Author: To Haiti We Go

“The cure for an anxious heart is not building confidence in your own abilities to overcome today’s worries and concerns; it’s submitting your heart to an almighty and loving Father who will transform your greatest weaknesses into a display of His perfect provision.”

– Ruth Chou Simons

I’ve always been a natural worrier and as a young girl, I just assumed that was a part of me and always would be and there was nothing I could do about it. Thankfully, as I grew older, God revealed to me through His word, how worrying can actually be a sin because it takes the focus off of Him and what Hes doing and makes me so focused on the problem or thing I’m worrying about. It makes me forget to trust in the One who breathed life into me and who spoke and the world existed. I’ve started to let my worries get the best of me again lately…y’all we are human and so this journey to the actual destination God has called us to is DOWN RIGHT HARD on many levels. It’s a daily laying down everything kind of journey! That is why we covet your prayers so greatly! I let my fears and worries creep in and say…”you still haven’t even reached 30% yet, you’re never going to get to 100% in monthly support to move” or “this is going to take so long, do you really think you can raise 100% up?” Or “you have no churches to speak at after July, how do you think you are going to find any that will let you come when you cant find any now”…and many other thoughts that I let the enemy say to me.

Yes I’m being real and raw but that is what you will always get with our family whether we are stateside or in Haiti, we will share our hearts and we will be real and honest with you because we believe that’s how we can best serve and how you all can best know how to pray for us.

THEN GOD! Oh friends, dont you just love when God doesnt leave you alone and He actually does what He says He will do 😉 I’ve been pouring my heart out to Him about my worries, this past week and I just HAD to share with you what He did in my heart.

Wednesday my bible time included reading Phil. 4:6-7. Then, yesterday during bible time at home with Isaac, our bible verse that we were suppose to read, learn and talk about was Philippians 4:6-7. If you grew up in the church at all, it is one you know well and sadly may even skip over sometimes because you know it so well. WELL…since it was for bible time, we actually took time to disect it a bit and ask questions about what it means and we pondered it. THIS helped my heart as much or probably more than it did Isaac’s! 😉

THEN…..it gets better! I went to moms prayer group last night and guess what the theme was….WORRY and one of the verses they shared and we talked about was….PHILIPPIANS 4:6-7!!! I was like…ok God, I get the point, You really want me to dwell on these words and do what they say.

WELL GOD KNOWS ME WELL and knew I needed one more time to really get it through that I needed to not just READ this but actually DO IT! So today after my bible time, I got out one of my devotional study books and guess what today’s topic was all about….YEP YOU GUESSED IT, anxiety and worry! The verse and picture she painted (picture above) was Philippians 4:6-7! WOW GOD! He used 4 different times this week to speak to my heart that HE HEARS ME, HE SEES ME, HE WANTS ME TO GIVE MY WORRIES TO HIM, TRUST HIM TO BRING THE MONTHLY SUPPORTERS IN AND FEEL HIS PEACE! I shouldnt be shocked He did that but I am for sure grateful He did ❤

So if you find yourself worrying and fretting over something like me, I hope this verse brings you comfort. He’s got this, whether its us needing families to be monthly supporters and we dont know how it’s all going to happen or it’s something else you are dealing with….we HAVE to remind ourselves we cant do it without Him anyways so why fret. He is the one who owns it all, created it all and has plans for it all…we are just the vessels! So let’s give it to Him since it’s already His and let’s just rest in His peace. (Now I just have to keep reminding myself of this daily) 😉 I am so thankful though that through this time of waiting and wondering when it’s all going to come together, its drawing us closer to Him and making us dig in deeper and THAT is exactly where we want to be!

We wanted to do a quick little post to share a few bits of info with you all! If you are signed up to receive one of our newsletter in the mail, you will be getting yours in the coming week! If you’d like to start getting those (come about every 3-4 months), just fill out our contact page on the blog!

Progress Report: We are thankful for two new monthly supporters this week! We are at 27% raised right now. We have 73% more to raise in monthly support before we can move. The generosity and sacrifice of the families who are our monthly supporters have been a great source of joy and encouragement to us, so THANK YOU! We need people to join our support team!  This means, we need more people who will pledge to continually pray for us and give financially to us, on a regular basis (monthly, quarterly, annually). We can’t go and serve in Haiti without more people joining our team. Would you like to join our team and pledge your monthly support? Go HERE to do so!

COMMUNITY BIBLE PEEPS: Our wonderful church has made it super simple for the families at our home church to start their automatic giving to us. If you go to church with us, please start your monthly support for us THROUGH RMI, not the church. You can go to the church website and click on MISSIONS and you will see MEET THE STARKEYS and there is a link on our page that will take you directly to the donate page on our missionary organization’s website! We need you, our home church family, to pray about your family being one of our monthly supporters. Simply put, we need you to go! Thank you so much ❤ We love you all so much! Here is what it will look like BELOW. http://www.DiscoverCommunity.org

Thanks so much everyone! Hope you all have a wonderful June. If you’d like to be a part of our Praying the Starkeys to Haiti private group on Facebook, just let us know and we will add you. We add specific requests to that weekly.

We are in the process this week of going through our house and getting rid of everything we know we will not be able to bring with us to Haiti. We plan on having a garage sale soon so stay tuned for dates and info on it because we will probably have quite a bit of books, toys and many other household items! We also finished our landscaping and took some outdoor pictures of our house in case we get to 50-60% raised during fall/winter, so we can have some nice summer pictures of our house and yard to show prospective buyers!

Until next time,

The Starkeys

To become a monthly supporter, follow this link: DONATE HERE! Thank you so much!