Tis The Season...

As I went through my day today I was reminded several times that this is the last Christmas season, at least for a while,we will be in Minnesota. The last Maple Grove E Free Women's Christmas Dessert I will decorate a table for, the last Spectrum High School Christmas Concert Brad will sing in, the last winter in the cold (well that's not such a bad thing) and the last time I will decorate this house for Christmas.  A season of lasts is what I thought about.

But then as the day went on I thought about the new beginnings we are going to experience in the next year.  The first summer on the field serving our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Brad's first year of college and our granddaughter, Analise's first year of school.  Walking into a new church for the first time again and all those people I have yet to meet for the first time.  And that permeated my thoughts later in the day.

There is a time and season for everything.  Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there is "a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance".  The time to tear down will probably be the first disaster we respond to and a time to build will be that first home we are able to put back together for someone...but first we need to break down our own home here in Minnesota and then build a new home in Louisiana.  We are not literally building a home but it takes more than bricks and mortar to build a "home".  Anyone that knows me knows that "a time to weep" could be about anytime!  But I imaging the weeping this next year will be tears of sadness as I say good bye to so many friends in Minnesota when we move.  And a time to laugh..well that will be the times of remembering all the good times we have had and the joys that the Lord has brought into our lives.  And a time to mourn.  We will mourn our "home" in Minnesota.  Not the bricks and mortar home but the home that others have built through their friendships that really have been our safe haven for years.  And a time to dance. I will be doing the happy dance when I see people complaining on Facebook about the first snow and how cold it is outside!

In all seriousness, we all have seasons in our lives that are good and seasons that are bad.  Jesus Christ was sent to this earth to bridge the gap between us and God the Father during all the times of our lives.  We all make mistakes and go through difficulties.  How awesome is it that we can all receive the gift of Jesus' saving grace from our Father this Christmas season or in any season of your life?  Have you received and accepted that gift?  Is it your season to mourn or is it your season to dance?  Experience the joy that is Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior this Christmas!  Come dance with me!

Blessings,

Jackie

Sharing our Blessings

We just finished up with Thanksgiving and most of us probably went around the table 

and said what we were thankful for. Well, all those things are blessings and they are 

given to us by God. When we really think about it there are a lot more that we didn’t say 

at the table. I know for me I could go on for hours. When we look at the rest of the 

world we are a very blessed nation. As I read the Bible it tells me we have been 

blessed so we can be a blessing. In Gen. 12:1-3, God asked Abraham to go and I will 

bless you and through you I will bless all nations. We are part of that blessing and we are to use it to bless all peoples but we must go to do that. Then I read on in Matt. 28:19 where Jesus gives us a mandate that all of us should follow. “There for go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching 

them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Here we see go again, so right now all of us should be in one of two stages, either we are being discipled or we are discipling. Where do you fit in there and how long does it take to make a disciple? Jesus took three years, so we need to be on the move. Go. 

Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice  and because of that we can have a relationship with 

God. Since then we no longer have to take our sacrifices to the high priest to be 

forgiven. That in itself is a huge blessing. As a matter of fact sacrifice for us is only mentioned 

in the New Testament twice. Once in Romans 12.1 “Therefore, I urge you brothers, in 

view of Gods mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-

this is your spiritual act of worship.” Again in Philippians 4:18 as Paul was traveling 

around doing ministry work the people were supporting him and Paul says their gifts are 

“a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.” Though we do not need to 

sacrifice for our relationship with God we do need to sacrifice ourselves and our 

resources to carry the gospel message to others. Our Blessings. 

This doesn’t means to give what we can afford or to serve if we have time, this means we look at what is a true sacrifice and give out of our blessings not just our abundance.

Ephesians 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.  Live as children of light.” 

Jackie and I are so blessed that God has brought us from darkness and made us light. 

We have chosen to sacrifice our lives to him by serving with TouchGlobal so we  can 

bring the gospel to those in need in the wake of disaster. In our experience, we 

found God when there was no where else to turn and someone was there  to share Jesus with us. We need to Go. We need to pass the Blessing.  God just keeps pouring his Blessings on us since we have decided to Go.  I challenge you to Go spread your blessings that God has given you so they can see what Jesus did for you and that you are blessing them because Jesus blessed you. 

Ask and you shall receive!

