god is faithful. the past several months have provided some interesting times of frustration, learning and sadly have displayed my lack of trust. if you know me, you are probably well aware that i am not one who asks for help, instead i try and help everyone else, and yet i have found myself in countless situations in which i have had to rely on others just to accomplish the simple tasks of a normal day.
let me expand on the situation... in april the great denton floods happened (click here to read a previous blog about it). as i mentioned in the previous blog, my car experienced some damage... the damages were only partially paid for by insurance, and left me with quite a large balance on my credit card. (once again, if you know me... you know that i have always paid my credit card of each month, and now that was not a possibility). frustration, is a mild term to describe how i felt about my newly-claimed debt, especially as i attempted to budget how i was going to pay it off (and when you are in ministry, that can seem quite discouraging).
fast forward to a few months ago... even though i had been making substantial (on my budget, very substantial) payments on the credit card, i knew that i wasn't making a dent. so i started to pray. i had tried to figure out how to manipulate my monthly income so that i can not only live, eat and pay bills... but pay off this debt. (i was a business major in college, so i figured i should be able to figure this out) like i mentioned, i started to pray. why didn't i just start there in the first place? so often we try and fix our problems first and then "turn them over to God."
during the past few years, i have been blessed with some opportunities to lead worship for different ministry events... so i started to think that maybe i could try and book some more worship opportunities to provide the extra income needed, and with my previous music business background... i figured it would be relatively easy to find a few places to play each month. so i started to look into what i would need to do to "promote" myself (which was very odd... i was the promoter, not the promotee), but at least i had a good idea of where to start. so i've spent the past few months just trying to get myself prepared to contact people about worship leading opportunities. i haven't called anyone. i haven't emailed anyone. i've been so busy with work that i haven't really been able to do hardly anything to get things going, so i figured i'd set a goal of getting things booked in the spring.
then god took over.
the phone calls started to come in... and amazingly enough, i am booked for every sunday and almost every tuesday from october through december. i am also leading worship for a retreat in november. check out what God has done:
Date Venue
10.07.07 Crossroads Church
10.09.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
10.16.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
10.21.07 Crossroads Church
10.28.07 Parkway Hills Baptist Church
11.04.07 Parkway Hills Baptist Church
11.06.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
11.09.07 University Baptist Church Youth Retreat
11.10.07 University Baptist Church Youth Retreat
11.11.07 Crossroads Church
11.13.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
11.18.07 Crossroads Church
11.20.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
11.25.07 Crossroads Church
11.27.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
12.02.07 Crossroads Church
12.04.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
12.09.07 Crossroads Church
12.11.07 New River Fellowship - Relevant
12.16.07 OFF
12.23.07 OFF
12.30.07 Crossroads Church
for more information with what has been going on with the music ministry God has given me, check out my myspace page: www.myspace.com/stephaniegatesmusic.
it's amazing what happens when you have nothing to do with it... and God takes over.
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