Brooke’s First Year In Colombia – Video Blog
Love Brooke
Photos of Brooke’s work in Colombia
Like many missionaries, Brooke has no source of income other than love gifts from home.
If you would like to support Brooke you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
Give online below.
100% of your tax exempt gift will go to Brooke in Colombia.
Why Do It?
Why do you want to give up your comfortable American lifestyle to minister to the poor and hurting overseas? Why did you give up a chance to go to college and a have a good career and instead only own what can be put into two suitcases? Why go to places where you can get sick or contract an incurable disease or be kidnapped or killed? Why do you do it?
Every time I am asked these questions I think back to my first mission trip. I was twenty-years-old when my father and younger sister Beverly visited Colombia for the first time in 2009. Our family was in a dark place and I was dead inside. My father was a pastor and we had started two churches in our living room so to the outside world we looked like the prefect family. We worshipped God every Sunday and served our church members throughout the week but when everyone left it was like a cloud of past pain and hatred of those who hurt us settled into our house. I will never forget the fact that we could no longer talk or have fun as a family because we were haunted by our pain. So I wanted out anyway I could find. I needed something to live for.
So when they came back from that mission trip full of passion and a renewed love for God, I knew I had to go and see what they had found. For three months I asked my dad when I could go with him to Colombia and the day he called me into his office to let me know we were going, I remember running and jumping into his arms because I knew I HAD to go… I couldn’t stay who I was…
God always answers our heart’s desires! Most of the time we don’t even know what we are looking for or what we need but the most amazing thing is God gives us exactly what we need even when we don’t know what to ask for.
I knew I needed something but I didn’t know what was missing. But when I walked into the orphanage that my dad had visited three months earlier, I found it. I didn’t know I was missing the heart of God… but I was… I had grown up in the church and worked in the ministry most of my life but I had somehow missed the heart of God and it left a gaping hole in my heart. I could never understand why I wasn’t passionate for God or why Christianity seemed like a chore to me. But when I looked into the eyes of those love-starved children, looking for someone, anyone to show them the love of their Daddy God, I finally understood that I had missed a relationship with Jesus. I needed to know Christ and I didn’t. I had head knowledge but I didn’t know Jesus because I hadn’t experienced His presence and I didn’t know His heart or what He was passionate about.
My fist trip changed my life because it set me on a mission to know the heart of God and through knowing Christ I was finally healed from my past. He loved away all of my pain and that’s why now, nothing this world could offer would tempt me to not give God my all, because He gave me His all. Why do what I do? Because I can’t not. I love Jesus too much to not give all I have! His love makes it worth it! I follow the heart of God no matter where it takes me. Because as my dad says, “I have a holy addiction to His love!” And a big part of God’s heart is for the poor and fatherless! Psalms 68:5, “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in His holy habitation.”
Love, Rebekah Bullen
At Large Missionary
Mission Critical International
Photos of Rebekah’s Ministry
Like many missionaries, Rebekah has no source of income other than love gifts from back home.
If you would like to help Rebekah you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
or give online below.
100% of your gift will go to support Rebekah’s missionary work around the world.
Family
My heart soared as my feet touched Colombian soil again after five years. Five years was way too long! As we stood in what seemed like an endless line at immigration, I couldn’t wait to wrap my arms around my beloved brother Juan David and my sister Heidy. Juan David was waiting for us outside of the airport but it wasn’t until the next evening that I finally held Heidy in my arms. In that moment my heart erupted into praise to my heavenly Father for giving me a brother and sister. Even though I didn’t meet them until Heidy was thirteen and Juan David was ten, God always planned for us to be family. We are family!
I had so much fun just playing and watching movies together. Doing all the things families do together and I thought about how beautiful it will be when we reach heaven, when we will finally have a big family reunion. When there will be no goodbyes and nothing will ever separate us again. When I will finally see my heavenly Father face to face and I can stay in His presence forever with everyone I love with me. That is something to look forward to! And until then, my mission is to grow our family as much as I can! My desire for heaven is for it to overflow with the praises of my huge family!