The Passer house has been alive with activity this month!  If you are following our newsletter you probably read that we are getting our house ready to put on the market at the end of January.  We had an amazing young lady come in and donate her house staging services by giving us ideas for paint colors, light fixture changes, furniture rearrangement and a mini bathroom makeover.  The Lord provided the finances for the changes in the form of a nice tax rebate and we were all set to go!  

With Jackie directing traffic in the background (most unsuccessfully I might add), Rob began the task of changing out light fixtures and tearing down wallpaper.  I'll let you ask him which of these he enjoyed more!  A request was put out in our last newsletter for help for Rob in painting the rooms that needed to be done and low and behold the painters arrived!  The front entry hall, upstairs hall, master bedroom, and both bathrooms upstairs were prepped and ready to paint and the crew got to work!  In a matter of a few days all of the areas that were prepared were painted with two coats and rooms were reassembled so quickly it looked like a version of Extreme Makeover-weekend Edition!  Hat's off to Jen, Will, Shari and Katie for the time they took out of their lives and their painting skills to accomplish the task at hand.  Our friends are absolutely amazing and we don't know what we would do without them!

Below are a few action shots of some of the crew working!  We praise God for such humble servants!

We'd also like to give a BIG shout out to all of those that visited the hospital, our home, fed us and prayed for us over the last month.  Jackie is going back to work on tomorrow, 11/1 and is healing up quite nicely!  Your prayers and support are so much appreciated.

We also want to welcome everyone that has joined our Ministry Partnership Team and thank them for their support!  We are currently at 23% of our monthly support committed and 48% of our start up costs already given!  

If you have been thinking about joining our team but would like to hear more about our call and what we are doing, shoot us an email at rob.passer@efca.org and we can set up a time sit down and share our hearts with you.  Maybe God is tugging on your heart to just join the team!  You can just hit the TouchGlobal logo under the "Donate online" button on the right and you can give online or go to 

http://www.efca.org/give-serve/ways-give for other giving options.  Be sure to include 1670-Passer on any donations made.

Please keep all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy in your prayers.  There is so much clean up and rebuilding to do and TouchGlobal will be among those helping.  Pray that the light of Christ can show through every worker that God calls to this field and that the people can see that their only hope is in Jesus.

Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.’”

Exodus 16:32

When I look in the bible I see so many verses on food.  Whether they are regarding sustaining a population, breaking bread with others, or celebrations with food.  God fed the Israelites while they were in the dessert,  Jesus fed the multitudes with a few fishes and loaves of bread.  The apostles broke bread with Jesus the night before he was arrest.  God performed many miracle with food.  He has taught us many a lesson through these miracles and today He has taught me a lesson about food and the meaning of eating versus using food as an idol or even crutch.

In the last few years I have gained quite a bit of weight.  It started out because I discovered I loved to bake pastry, breads, cookies and cupcakes.  Ahhh the cupcake.  Cupcake wars had become the go to show on Sunday nights and finding a cupcake shop that had been on Cupcake Wars was put on my "bucket list."   And yes, that has been checked off the list!  

But as I sit here in the hospital for my 6th night after having abdominal surgery to remove a large colon polyp I really began to think and pray and ask God what I was doing wrong.  Why was I not able to eat yet?  The only thing holding me back from going home was food!   One of the things that I truly love the most in the world.  Anyone who knows me knows this.  And here I sit blogging from my hospital bed because of food.  I have to be able to "tolerate" eating 2 meals in a row to be able to go home.  It became quite clear to me today after a walk around the hospital floor what was going on.  God was giving me another clear message and it has taken me a few days to figure it out.  I needed to take food off of that list that some days was above God in my daily life.   Food had become an idol and it clearly needed to be put back in it's place.  It's place is for sustenance. Food is one of the things that our body takes to live on this earth.  BUT not an overload of it or overindulgence of it.

Tonight as my carefully chosen dinner was put in front of me I prayed.  I prayed to God for my body to be able to tolerated what I was going to feed it.  I prayed in thanksgiving for again teaching me what was coming between my relationship with Him.  And I prayed to be able to go home tomorrow to the family that I love and want to see so badly.

Thank you Jesus for being my Savior and ALL that I need on a daily  basis. Thank you for the rememberance of the manna put in a jar for generations to remind us that God can and WILL give us all we need.

Blessings,

Jackie

Crisis or Christ?

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy." Colossians 1:17-18

Our church is doing a sermon series on Colossians right now.  The above verses are so fitting for what is happening with our church and how the church is allowing Christ to take over and not the crises that keep cropping up on us.

