me "But thanks be to God, who in Christ Jesus always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere."  I am expectant.  Here we come 2013!