I ask you to think of your family. Whom do you want to join you in heaven. Pray for them and enlarge your circle so as to bring even more to the thrown of God. Jesus loves your family more than you can imagine! He will do what you cannot.
Love, Rebekah Bullen
At Large Missionary
Mission Critical International
Photos of Rebekah’s Ministry
Like many missionaries, Rebekah has no source of income other than love gifts from back home.
If you would like to help Rebekah you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
or give online below.
100% of your gift will go to support Rebekah’s missionary work around the world.
The Great Commission
2014 was an amazing year. One of the best in my personal life. A year of redemption, new passion and dreams for the future. This year God brought me back and gave me a chance to start doing what it is He put me on this earth to do. After running away as hard as I could for two years God intervened and would not allow me to run anymore. I could no longer run from the knowledge that God was calling me to a higher purpose. As Christians we are called to what the modern church calls “The Great Commission” Matthew 28:19 and for years Christians heroes have been going through the whole world sharing the gospel with boldness no matter what the cost even if that cost is their lives. Unfortunately Christianity has turned into a comfortable religion instead of a way of life. “Most churches and ministries are working in the Commission but not the Great commission” – Enith Diaz. Having grown up my whole life in church I can say with authority that the modern idea of what it is to be a Christian is down right tragic.
Something I read recently struck my heart, it said “Some Christians haven’t even thought about whether they would die for Christ because they haven’t really been living for Him” Jesus Freaks, DC Talk. I will tell you that really made me rethink my life, my roll as a Christ follower and my idea of what it is to be a part of the Great commission. Thanks to God he opened my eyes just a tiny bit more this year. When God finally broke my pride and brought me back to Colombia in April I had no idea I was gonna spend the rest of my life here, but you know, there is absolutely no place I would rather be and nothing I would rather be doing than giving everything I have for the one who gave His everything for me. I am now living the life I was called to. And I would encourage everyone reading this DO NOT run from whatever it is He has put in your heart to do. WE ARE ALL called as followers of Christ, as His kids, as part of His family to go and spread that love and spirit to everybody we possibly can. THAT is what it means to live. We are of another world, this is only our temporary home and nobody is promised tomorrow. Choose to obey now.
My personal dream and my hope for all of you is that we can come to our end the same way Paul did and be able to say “As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. 8 And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:6-8.
So blessed to be here, so blessed to be doing what I was born to do… Who is it that God is using you to speak to? who is it that God put in your life that needs Him? What is it that God put in your heart to do with your life? Just something to think about. As always, A HUGE thank you to all you who support us in prayer and financially. It means so much more than you can ever imagine. I could not do this without all of you.
“Don’t let your light go down, don’t let your fire burn out cause somewhere somebody needs a reason to believe, why don’t you rise up now? Don’t be afraid to stand out… Thats how the lost get found” Britt Nicole-Lost get found
To see what God did in 2014 and where He is taking Mission Critical in 2015 please watch the video below.
Love Brooke
Photos of Brooke’s work in Colombia
Like many missionaries, Brooke has no source of income other than love gifts from home.
If you would like to support Brooke you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
Give online below.
100% of your tax exempt gift will go to Brooke in Colombia.
Visiting The Sick
I grew up in church… a good PK and as such I had one simple job to do.. be perfect, sweet, and make sure to set a flawless example for all the church to see. My main goal was to grow up leading Bible studies with all the young “maidens in waiting” of the church body because “youth group” was out of the question and one day marry a perfect young man who would become a pastor when he was 16 years old and spend the majority of his time locked away in his library studiously pouring over theology books while I made baked goods in the kitchen of our town house with the whitewashed picket fence and watched our ten children play with their Atlas and puzzles. Lets just say I was the ultimate teenage bigot. But sadly when you live under a mountain of self-inflicted expectation and constant failure to accomplish it eventually causes you to hate yourself and anyone else who does not live up to the impossible standards that you yourself are drowning in. I remember growing up hearing about grace and about how “nothing you could ever do would make God love you any less”.. now I am not here to preach theology to anyone.. trust me I know how much I still need to learn but lets just say grace was for weak christians who couldn’t “keep it together” in my opinion and I refused to be one of “those people”.