A little over a year ago it was announced that by mid-2013 or Sr. Pastor of 20+ years would be leaving our church to follow God's call into a Marriage and Family Care Ministry.  A search committee would be formed to look for a new Sr. Pastor and in the mean time Pr. Russ would still be around until a new Sr. Pastor was found.  Those of us that have been around a while were not shocked at God's call on Pr. Russ' life but were sad to even think about another Pastor leading our church.  And we still had Pr. Dan, Pr. Paul, and Pr. Phil plus the rest of the staff that would be consistent and staying on.  So we took it all in, prayed about God's direction and trusted God to get us through this.

Last December I sat with my good friend who was also my direct ministry report in missions, Pr. Dan as he explained that what they had thought was Parksinson's Disease was actually ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease.  He indicated that he would be around for over a year and hoped to transition out of ministry by the end of 2012.  But that is not the way it happened. Pr. Dan's disease has progressed much faster than he and his wife, Heidi had thought and he retired in March, 2012.  We have kept up with his Caringbridge site and have seen Dan and Heidi's total dependence on Jesus during this time of crisis and I personally have been so humbled by their walk with the Lord through all of this. This has been so difficult for all of us at MGEFC but we follow Dan and Heidi's lead and are completely dependent on the Lord to get us through this too.

In the last few weeks we have received email after email from the prayer chain about people from our church going through major health problems.  The father in law of an elder with a serious illness, a long time member of the church going through bypass surgery and subsequently acquired a rare and serious infection that will keep him hospitalized for maybe a total of a month, the daughter of our youth Pastor with a serious throat infection that has caused her to be hospitalized twice and who is looking at surgery on Tuesday, and finally our Sr. Pastor again, who fell off of a ladder doing home repairs and has shattered his ankle and heal and is also having surgery on Tuesday.  And the list goes on...  All of this going on in so short a period of time could have crippled our church.  But again we were completely dependent on Christ and did not give into the crisis.

One might think...boy that church is under attack!  Those people better watch out!  I wonder what's next?  But...just think of this...if the evil one is trying so hard to attack us, what is he so afraid of?  We must be doing something right for him to be working so hard at trying to discourage us.  What are we doing right?  Well we believe this...

1.  Jesus is God  Col. 1:15
2.  Jesus is the creator of all things and holds it all together Col. 1:17
3.  Jesus began the church! Col. 1:18
(these 3 things taken from my sermon notes from this morning)

So if Jesus is God, is the creator of all things (that includes us!), He holds everything He created together AND He began the church, why would it surprise anyone that Jesus is protecting us from the evil one right now.  We could be down and out.  The leadership could feel as if they can't take another crisis or illness.  But what is happening?  Services go off seemingly without a hitch.  God has begun the healing process in the elder's father in law and the elder's wife's face showed true joy today as she told me about answered prayer.   The long time member's family is hanging in there and is trusting on God to bring him through all of this. The youth Pastor's daughter will finally get some relief from the pain she has been in from this infection and Pr. Russ will be up and around in no time.  Who says God doesn't perform miracles anymore?  Not me because I know JESUS IS GOD and He IS holding it all together because He began this church!

Watching and waiting...

I remember 7 years ago tonight.  I say in front of the TV watching and waiting and praying.  Praying that Hurricane Katrina would slow down, change course or just plain fizzle out.  Instead it hit the Gulf Coast with a fury and shortly after that the storm surge hit New Orleans and 80% of the city was flooded.  Rob was in Colorado hunting and I sat with the boys just staring at the pictures on TV.  The rescues, the water, the Super Dome and the Civic Center. I watched as the National Guard and Coast Guard rescued people in baskets from helicopters from their roofs.  I watched and I cried.

Hurricane Katrina, 2005

 Tonight I sit in front of the TV watching and waiting and praying.  But my prayer tonight is one more of praise to my Heavenly Father for the storm not going higher than a category 1.  Praise for an amazing team of TouchGlobal friends that are sheltering in place in New Orleans and the surrounding area so that they can be first responders to a wind blown and rain soaked city in a few days.  Praise that Our God heard our prayers and for the most part spared our friends in Haiti from this storm.  And praise that I know for sure that God can and will use every event for His glory,  even hurricanes and earthquakes.

