Mary, Mary How Does Your Garden Grow?

A lot more interconnectedly than I once thought...
 

Today while registering gardeners at the garden, up walked a man I knew from Willow Branch, my old complex. Yup, he has a plot and our faces met with a look of total shock and excitement of who eachother was, he a gardener, and me the new Director! Guess what else? He is also a member at my refugee church, Reach The Nations, a Nepali man with stained teeth from "Pan" ...Nepali tobacco. We couldn't stop smiling at eachother and explaining to every other Nepali who came up why we looked so silly shocked. Do you have any idea how much joy that brought to me? Today I got a bit of my joy back, because I was reconnected to my love, the people, even if only for a couple hours of sign up.

 

 

Let me tell you why else I walked away smiling and full of energy after 9 days of no eating on a cleanse to kill off some parasites and standing in the frozen, yes frozen because it was no longer freezing, it had definitely passed that checkpoint already, wind. I stood with a man named Ghaja* at his plot, a man my heart already feels so deep an affection for, talking about what his "roya saag," which looks like Nepali spinach, and making small talk in broken, broken English.

 

 

Why did this matter so much? Because beloved body, my strong support, at 18 I went away to study Environmental Studies with hopes to be an agricultural missionary in Asia one day. Then I went to Nepal and God gave me a curiosity and hunger to find a way into Bhutan, the smallest Kingdom in the world and almost completely closed to visitors after being told about it by the Argentine missionary housing me. That began a pursuit in researching what would make me a good visa applicant to be one of the few allowed in. I looked into their agriculture, among many other things and contemplated what could be possible.

 

 

My inner hope was to go and work with farmers in agriculture, teaching new methods to yield a greater harvest, and reach the people of Bhutan with the all sufficient news of Jesus.

That hope died, and even my own boss last semester as a teacher at a private school, mocked my desire to go there as I came across an article on Bhutan while helping my students find collage materials in Art class. "Isn't that where people are fleeing from to get here?!" she said. "Yah..." "Then might make you think you shouldn't be going there, huh?!" No Pam*..."Actually those are the places God calls me to go to because it's worth it," I say with a huge lump in my throat and red cheeks as she overpowers me. Then Today, I made the connection. I am standing here with ghaja*, a man who tells me he was a farmer, in Bhutan, and we are having a conversation about his vegetables right here together. It happened.

 

I walked away in awe of a God who places inside of us desires, but asks us to watch Him pull them together in submission, one blind step at a time, and in doing so, our worship and awe of Him is magnified all the more because He never for one moment went away from bringing that God given urge to pass.


I love the webs He weaves, the obedience He blesses, the way He blesses in such a way it is never divorced from our sanctification and His more intensified worship. I love that it leads us back into the well again. I feel a hope in me rising as God privileges me with seeing even for a season, the way He has never walked away from the desires He put in me that, until this point have all seemed separate and confusing, that I somehow misheard. No, no, He was just putting in what the bread needed before the oven. I am starting to see the dough rise and that it somehow all works together and smells really good.

I trust Him with my plans. I trust Him with the side roads, and I trust Him to make happen what He has given natural curiosity for as I choose to enjoy the immediate obedience of what He has spoken for now.
 

I may not know as much about vegetables as I had expected by now, but I know a whole lot more about yielding a greater harvest, and that is a track He knew all along He was placing my caboose on.

 

 

Blessings my incredible family, goodness how I cherish you.
 

To get more up-to-date on why I was registering gardeners and what this refugee church is all about, see a recent bio explaining my current work at http://rtnatlanta.com/2013/02/09/ciao-chinee-jaimesi-jenna/

~Jenna in Clarkston

This is a photo taken at Urbana, a missions conference where God confirmed my call to missions undeniably in 2006 as a Freshman in college. It was taken because God had just spoken India into my heart in a prayer room as the place He would one day send me. It was on the wall of the booth I visited just afterward. I cannot wait to tell you more about this confirmation and the wonderful web he has woven on this one currently.

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