Lessons learned…

The other day our pastor asked all the leaders to answer some questions. One of them was “What is the biggest leadership lesson you have learned in the past year?” Good question! As leaders we try to always learn; as christians we try to always learn… But sometimes it’s good to stop and review lessons learned. Here are mine:

1. I learned that sometimes you don’t want to hurt a person,  so you don’t tell them the truth about their performance, but when the time comes you still have to deal with the work not getting done. At the end you end up hurting both, the person and the ministry, and usually the relationship. So it’s better to keep the communication line open, no matter how  difficult the confrontation is.

2. I also learned that our past plays such a big role in our present. If we are not careful, our past could be running our present. Without knowing it, we can be pushing away everyone who reminds us of  a person, experience, emotion or even personality we’ve encountered in the past. You just don’t like a person or don’t have a good feeling about them. But the Bible teaches us that “love believes all”…  So I learned that when I meet people, I can not dig out my so called “manual” on this “type” of person. No, I take out a blank sheet of paper and let the relationship start from scratch…

3. The third lesson that i never wanna stop learning: God is SO BIG! He blows my mind with every move of His hand. My brain gets intimidated when faced with His works, but my soul cries out Holy! Awesome! Glorious! … and the rest i can’t translate ; )

What is the biggest lesson you have learned in the past year? Think about it; write it out; share it with others (me .

Until next time,

Tanya K.

Friends, that make you work hard!

Friends. They come in all shapes and sizes. You meet them in different circumstances and all kinds of situations. You can not choose how you’re gonna meet your friend, how your relationship is gonna start: on a positive note or maybe negative. I remember the day I met my old friend, I so didn’t like her at first. Everything about her bothered me. And then we got into a huge fight. From that day on we became best friends for a long time

Now although you don’t have anything to do with the beginnings of relationships, how good of a friend you’re gonna be is totally up to you. People say that real friends don’t have to try to be friends. I disagree.

There are two kinds of friends. The ones that naturally click with you and it’s so easy to be with them. You know, the friends you spend the most time with. You never have to think what to say, or whether what you said made them mad or not. Yon can be totally silent  and still have a good time together. Even when you fight you still know they’re not going anywhere. I love those friends; it’s easy to love them.

And then, there is that one friend who you like so much, but to be with them is not as natural. It’s like you try to be friends. It’s not that you don’t have anything in common; you can be totally in the same situation, but it’s not easy to engage in conversation, it’s like there is not enough to say. But for some reason you wanna be friends, you know that you need them. Do you know what I’m talking about?

And that’s where your choice can make all the difference. You can give up on that relationship; just let it go. You’ll loose a friend and one day really regret it. Or you can try hard to keep them and one day understand why they were sent into your life.

It’s so easy to loose friends and so much work to keep them. With time I came to believe that more friends is better than less. I have a lot of people I try to keep contact with. Just an email, or text message, or call or even myspace comment; just to keep the warmth, the connection.  

Do you have a friend like that? Or maybe a couple of friends? I wanna encourage you today not to let them go. And remember, it’s never too late to reconnect. Even if it’s been awhile since you’ve heard from them, reach out to them, I bet they were thinking about you, too.

With love, Tanya.

Getting older; scary or …

Do you ever think about getting older? I did today. It’s kind of interesting what am i gonna be like when I’m 75. I’m sure i don’t know.

If someone told me 10 years ago that I’m gonna be who i am today, i wouldn’t believe them for a second. A lot has changed since then, and I’m not only talking physically. (although my appearance has changed a lot. I placed a picture, of myself 8 years ago, on the fridge to motivate me to live healthier, and every time i pass by i cant’ believe I used to look like that ; ).

My attitude toward life has changed, I understand the power of consequences: everything you do has aftertaste, pleasent or bad, but nothing goes by without leaving a mark on our life.