Will I cry over the next few days as I watch the damage reports or possible hear about lost lives?  Absolutely!  But compassion and mercy are part of who God made me to be.  That's OK.  I look forward to the time when we are in the field and I can be a part of that first responder team going in to see if everyone is OK.  When I can go in and pray with someone and tell that about the life giving blood of Jesus Christ.  Our Lord and Savior can and will help us through any storm.

My friend and teammate Katie had this verse on her blog and I wanted to share it with you.

"Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you and praise your name,
for in perfect faithfulness
you have done wonderful things,
things planned long ago.
2 You have made the city a heap of rubble,
the fortified town a ruin,
the foreigners' stronghold a city no more;
it will never be rebuilt.
3 Therefore strong peoples will honor you;
cities of ruthless nations will revere you.
4 You have been a refuge for the poor,
a refuge for the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the storm
and a shade from the heat."
Isaiah 25:1-4 

This is a different storm than Katrina was 7 years ago.  That storm caught me at a time in my life where I was looking for a place to serve.  Looking for what I was going to do when I "grew up" so to speak.  Today I know what God has for me.  I have grown into a daughter of the King.  A daughter that just wants to love and serve her King and expand His Kingdom.  Hurricane Isaac has opened my eyes a little more to what God has in store for us.  And I have to tell you all....I am so joyful that He has chosen us for this work and so joyful that He is a shelter from the storm.

Jackie

My Brother Jeff

Tonight as I reflect on the last few weeks one thing keeps coming to mind.  My brother Jeff.  Jeff is 14 months younger than I am.  Did you ever have a sibling that whenever your mom and dad would ask any one of the kids in your family "who did that" you would answer "so and so did it!"  Well in our house it was always "Jeff did it!"  While sometimes it was Jeff who did it, he was usually our scapegoat and after a while I think our parents knew that the answer they were going to get is "Jeff did it!".  Did they know that the first person to say "Jeff did it!" usually was the culprit?  I'm not too sure but I can place dollars to donuts that they did.  We weren't pulling the wool over their eyes at all!

To say that Jeff had a rough life is an understatement.  He soon fell into a life of drugs and alcohol that would continue until just a few years ago.  At that time Jeff had met some people at work that invited him to church.  They loved him for who he was, embraced him for who he was and led him to a spirit filled life with Jesus Christ.  The change in Jeff has been like watching a caterpillar morph into a butterfly.  The love and light of Jesus shines through him.

So many people hear about Jackie and Rob's travels and Jackie and Rob's road to the mission field.  I learned recently that many people even from our family don't know that Jeff has made a huge move in his life also!  On Memorial Weekend Jeff came over for dinner and told us all that he had applied for a medical missions training program in the Philippines and if accepted he would be selling everything he owned, giving his dog to friends and moving to the Philippines for training this July.  Imagine our surprise!  But also our overwhelming sense of God's goodness and mercy.

Well, Jeff was accepted into the training program and on July 6 he left for the Philippines.  He is working each morning doing some building, gardening and other things to help build character and then in the afternoons they are doing training for a medical mission.  Jeff is the embodiment of a missions minded servant of God.  He has sold everything he owned and moved to the other side of the world to do the work that God called him to do. 

I love my brother Jeff so deeply.  I admire him and what he is doing.  And I give all the glory to God for Jeff and the miracle he is.  Amen to that!

Home...It's relative thing

Home...where is home?

Home is where the heart is.  Home is where you hang your hat.  Home Sweet Home.  Welcome Home!  Carrie Underwood says in a song "This is my temporary home, it's not where I belong, windows and rooms, that I'm passing through. This is just a stop, on the way to where I'm going. I'm not afraid because I know, this is my temporary home."

We stayed in lots of "homes" along the way this summer and then we got "home" and we were there for 5 days and left again for training.  All this moving around gave us the feeling of, wow, this is what it's going to be like when we go into ministry with TouchGlobal full time.  Away from our "stuff", friends, family and what we know as normal.   But then we got home and it didn't feel right.  It really made the word home feel a whole lot different than I had ever felt before.  Temporary, fleeting, just a stop along the way....

This is just our temporary home here on earth.  Some day we will all live eternity somewhere.  My home will be in heaven singing praises daily to my sweet Jesus.  I won't have to worry about my stuff.  Won't miss my friends or family and normal will be far greater than anything we could ever imagine here in our temporary home on earth.  It makes me wonder why I missed my house so much when it isn't really my permanent home.

