Help Support Missions and Look CUTE!

A dear friend of mine makes the most adorable purses.  I remember complementing the one she was wearing and was shocked to find out that she both designed and put it together herself, and even more surprised when I learned that it was made completely out of recycled bike tire tubes and other refurbished materials! See for yourself how cute Flat Tire Purses are by clicking here! 

The greatest part of her business is that 10% of the profits go towards missions. This year, she has chosen to support my ministry to students in the Dominican Republic through Flat Tire! So please check out www.flattire.us and share it with your friends and family!

3 Weeks left in the U.S.!

While I still have 3 weeks in the states, I will be leaving my home in Vegas in 2 weeks to spend a couple of days saying goodbye to friends and family in Phoenix, then it’s off to Chicago for briefing where our team of five will unite for the first time.

For those of you who are keeping up with my support goal updates, you’ll be glad to know that as of today I am at 79%! My one time gifts goal is overflowing (praise God!), but I still need $600 in monthly support. If you know ANYONE who might be able to meet this need by pledging some amount in the next two weeks, let me know how I can reach them at Jessica.Wright@uscm.org.

On another note, I’m appreciating how God is spiritually preparing me for this trip. He showed me something encouraging today in Acts 15:1-21 about when Paul approached Peter, James, and John, requesting an alignment of belief that the message of the gospel was for both the Gentiles and the Jews. Clearly, Christ intended these “pillars of the church” to minister to the Jews. But the Spirit had other plans for Paul. A previous persecutor of those in the faith, God redirected Paul’s passionate hatred into a passionate messenger of the gospel—specifically to the Gentiles. To me, this so illustrates the body of Christ and how each of us was uniquely designed to minister to people and bring God glory. In the past, God has chosen me to be a witness to freshmen women at Arizona State University. Now, God has equipped and called me to minister to students in the Dominican Republic.

What are your unique gifts and how is God calling you to use them in carrying out His second greatest command: “Love your neighbor as yourself?”

Ask and You Shall Receive

A week ago I was at 27% of my support goal. Today I am now at 43%!!! And that’s just counting received support, not pledges! I learned a great lesson this week. As I was making my calls to everyone and anyone I knew to share my ministry and invite them to be a part of my support team, TWO of them said they’d give simply because I’d asked. One person had been looking for a church to call home for the last several months and in the meantime had held on to her tithe. She was excited to hear about what I was doing and glad to be able to contribute in a big way to help send me to the Dominican Republic—simply because I’d asked for her help! So even though it feels awkward and can be draining, I will boldly continue to ask others for their help and let God do the providing.

Changing Focus

I know it’s been a long time since my last post, but I realized that I need to get back in the habit of blogging to keep my friends and family updated throughout the year. This means I will be changing the focus of this blog (which was previously just about a bunch of random things that happened in my life) to what God is doing through my journey of ministry in the Dominican Republic with Campus Crusade for Christ.

If you haven’t heard much about my ministry, you can read more about it here. God began to lead me towards doing a year long missions trip to the DR last November at Crossroads conference where Campus Crusade staff members showed us options for ministry post graduation and what living out our faith outside of college would look like. There, I heard some students share what happened when they went on the first summer project to the DR and was inspired by how God is moving in the hearts of students in Santo Domingo. In the four weeks they were there, they saw 60 people come to know Christ! The soil is ready to be tilled. Meanwhile, I was looking into teaching abroad—in a Spanish speaking country, which I was really passionate about—and considered teaching math at a missionary kids school in Spain. I began to wonder, “I hope I am able to disciple some of my students and be a part of their spiritual lives…” That’s when I realized that my passion lied more in sharing the Good News than in sharing the quadratic equation :)

So currently on my journey, I am in the process of raising support—yes, I have to raise my entire year’s worth of funding before I can go—and am in Colorado for the leaders’ training. So far, raising support has really challenged me to learn how to articulate the vision for this ministry and to be bold in asking others to support me financially. And God has been faithful! Not only by providing me with donors towards my financial goals, but with encouraging conversations with potential partners as I am sharing this ministry. My favorite story so far is while one of my dear family friends was over at our house for game night, she became distracted and shared with me how God was speaking to her heart to trust him with her finances. She also said that God had been laying on her heart a very specific—and large—amount that seemed crazy! But in her obedience, she gave and prayed over my ministry and the team that would be coming with me. On top of that, she has been working towards gathering some of her contacts together for a night where they can come together creatively and hear about my ministry, which leads to more opportunities to gain partners! It was just really cool picture of what a “ministry partner” looks like, and that they truly are for me and are a huge part of God’s work.

Like I said, I’m currently in Fort Collins, Colorado and it’s my first time in Colorado ever! It’s gorgeous. We had a BBQ by these mountains and a reservoir which was beautiful and are going to get more outdoors experiences later this week! Yay for nature!