One sad thing about getting older is that you gain all this experience, and in response stop being spontaneous and careless. I used to love to just have silly fun, like running in the rain, feeling it on my clothes and on my skin and in my hair;  riding my bike through puddles;  writing notes back and forth with my friend although she’s sitting right by my side and there’s no one else in the room; laugh just because; laying on the grass watching clouds, trying to see different shapes they form; writing love poems…. Now stuff like that seems like waste of time.

I hope, that when I’m 75, I’ll have a long list of God’s assignments i finished, to look at. I hope to see thousands of lives being changed and enhensed because of my life on this earth. Most of all I hope I will be able to say that i lived my life to the fullest and tried my best – to make my husband happy; and raise my children in love and in fear of God. I hope i will know Jesus much, much closer than i know Him now…. Well and I hope l’ll still look good, too . I’m not afraid to get old, i just want all the years i live to count for something good.

Do you ever think about getting older?

Hello world!

Ok, here I go. My first blog. I’ve been trying to start it for couple weeks now, but didn’t quite know where or how to start. I guess, here is a little about me:

I was born and grew up in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. I had a very good life, God loving parents, close friends and great plan for my life (or so I thought).

When I was 14 my parents decided to move to United States at the invitation of my uncle from MN. My world was crushed. I didn’t want to leave my friends behind. I was mad at God and didn’t understand why would He do something like that with out even asking if I want it. (As I learned later, He does that a lot

Of course, as soon as we got settled in our new surroundings, I found new friends I couldn’t live with out J. I became a part of a great church, where I served singing. We had a girls’ quartet. And were ready to record an album…when I felt led by God to join a different church. It was much smaller than the church I was member at; in fact it was just in its beginning stage: not much young people, just the pastor’s and deacon’s kids J. But I knew that, this is where I will grow.

Disregarding the disapproval of my quartet friends, I made the transition and soon became fully involved in my new church as one of the youth leaders and choir leader. Once again, I thought I knew exactly how my life is gonna turn out, and once again I was wrong.

Year after, I met my husband, fell in love, got married and had to move to SD. That was not part of my plan!!! God was asking me again to give up the church that I loved so much, but on top of that he wanted me to give up my parents? (Little detail that I forgot to mention: when I got married I was only 16 (well almost 17), but you get the picture) I was scared, but knew that this is God’s will for me, even though most relatives were furious (I totally understand them).

To make a long story short, I obeyed God, and here I was in Sioux Falls, SD. If you ever been to SD you know that it’s mostly corn fields and … yeah just corn fields. But I fell in love with this place! I loved everything about it. Because I loved the man, that was now my life, and I knew that if God placed me here, then there’s no better place for me.

For the next 3 years I was helping my husband (Alex) in church (he was a youth leader). He also was running a tree business, and I worked at H&R Block in the winter. Life was good, fulfilling. We really enjoyed working with young people. And then…

The story of my life! God wanted us to move to a different church. Now you have to understand: while I’ve changed churches before, my husband’s been in one church since childhood, this was very hard for him. But being the man of God that he is, he asked our pastor to release us from membership and joined a little church in Downtown Sioux Falls.

The Pastor of that church was amazing: God fearing, God hearing and moved in the Spirit like crazy. As soon as we joined, the Pastor started calling my husband “Pastor”. We both thought it was interesting, Alex was never ordained, and never even thought about pastoring a church. (Although, since I gave my life to Christ, I always somehow knew that I will be married to pastor ; ). Anyway, Pastor and other elders were telling us how they see pastor’s anointing on Alex, and how he needs to start a church…

And so we did. Alex was 25, I was 20 and pregnant with our fist son. What an exciting time that was! Faith overtook our lives, like adrenaline overtakes one’s body. There was no fear, just vision of God’s will.

Needles to say; our life has never been the same. Looking back I see God’s fingerprints in every corner of my life. He never asked me to approve the blueprints of my life, but He always gave me a choice: “Do you wanna use your plan or Mine? If you wanna use My plan, then close your eyes…      give me your hand…     and let’s go!”

And I’m blessed beyond my dreams!