Soon we will be moving to Louisiana and we will have a different house.  Same stuff, different house.  We will be in and out of that house too.  Where ever God calls us we will go.  Hurricanes on the gulf coast or Pacific ocean, earthquakes in Turkey, Japan, Haiti or another unknown location, flooding in Brazil or North Dakota or fires, tornados or drought.  God will call us to those locations and again we will leave our temporary home to live in another temporary home.  People ask...aren't you afraid?  You will have no idea where you are going...how will you prepare?  We say...no we're not afraid and God will prepare us.  He has been preparing us for such a time as this since the day we were born.  We will be ready.  God will provide the Ministry Partners in His time and that time will be when He feels we are totally ready to serve Him and not a minute or a day sooner.

So as we prepare for a new home and a new life over the next several months we will keep in mind that this home too will only be temporary.  A temporary home here on earth that is preparing us for our permanent home in heaven, serving Him and singing praises to Jesus.

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."  2 Corinthians 4:18

Our Country's Monuments

As we have traveled throughout the country we have seen several monuments along the way.  The monuments were erected in memorial or in remembrance of so many different people or groups of people. We soon learned that we could not take pictures of every monument or we would be stopping every few miles.  Every country has their monuments and the USA is no different.  But as we have traveled across the country and talked to people we have learned that monuments are built for man and that we must build our monuments in our hearts to glorify God.

Below are just a few of the monuments we have come across.  The last one is a monument that hit us hard though.  It is the monument talked about in the documentary movie "Monumental".  Look at the pictures of this monument and read the captions below.  As you read them think about where you have built your monuments?

Monument at the gate of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona

 Memorial at the Hoover Dam

The Statue of Liberty

Monument to the Founding Fathers

  It starts with faith that we can only get from God that is why she is pointing up and there is a star on her forehead which represents the wisdom God gives us.

  It takes morality which we get from the 10 commandments, she has no eyes so she cannot be distracted.

 

 The law is kept by the justice system whether you our rich or poor we are all treated the same.

Education is holding the Bible and this is where we are to get our education.

Liberty has the chain broken from where we have come but a sword in his hand to remind us we must fight to keep it.  Liberty can only come with the rest of these.  It cannot happen without the rest of these or Liberty would be on top.

As we serve God in our ministry we are reminded that we all have erected monuments to those we have loved and served on this earth.  The Monument to the Founding Fathers left us thinking...if our country has been built on Morality, Law, Education and Liberty, that comes together because of our Faith...are our monuments built on faith in what God can do or are our monuments built on what man can do?  We will be serving in disasters all over the world, I pray that as we go out and serve that we can continue to build our monument in heaven on our faith in what God can do.

For more information on the above monument please watch the movie "Monumental"

Family, Friends and places along the way...

We have been on the road now for 22 days.  Our travels have taken us from Minnesota through the fields of Nebraska, the mountains of Colorado, the deserts of Utah, California, Arizona and New Mexico, to the beautiful Grand Canyon and the powerful Hoover Dam.  We have seen the roaring waves of the Pacific and the oil wells of Texas.  And then the beautiful rolling hills of Arkansas and Tennessee.  We have rolled through Mississippi and then spent a few days in Alabama.

But the most important part of this trip has been the people.  From the high school classmates, in St. George, Utah and Santa Rosa, California to the siblings in Visalia, California and Memphis, Tennessee we have been welcomed with open arms.  In those 22 days we have spent only 4 nights in hotels!  We have been blessed with comfortable beds, yummy meals, laundry facilities and even an oil change.  We have been prayed over by friends that we haven't seen in years and loved on by aunts, uncles and cousins.  Below are the pictures of some of those that have blessed us along the way.  May the Lord bless them as they have been a blessing.

 

We stayed at Jane Rohr Peterson's house in St. George, UT our second night on the road.  Jane and I sat down and started to talk like we had seen each other the day before.  It was such a blessing to see Jane and meet her husband, Pete.

Two of my sister in law Cheryl's three dogs.  We stayed with Todd (Jackie's brother) and Cheryl for 5 days before we dropped Brad off at Stanford.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then moved on to Jackie's friend Ann's house in Santa Rosa, California.  We had a great time with Ann catching up.

We spent a family day in San Francisco before we dropped Brad off.  This is fun on the Cable Cars!

On to the Los Angeles area for breakfast with Jackie's Aunt Sheila and brother, Todd.  What a blessing to see Sheila again.