Anyway to save on paper and to not put my readers to sleep I will skip ahead a couple of years. At 19 the once perfect saint was now a tattooed, pierced, smoker who wouldn’t dare step foot onto a church’s front lawn let alone attend. A girl who once believed being a christian meant being better than everyone else now spent her days working, smoking, and crying herself to sleep every night. I won’t go into all the details of those horrible days but I can write this with a smile on my face because God did not let that little girl stay there. Through many hard lessons she was finally able to learn and understand what Jesus was saying in Mark 2:17 “When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor–sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” and it was my greatest joy last Friday night to share that with over 100 or so young men and women in a city park with some paper and colors.
Six of us went out to what is, in my opinion, one of the scariest parks in Boston Medellin. Lets just say its where all the gangs, addicts and hustlers like to hang out day and night. And I could feel the nervousness of every one of my companions as we sat down to play some music and sing right in the middle of it all. We brought with us pens, paper, paint, and all kinds of markers and our strategy was to break the ice by inviting anyone who wanted to “express themselves” by drawing or writing whatever they wanted. To my amazement it worked! I don’t know if it was the influence of the alcohol or weed but these kids LOVED the idea and in less than 30 minutes we had a huge group drawing, singing, playing instruments and listening to us share the gospel with them. One girl in particular I remember was Viviana, she was a beautiful 22 year old girl who was so touched by what we were doing that she asked me and another friend if we would sit down with her. I could feel her pain as she cried on my shoulder and poured her heart out to us. She wanted to know Jesus, she wanted to change and I know that God did something in her heart that night the same way He did it in mine. He is so amazing and we were able to share His story and His love with so many young people that night. I saved the papers with all the drawings and notes they wrote so that I will never forget that night, that experience and never again forget why and for WHOM Jesus came and died.
So blessed to be here, so blessed to be doing what I was born to do… Who is it that God is using you to speak to? who is it that God put in your life that needs Him? What is it that God put in your heart to do with your life? Just something to think about. As always, A HUGE thank you to all you who support us in prayer and financially. It means so much more than you can ever imagine. I could not do this without all of you.
“Wash my heart and make it clean, open up my eyes to things unseen, show me how to love like You have loved me” Hosanna, Hillsong
Love Brooke
Photos of Brooke’s work in Colombia
Like many missionaries, Brooke has no source of income other than love gifts from home.
If you would like to support Brooke you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
Give online below.
100% of your tax exempt gift will go to Brooke in Colombia.
How Much More
“At least Auntie Rebekah is coming back and we will see her again” said Patricia with a tear in her eye. I was sitting on the porch the night before my flight back to the States with my arms wrapped around Patricia trying not to cry as all the children and our house mothers begged me not to go.
I hate good byes of any kind but saying good bye to these kids here at Project Samuel is especially hard because they see so many people come into their lives only to leave and never return and so they have a hard time believing you will be different. I knew with all my heart I had to take some time off because of my health but the longer I am away from these kids the more that God confirms my calling and that these children need me to show them His love.
“Auntie Rebekah read to me please, Auntie Rebekah help me with my home work, Auntie Rebekah play with me”. This is what I miss so much when I must leave our beloved children at Project Samuel. Every second I am away from them I pray God keeps them until I can hold them in my arms again.
Feeling like I do makes Luke 11:13 so hard to believe and yet so beautiful. “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give good gifts to you who ask.” If I love these children so much and I am willing to give so much to them, how much more does God love me and these children and what will He not do for us?
Pray for me as I start raising support for next year as well as my plane ticket back. I know God will provide for all my needs and I will soon have my arms around our sweet children!
Love,
Rebekah Bullen
Photos of Rebekah’s work in Zambia
Like many missionaries, Rebekah has no source of income other than love gifts from back home.
If you would like to help Rebekah you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
or give online below.
