Home is where God is

Good afternoon dearest brothers and sisters!

I am so encouraged and strengthened knowing you all are constantly praying for us and keeping us in your thoughts! It is really impossible for a mission team to go out without the support of their family and friends. God is really doing work here and slowly bringing our team together in order for us to work as a body and as a church!! so God is truly answering our prayers! :D

Today was the first day of teaching except I didn’t really start yet because our community elementary school went to a field trip, so instead of teaching, Judith and I got to spend time with our translators Laura and Jesus! I also don’t teach at the school today, so I took a nap and read a little. It’s kind of hard getting into the mentality that I’m here to spread God’s love because our mission work is so indirect. Instead of going out there and directly evangelizing into the community and the school, we have to patiently show God’s love through our actions and our character! That’s definitely a prayer request! I think a lot of our team members have the same mentality since we are here as English teachers BUT we are actually undercover servants of the Lord!! muahaha :D 

Today, for my personal quiet time, I read about an eagerness that comes from your willingness to serve! In 2 Corinthians 8: 3, Paul states that there were those who “Gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability”. The reason why they were able to do so was because “they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will” (vs. 5). How amazing, right? I realized it’s important to keep our FOCUS 100% on God because He is our Lord and the reason why we are here :] The rest will come into place according to His will! AMEN!

Prayer Request: Please pray for Ichthus and the city of Chiapas! Pray that God’s presence will be made known to all! Pray for a revival within the hearts of many of the students here, so they may come to accept Christ and love Him!! God really has an amazing plan for the kids here :] Pray for their ears to open so they may listen and for their eyes to be open so they may perceive! <3 <3

Thank you Thank you!

Love your sister in Christ,

             Sharon Bae :] ♥

Happy Birthday JIHYE YOON!!! :]

HEY HONEY! This is a SPECIAL post JUST FOR YOU ;]

what a jerk right…. :[

What a weirdo right?…(Sharon I mean)

Meet Judith! and the many flies that are attacking her…She’s my elementary school teaching partner!! :D

some weird girl with pigtails…

I just wanted to wish you a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY my lovely dearest! I love you so much, and I miss you oh so very much too! I hope you are have a wonderful birthday and enjoying your day!! God bless you and the happy day that you were BORN! Goodness lady..you are getting older and older…teehee <3 <3 I lub you! :]

This is Michael. Happy Birthday Jihye! …that’s it. just kidding haha basically everything Sharon said…kinda. anyways we made a special birthday video for you! oh and some pictures in case you missed our faces. ENJOY!

:[ I have been trying all day to post this video for you..but it's almost not your birthday...so I decided to post this post and show you the video ASAP! Still be happy okay? :] <3…. MUAHAHA! JUST KIDDING! Baby..this is how much I love you..okay click this link!!

http://sharonbae1.tumblr.com/

LOVE YOU HONEY! ♥

DAY TRES!

AMEN! God is surely answering our prayers! Today, the team was able to build in our spiritual connection :] We have been doing QTs every morning!! 1 Samuel is the book we decided to read as a team, and I have been learning a lot through Hannah’s faith, Eli’s obedience and humility to the will of the Lord, and Samuel’s commitment and obedience to God as His mouthpiece. It’s been pretty good here!

BUT God really nudged my heart for a deeper connection spiritual as a team, and I believe He did the same to many of our team members because today…we became a bit more vulnerable with each other and shared about our spiritual walks with our Father. We also had an amazing idea from our wonderful team leader, Grace, who thought it would be good to have a speed dating prayer time! Haha..you guys are probably confused..WHAT..? Speed dating…uh…har har no worries peoples! What we did was spend time individually with four of out team members in a speed dating manner! We were able to share prayer requests and pray for one another, which made me very very happy! GOD LISTENS :] :] Thank you daddy!

Also, I have another picture of a delicious yummy..this wasn’t from today but I just had to show you guys how DELICIOUS these MANGOES look…these mouth watering..sweet…yea :D haha Tada!!! 

mmm <3

Beautiful, right? yea.. I know. Anyhow, thanks so much for your persistent and faithful prayers! Please continue to pray for our physical, spiritual, and mental health for the upcoming days when we begin to teach our English classes!! You guys are awesome, and GOD LOVES YOU!! You are his handsome sons and gorgeous daughters!