And believe it or not we had dinner the same night in Phoenix with my Aunt Diane.  I am amazed at the number of people we have been able to see on this trip.

From Phoenix we moved on to Tuscon for an afternoon and evening with Rob's cousin, Gary and his wife, Patrica.  They hadn't seen each other in over 25 years. They spent ours catching up.

Then a couple of nights in New Braunfels, TX with a friend of ours that Rob met several years ago.  He made smoked ribs and pork loin.  Yum Yum!

 

Please pray for everyone that has blessed us so much! We would not be able to do this trip without them.  We are being constantly surprised by God each day.  Again, just like our ministry with TouchGlobal it is about the relationships not the tasks. We praise God for these relationships.

 Yesterday, on the 4th of July we went through some of the tornado torn parts of Harvest, Alabama.  It was a reminder of why we are on this trip and why God has called us to work in Crisis Response.  We feel more fortunate than ever that God chose us!  

 

 

 

 

 

Is California really that big?

The answer is YES!  Wow, we arrived in California on Saturday, June 16 and left this morning.  We have seen so much of the state from the mountains in the west, through the desert (I think 2 or 3 of them) to the beautiful coastline and the wine country of the Sonoma Valley we have experienced California.  God has created an area with so much diversity and beauty that with as much as California has to offer in terms of the kinds of fruits, vegetables and nuts they grow, I can't even begin to image what the Garden of Eden must have been like!

My brother Todd lives in Visalia, CA on the edge of what I think is the Mohave Desert.   The valley that he lives in was once a seabed and has some of the most fertile farm land in the entire country.  Thousands acres of trees that grow oranges, lemons, plums, pluots, apricots, almonds, walnuts, pomegranite, pistachios and so much more.  Grapevines for raisins, wine and fruit.  Fields planted with every vegetable you can think of.  We came across truckload upon truck load of garlic and onions! And yes, you could smell them for what seemed like miles!  And then there are the dairy ranches.  Thousands of head of cattle that produce the milk for our tables...and yes this coming from a Wisconsin girl!  I never knew that California produced so much of our country's food supplies and for that matter the world's food supply.  As we drove past all of this food you can only wonder why there are so many people on earth do not get enough to eat every day.  Todd and Cheryl were great hosts and we were treated to the best of the best that California has to offer.

Rob has already told you about Sequoia National Park. Well since then we gone to the coastline near Pismo Beach, the sprawling San Francisco Bay area including Fisherman's Wharf, crooked Lombard Street and Ghiradelli Square where we ate FREE chocolate!  We also got up into the wine country of the Sonoma Valley to see my high school friend, Ann.   Here we saw grapevines for as far as we could see!  That's a lot of wine!  Beautiful hills with gorgeous wineries and estates surrounded us.

Then on to drop Brad of at Stanford University.  What a gorgeous campus but HUGE!  There are 570 high school students in this summer program representing 35 countries and 37 US states.  During the regular school year the campus has 7000 undergraduate students and over 8000 graduate students.  Just a little bigger school than Brad's high school!  I think the campus itself is bigger than the entire city of Elk River!  We pray that he can stay grounded in his faith and that he can find a campus ministry to get involved in.

Then a long ride to Los Angeles and a great breakfast this morning with my Aunt Sheila and brother Todd.  We literally went from top to the bottom of the state in 15 hours with a 5 hour stop at Stanford!

So YES, California is that big!  But God has been faithful throughout our time in California.  We reconnected with friends and family that we haven't seen in many years and we saw some of the most beautiful things that God has created.  If He has blown us away on the first week and a half of this trip....

We can't wait to see what the rest of the country has for us!

God Bless!

Jackie

As I did my devotions Thursday morning, it was talking about the things we might do to show our love for God. One of those ways was our baptism and how God responded in love to Jesus baptism. Though we may not hear an audible voice, God surrounds us with signs of His love for us. This has been so true as we traveled out to California. From the farmland of Iowa and Nebraska to the mountains in Colorado with the long horn sheep along side the road we saw these signs. 

From the deserts of Utah and Nevada to the canyons of Arizona that love was evident and then we saw the view in the picture above and we saw the beauty that came from destruction. The Grand Canyon was created by a series of earthquakes and the raging Colorado River.  Viewing the immense canyon that was started from an earthquake, you begin to wonder what we our really going to be seeing as we get closer to the end of times when Jesus says these things will get worst like birthing pains. 