100% of your gift will go to Rebekah in Zambia.
More Blessed
I can’t believe sometimes the great privilege God has given me! To live and minister here at Project Samuel with this wonderful group of people, is an incredible blessing! I can’t find the right words to express how grateful I am to serve in a ministry that not only touches the lives of the children we care for and the community but God also uses us to affect the lives of everyone who comes here to Project Samuel to serve. We had an amazing summer this year and were honored to host three mission teams of some of the most amazing people!
One of the highlights for me this summer was to see that even when you are doing your best to bless others God turns that blessing back upon you! One of my greatest joys is to see God radically touch someone’s life as they are serving others.
Our last mission team from Faithbridge Church in Spring, Texas, greatly ministered to us and our entire community. They even brought new shoes for all of our children! Our children were ecstatic! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier group of children as they ran to their house-mothers to show off their new shoes. But as I watched the men from the Faithbridge team tearing up as they gave out the shoes and as they prayed over every child, I realized we were all blessed as much, or more, than our children. It truly is more blessed to give than to receive.
Malachi 3:10,
“Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in My Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “ I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put Me to the test!”
Love,
Rebekah Bullen
Photos of Rebekah’s work in Zambia
Like many missionaries, Rebekah has no source of income other than love gifts from back home.
If you would like to help Rebekah you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
or give online below.
100% of your gift will go to Rebekah in Zambia.
Crisis Point
I have the great privilege of tutoring students from our children’s school in the village of Mashikili. The students are from fifth to seventh grade and are eager to learn English. My goal is to help these students pass their seventh grade test, which is written in English. It is sobering to realize that I stand at a crisis point in these children’s lives.
If the children don’t pass their test they will not be able to go to high school and they will end up dropping out of school to help their family in the fields with no hope of finding a good job. At my first class two weeks ago I had the children take an assessment test and the results were shocking! Out of the thirty children that came only five could write a basic sentence.
The need is so great sometimes I wonder if I can help these precious children but I know God has called me and He will make a way when there seems to be no way. Today as I stood in front of these expectant children hoping I could give them the education they so desperately need, I prayed for God to give me His strength because I know I can’t do this alone.
Love,
Rebekah Bullen
Photos of Rebekah’s work in Zambia
Like many missionaries, Rebekah has no source of income other than love gifts from back home.
If you would like to help Rebekah you can mail a check to:
Mission Critical International
11743 Northpointe Blvd #1025
Tomball, TX 77377
Give online below.
100% of your gift will go to Rebekah in Zambia.
How I got here
Where to begin, it is dificult for me to decide. It all started for me about three years ago, well I will go even further back than that, it really started for me way back when I was a little girl. I grew up the youngest of five kids, the baby of the family, and as awesome as being spoiled and babied was, I always secretly longed for a younger sister, I even used to pretend to teach her how to ride a bike or to make a bed. I never shared this desire with my parents but it stuck with me until about six years ago, when a friend of the family adopted a beautiful little girl from I think it was China, this really started me thinking, and eventually praying, one night as I laid in my bed, I said a silent prayer…… God please give me a baby sister, and if she can not come to me, please send me to her some day, here am I Lord send me that was my prayer every night for the next two weeks, little did I know that three short years later my prayer would be answered, I met my sister Mercy the first time when I was about 15, she came to visit me at my house, I would never at the time had guessed that God intended this to be the answer to my prayer, but she was, over time she ended up part of our family.