                                  love your sister in Christ,

                                         Sharon Bae

 

DAY DOS! :]

Hola!! :]

Como estas? OH ME? muy bien!! <3

So today we had a very very busy morning, but it was so very fun! :D We went to the community right after breakfast, and all of us got split up into pair into our designated teaching areas! I had the opportunity to teach at a local elementary school with one of my team members…JUDITH KIM! She’s a rising junior in UVA, and she’s very adorable! our translator, who is an excellent student at Ichthus, came along with us as well :] :] We had to take over the 2nd grade classroom with about 30 students because the teacher had to run an errand. I shall be honest…it was so much harder than I thought it would be, but they were SO FREAKIN CUTE!!

One of the elementary students drew this for me! :] so cute <3

All the students were so excited when we visited their classrooms and introduced ourselves. I was just surprised to see all the kids so excited over something that seemed like not too much for me.

I also got to spend some time alone at the chapel near our home! I sang some songs, praised the Lord, just took a walk with my pops and talked to Him how everything was going :] yeap..I love talking to Him. It may look ridiculous but I know He’s listening all the time <3 <3 He loves me

…and He loves our good friend..MIGUEL! He will be GUEST BLOGGING TODAY! woohoo exciting right?? so Michael is a rising sophomore at JMU like me!! , and he studies BIOLOGY! I know right…my goodness but he’s sticking through. That’s good. Anyhow, give a big hand to our buddy Michael :] :]

 

I’ve never really blogged before so if it sounds boring I’m sorry hahaha. Today we basically figured out our whole schedule for the 4 weeks we will be teaching. For me, I found out that I will be working with the police near us.  I thought we would be shooting their guns and driving around in their cars, but unfortunately when my partner and I (Grace a.k.a. team leader) went down to the station with our Spanish translator, Carlos, we found out that they will be coming to us and that we will have to teach them English in a classroom…which is still fun I guess because I will have my own class of police officers for five hours!! (3 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon) and hopefully if they like me I’ll get to shoot at their shooting range! Also, I get my own class of Middle School level 3 kids and will have to teach them every MonWedFri..I’ve never taught anything before especially English so that’ll be fun. To end this post, everything here so far has been really interesting and eye-opening. Everything is pretty much different here and I have to accustom to almost a new lifestyle. For example, the food. I wouldn’t say I dislike the food here, but I can say I’ve never been 100% full so far, but hopefully I’ll get used to the food and it will change. I really do like trying out all of the new food they give us here at Ichthus, but I really miss NoVA food already…

our mug shot

The police station we went to

Thank you so much for your continuous prayer and keeping up with us here! :] Have a lovely night and sleep well! and please please continue to pray that we will grow as a body and church..that God will truly use each and every single one of us to glorify His wonderful name!

God bless you guys!! <3 <3

Love your sister in Christ,

Sharon Bae :]

&     Michael Kim :)

Delicious yummies :]

fruit!

I have no idea what this delicious, magnificent creation is…but it was so YUMMY!

Yeah yeah…it looks kinda weird with all the spikes and thorn looking things. BUT don’t judge a fruit by its peel…ahaha! :]

snacks given by one of the teachers!

So colorful right? It had this weird styrofoam texture and was very soft.

This fascinating snack tasted like wafers but not really :D

DAY UNO!

Greetings my dearest supporters and friends!

I hope you are having a lovely night! Thank you so much for always keeping us in your prayers!! :]

The courtyard of our lovely home!

 

Rooftop view of the school of Ichthus

So TODAY was kind of a get to know the Ichthus school and the community! The students here are so adorable! We arrived here pretty late last night, so we were greeted by the students with a lovely welcome sign they made for us!! So sweet right?

We have not started teaching English yet, but I did get to be a part of an interview class, which I will be assisting in! There were only 5 girls in that class, but my goodness…all of them were so adorable and just so sweet! I was the interviewer, and I had to ask them questions from their homework assignment…Here is the really tight part..

Question: What was the most challenging situation you have experienced?