 

 In Sequoia National Park in California you walk up to these magnificent trees and think, WOW. Some of trees were alive when Jesus walked on this earth. Oh how it makes you feel to stand next to something that old. Some of these may have even been one of the first things that started to grow after the flood of Noah. Some may be over 4,000 years old. Can you imagine? These groves of trees also take destruction to continue to multiply. The forest fires are essential to their seedlings as it cleans the forest floor and fertilizes the seeds with the ashes. The fire also breaks open the pine cone shells so they can germinate. As I think about our new up coming ministry the destruction we will see may be essential for newfound Christians. The floor must be cleaned and the hard shells must be broken open for us to reach hearts with the Gospel. As we look with terror as these things happen, Jesus is looking on it with joy and beauty as new Christians are formed.   Please take a look around you today and see how God is showing his love to you. Pray that we can do this everyday even in the little things. We must look at it through Gods eyes.

Today was a day of driving and looking at what God created and wondering.... Wondering how anyone could ever believe that God does not exist.

Looking at the plains and forests of Nebraska was beautiful.  You may say...are you the only one that thinks Nebraska is beautiful?  Do they have more than cattle and corn?  Yep!  Trees, rolling hills, and turkeys.  Those are just a few of what we saw in Nebraska today.

But...the realization that God created this beauty came in when we were in Colorado and all of a sudden you look up and see the mountains.  The majestic peaks made me think of God and how much He must love us to make such a beautiful sight.  It was put there for our pleasure!  God even thought of that!  Making sure we had this backdrop to live our lives in.  Snowcapped mountains, rock formations, and long horn sheep (yes 6 feeding alongside of the road in the mountains) bring out such a sense of gratitude for our Lord and King!

Tomorrow we drive to St. George Utah where we will stay with a high school friend of mine.  So looking forward to catching up with her and sharing what God has done for us and through us over the years.  God is good all the time and I can't wait to see His goodness each and every day.

Blessings to you!
Jackie

A whirlwind week!

It's Monday morning of the week we will be leaving for our "Around the USA in 46 days" trip and trying to get our blog updated, our newsletters out, our packing done and our house cleaned and my list just keeps getting longer and longer.  We plan to leave at 3 AM on Wednesday in hopes of making it to Denver by that evening!

We will then go on to see a High School friend of mine in St. George, Utah.  Excited to see Jane and catch up with her.  She will see us off on Friday morning for our trip to the Grand Canyon to see how God carved out one of the most beautiful places in the world.  I am really looking forward to sitting on the edge and spending some time with God.  Clearing my mind and asking for His wisdom and strength for this journey.

What's news?

It's been a while since we have posted here so I thought I'd catch you all up a bit!

What a month it's been!  We started off May in Phoenix, AZ at a workshop called "Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills".  Now you say...what's that all about?  Well let me tell ya, it's all about finding out how God wired you, how you respond to others and then how you SHOULD respond to others. 

I think we all know that how we do respond and how we should respond are two different things!  The bible tells us this in Col. 3:12-14  "Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." This is what I found out...that the key to all of this is "Bear with each other".  Not everyone has my opinion of things and not everyone should have my opinion of things.  Hmmm...novel concept huh?  How about this...Treat others the way THEY want to be treated instead of the old axiom of "treat others the way YOU want to be treated". You'd think it never occurred to me that maybe not everyone was wired the same as me! And the way I figure out how they want to be treated is by listening to them.  What I found out is it's as "simple" as listening!  It's hard to listen when I am always talking so being quiet and listening is key to me.  


This also translates into my spiritual life.  If I am always busy talking to God or "doing things for God" how am I going to listen to what He has to say?  "Be still and know that I am God" is in the bible for a reason.  "Do not be anxious about anything" is also in there for a reason which brings me to the other part that God taught me during the workshop.  Creating and keeping "margin" in my life in order to have the time to listen to God and to others is the key to the peace and joy that God wants all of us to have.  I made a list of all the things that I thought brought stress into my life.  My list filled a whole page!  Then we were asked to cross of the things on the list that were other people's things and the things that I was stressing over that weren't really stressors and my list went down to 4 things!  Seriously, 4 things!  That was the most freeing thing about the entire workshop for me.  


Now I have learned to Bear With Each Other, to create and maintain margin and the way to do that is to eliminate the stress that I bring upon myself.  With that said, I still need LOTS of work in these areas but with God's help and your prayers this will become my way of life vs the way others live their lives.


