God's Way

Three weeks ago this Sunday my church held a health expo. Long before the actual day of the health expo we had a planning committee and all but one person quit and said that it was too much and they didn't have a clue what they were doing. This was a bit discouraging but I pressed on. Much prayer and effort went into putting together the expo and on the day of six people came through but I had perfect peace about the whole thing. This was not the case a few hours before. In fact due to stress my immune system was down and I ended up getting very sick; which lasted for about a week after the expo. So that being said my body was aching and I was not feeling well the day of the expo. But God blessed in an unusual way. I had run out of money and couldn't buy ink for my printer to print some of the forms needed. My parents were coming to help and they graciously bought me ink but they didn't make it until about 1/2 hour before I needed to be at the site to set up. Ink cartridge in and I'm ready to go but my printer is not cooperating. I try everything but there is error after error. I sent everyone over to the site to set up while I mess with the printer. One page printing! Every once in awhile someone would call and ask a question. I was so thankful I wasn't over there because from the phone calls I could tell people were frustrated and my being over there wasn't going to help their frustration (I could tell because of the nature of the situation). This was such a blessing. By the time I got over there they had solved the problem and I had taken the time to pray and surrender the health expo to God. 

Before all of this while advertising there was a mix up. We were hosting a blood drive at the same time and had agreed on a time. I had posters printed up: Health Expo from 3 - 6. Then I received the Blood Drive posters: Blood Drive from 1 - 5. Well this was a bit of an issue. So we set up and were ready to go about 1:30ish. I have learned to be flexible because we can plan and things rarely run exactly as planned. But God knew this. He saw this coming. We were outside under tents and around 4:45 the rain clouds started forming. At 5 it was down pouring. We had most everything packed up by the time the rains hit. Praise God for moving the time.

Monday we began a cooking class. A few days before this a person was telling me how I needed to advertise more and when they did stuff they always managed to fill the church with complete strangers. They also said that if I didn't advertise more then the cooking class is going to turn out like the expo and they'd be discouraged if they were in my spot. I learned something. It is always important to realize that people are not you and they do things differently and situations  are different and before you take the time to criticize someone you should take the time to find out why they are doing something the way the are and offer aid instead of criticism. Was the person correct? Absolutely! I do need to advertise more. But when I asked for help in organizing stuff no one stepped forward. That aside on the way home I prayed and prayed and prayed. So by the time Monday night rolled around I was excited. It didn't matter if anyone showed up I knew that God wanted us to do a cooking class and if we are faithful that is what matters. Numbers is not the important thing. So three people came. 

God brought the right three people. The one was a church member and her cousin. The other was a food columnist for the local paper. She couldn't figure out why more people weren't there so she posted on her facebook about the class to try and get more people. No one came. So the next day she interviewed me about the class and various other things and their will be an article in the paper this weekend. God is always faithful and despite trials and difficulties it is important to walk with him in surrender and complete dependence. Sometimes it is easy to get discouraged about the circumstances but we need only to look to Jesus and He will pull us through.