All of them talked about their Christian walk and how God was there for them. When they could not solve their own problems, God was their answer! Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

We also got the opportunity to join the students during the worship time, and God bless them…just entering into the room…His presence was truly there. They worshiped with all of their hearts, unashamed to declare their love for their Father. What brought tears running down my face was when I saw three boys go up to the front as we were singing Here I am to Worship. As soon as I saw their humility and love for Christ, oh man..God just blew my mind. It truly touched my heart to see them love and worship the Lord at such a young age even through all the circumstance they were in. Praise God! For He truly loves His children. He is a God that has an unending love for all of us!!!

Ooh! and prayer request please :] :]

For our team to grow in a spiritual connection along with getting along with one another and just loving loving loving! (so far, our team is definitely bonding!! Thank you GOD!)

Michael was not feeling well tonight, so please pray for his health and that he can have the energy and strength to serve!!

LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!

love your sister in Christ,

Sharon Bae :] ♥

Hola Mexico! :]

Hello Hello everyone!

We are finally here at La Trinitaria, Chiapas, Mexico!! :]

MEXICO TEAM 2012

Day view from the airplane!

MEXICO! Gorgeous…

BTW! Michael is this blogs talented photographer, so THANK YOU BUDDY! (majority of these pictures from my posts will probably be from him!)

haha so funny story…

      Alrightey, so for some odd reason I had the weirdest fear of being stopped during security or the customs check area just because I worry about weird things, and out of all the things I had to worry about that was my BIGGEST doubt. I knew God had everything under control, and there is no reason something small like that would stop Him. I just couldn’t get over that tiny little doubt in the back of my mind. SO when we were getting our custom check at the Mexico airport…guess what happened??

    Out of our entire team, I happened to be the one stopped and inspected. I know right…God is pretty humorous. It’s a small thing, but you can always learn through any experience, and for real you guys… as soon as I was done with the inspection, everything clicked…and I just laughed. sigh

God is hilarious. You know how sometimes we doubt the smallest things…you gotta just REMEMBER how big our God is, and there is NOTHING He cannot do. His will be done :] He’s got everything under control! Glad to let you guys know…nothing was wrong with my stuff..just God reminding me a little something about himself :] :] <3

Our team has a blog if you guys will like to see all of our perspectives during this trip!!  Here ya go…

                     Ichthusmexico2012.wordpress.com 

(it will also be under blog roll at the bottom of the site!)

Bye Bye Nova…

Off to Mexico tomorrow!! :] EXCITING!! 

I’m about to go to our leaders house to eat dinner and finally meet our ENTIRE TEAM! <3 <3

then off the airport tomorrow morning and into our next mission field for this summer! :] WOOHOO!!

SO I am going to try my bestEST to blog when I get the chance when I’m Mexico! so keep up with the blogs to see what AMAZING stuff God is doing at Mexico! :] Please be praying for us! <3 

OH OH OH! & my lovely JMU class members decided to throw us a wonderful lunch surprise that I greatly enjoyed! Seriously, ya’ll are just so adorable!! Thank you thank you :] Love ya guys ♥

 

GOD IS FREAKIN AMAZING!

Well my goodness gracious…today was fun packed day :]

For reals so full of wonderful things and good time spent with some AMAZING friends that I am blessed to have. Now, why am I saying God is amazing? Well, because He just is!!! Yeap. Yeap.

We went to the zoo today, and it blew my mind to see all the beautiful creatures God created! Seriously, how can you be so creative and so intricate in every single detail of every single animal. Each animal has a distinctive characteristic that makes it so different and unique. Isn’t the just amazing?

Even the plants in the sea live and are so full of beautiful, bright colors. The jellyfishes just blew off my feet! I couldn’t stop staring at them and seeing the way it was made with such wonders! oh man!! God is the best artist out there :]

But guess what else I realized?!

We are made that way…with such beauty and intricacy. All of us carry our own distinct gifts and character that make us who we are made to be. God loves us that much!! EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS WORLD is made with so much love and care…there is not one mistake. That does more than blow my mind…it allows me to look at this world differently. He loves everyone like that :] :] so Hey! You are BEAUTIFUL. You are UNIQUE. You have AMAZING GIFTS & He has a plan for you :] <3 Thanks daddy for being freakin amazing.

 

Fragrance of LIFE

” But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For were are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.”

2 Corinthians 2: 14-17