What else is going on?  Well......WE'VE BEEN ACCEPTED!  We are officially commissioned Missionaries with ReachGlobal the missions agency of the EFCA.  We go to orientation next Friday and then leave on a 7 week trip around the country building our Ministry Partnership Team.  I have taken a leave of absence from my job from June 8 through August 6.  That alone relieved  a lot of my stress.  If you would like us to visit you or would like to join our Ministry Partnership Team, please contact us at jackie.passer@efca.org or rob.passer@efca.org and we can sit down with you and tell you about God's call on our lives and how that all came to be.


Pray for us over the next two months.  We will be updating the blog from the road and may have to change the name of our blog to the "Wandering Vagabonds"!  


Be blessed and be a blessing,

Jackie

Wow, What a journey the Lord has us on right now!  It's been awesome to join Him on this journey and we look forward to what He has in store for us in the coming months and years.

We have been learning "everything you always wanted to know about Rob and Jackie Passer".  What makes us tick, what happens when we are not able to use our strengths and what happens when our strengths are used in ways that can possibly be hurtful to others.  We've learned that Rob is an introvert and I am an extrovert...like we needed a personality test to tell us that!  We have learned why I like to talk and why Rob spends more time listening and soaking it all in.  And I am learning to listen better and that it's hard to listen if your mouth never closes...

We are learning that everybody on this earth is uniquely made by God to have the strengths, personality traits and gifts to fulfill a need for Kingdom purposes.  And that our lifetime of experience has brought us to the place that God has us today.  It's truly amazing and humbling to know that before time began, God hand-picked every one of our traits. That He took the time to WANT to mold me into the woman I am today and Rob into the man that he is today.  And I see now why we have walked through so many difficult times and hurts.  It's hard to help someone else through a crisis if we have never been through a crisis ourselves.

I have found that I am already in a transition period.  No, we are not moving right away but the transition has already started. The first part of April, Rob and I went to Haiti with a team from our church and it occurred to us that it would be the last short term trip we take for quite some time and possibly the last short term trip we take with Maple Grove E Free.  I have transitioned out of the Missions Leadership Team at MGEFC and have turned it over to capable hands that God has prepared for such a time as this.  This ministry has been a part of my life since 2004 and while it's difficult to not be a part of it anymore I know that God had me there as a training for what is to come.  Brad is a Junior in High School now and we have visited 2 college campuses, he has taken his ACT test and we will be dropping him off this summer at Stanford University in California for a Summer High School College program for 8 weeks.  My baby isn't a baby anymore!

On May 6 we will be traveling to Phoenix, AZ for a "Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills" workshop.  We are looking forward to going to learn what God wants us to learn about ourselves, how to read others and how to help others in difficult situations.  We then come home and will be telling ReachGlobal about everything the Lord has taught us over the last months since the REV.  We look forward to hopefully raising support this summer and over the next year and we can't wait to tell everyone about our ministry and what God has called us to do in times of crisis both domestically and internationally.

Please pray for the next few months as we travel to Phoenix for the workshop, hopefully go through orientation with ReachGlobal in June, get Brad to Stanford for the summer and then traveling around the United States talking to friends and family about our ministry.

We covet and appreciate your prayers!

In Him Always!

Jackie

Our journey to the Field

We want to send out an update to our wonderful journey as we prepare for our ministry. To those who may not have heard Jackie and I have been working on the application process to become missionaries with the Evangelical Free Church of America, ReachGlobal. Where we will be working with Crisis Response. This last week we where invited to the Readiness Event which is part of the training and interviewing process. This was a very long week which was held at the main offices in Bloomington MN. It was very informational and we learned so much about ourselves, each other and the organization. We are encouraged as they focus mainly on team health and personal health.
This is the kind of organization we want to be involved with.
Well we have learned that since we are going to be working with many, many volunteers which means many, many personalities, they would like to prepare us for that. As we will be the face of ReachGlobal, we would like them to have the best experience of their life. To do that we need to be able to communicate to all those different personalities. So we will be doing some training on the Strengths Finder, DISC and the Myers Briggs which are personality assessments. Along with those we will be attending the Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills (SYIS) Workshop in Phenix AZ in May. We are very excited as we continue our growth in the Lord, to see the work He has been doing in us as He is preparing us for great things in His plan to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Thank you for all your prayers and continue praying for us as we go through the process to our acceptance in to ReachGlobal.

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