Then in June 2009, my Dad and my sister told us that they were going on a mission trip to Bogota Colombia, I was not very interested, to me that missionary stuff is good for some people but not for me, I was good right where I was. It was even worse when my Dad and my sister came back broken, and totally sold out for God and the wonderful children of Colombia, especially two little angels Heidy and Ginary, Story after story, tear after tear, photo after photo they retold the story of their ´´heavenly heart break´´ as my sister in law Jana puts it. I have to admit I was jealous, the obvious love and adoration my Dad had for these kids tugged at my selfish side, and because of this I refused in my heart to care or to participate in the excitment my family shared over this door God had opened for us, But as always God had a different plan for me, and I eventually found myself on an airplane to Colombia with my dad and my two sisters, my plan was to just enjoy myself and have a vacation and not get ´´heart broken´´ over a bunch of kids, well I for the entire week I did just that, I enjoyed hanging out with the kids, but I refused to get close to anyone, and I definatly did not cry. On the last day, we visited the institution where my sister heidy lived at the time, we went through the normal rutine, playing games, holding precious broken conversations with our little gangs, and just enjoying eachothers company. Finally it came time to say goodbye, and to my surprise, my heart hurt, I had tried to hard not to be touched, not to be pulled into the emotion of it all, but as I hugged my baby sisters goodbye, I felt the knot roll in my throat and had to step away to keep my composure.
Back home in Houston, my family made the desicion to adopt these two beautiful girls, I had to admit I was really excited, I felt as though God had given me again what I wanted, another answer to my prayer, unfortunately prayers are not always answered the way we want them to be, our plans are not God´s plans, and we were unable to adopt the girls, the day I heard the news, I remember running to my favorite place to sit and think, I ran and plopped myself down in the soft grass, I sat in silence for a while and then wispered to myself, why God, why?……. why??? why put us through this? why could we have just never met them? why get my hopes up and then dash them? is this what I asked for? I did not understand why that had to happen, why God would let that happen not just to us but to them, but somehow we made it though.
That next June, my dad and my sister in law Jana where planning to go on another trip to Bogota, I desperatly wanted to go, and somehow felt that I really needed to, that I was supposed to, and as God would have it, the plans with my sister in law fell through and I was able to go with my mom and my dad, I have to say, I was not prepared for what God had for me, I was not ready for this one week in my life to be my turning point. God touched my heart that week in a way that I cannot explain, and cannot replicate, I always look back to that week being the happiest of my life, for the first time in my life, I felt like I had built my house directly under the waterfall of grace, I felt like my heart was one with Jesus, and every child I saw I wanted to hug and give a huge kiss, and that is just what I did. I met a little boy on that trip named Andres, I dont know what it was, but he made me love life, he sat with me as I made bracelets out of string and just talked and talked, I did not understand of course, but I did not care, this little boy wanted to tell me his life and I was more than ready to just sit and listen, when I got on the bus to leave, I could not stop the tears from flowing, my lips were salty from kissing his sweaty cheek, now any other time in my life I would have cringed at the thought, but this time, I felt privileged to be able to kiss this little boy, to love him, he inspired me to write my poem “Kissing the face of Jesus”.
How many times have I longed
To see my Lord, to sing Him songs
To stand before Him, to give Him love?
To live with Him in His home above?
How many times have I cried
He said He was here, I felt He lied
“Lord I want to see you, to touch you”
And then I learned what I never knew
I found Him right were He said
In his tiny home, in his tiny bed
A little child, across the world
He warmed my heart, which once was cold
I found what I sought in the least of these
Now to my heart he holds the keys
Jesus’ true face, without pride or care
A find like this though humble is rare
This is why I write this rhyme
I will never cringe at the dirt or grime
When I kiss the cheek of mi amigas
I am kissing the face of Jesus
When I arrived home at the end of this trip, I grabbed my dad and said, “I do not want to go back to normal life, I can´t, there is an emptiness in my soul that can only be filled when I am serving God´s children and showing them His love I am ready to go back home.” And since then I have been trying to get back every chance I get. My heart is in Bogota Colombia, my family is here, my baby sisters live here, this is my home, I just live in Texas right now, When I told the people I work with I was taking two months to live in Bogota Colombia and spend my days with orphan kids, they all said….. “why?” I wish I could say it is out of some sense of spiritual maturity, but really it is because this is where I am happy, I am more blessed then I can bless. I am out served at every turn. And I feel like I am doing what I was put on this earth for. I have purpose. I am more than a wandering soul with no plan. God had this in motion before I was born and I would not wish it any other way. And this my friends is why I am in Bogota right now.
Love Brooke