Missions Blog

Boundaries — Bill & Glenn Teach the Girls to Guard Their Hearts

Some lessons you learn from a book. Some you learn from a sermon. And some — the ones that stay with you — you learn from a man who has lived them.

This morning, Bill and Glenn stood up together and taught the girls of Faith House one of the most practical and deeply scriptural lessons of the week: boundaries. What they are, why they matter, and what God’s Word has to say about them.

Bill opened with a picture the girls could immediately grasp. Think of a fence around a house. Think of the lines on a sports field. Those lines don’t ruin the game — they make the game possible. They keep things fair. They keep people safe. Boundaries in our lives do the same thing. They tell us what we’re responsible for, what we’re not, and how to treat the people around us with honesty and love.

The lesson walked through the laws of healthy boundaries — not as rules to memorize, but as wisdom to live by. A few that landed especially hard with the girls:

You reap what you sow. Good choices, consistently made, build a life of trust and respect. Poor ones carry real consequences — not as punishment, but as the natural shape of the world God made. “A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7) is not a threat. It’s a gift. It means your choices matter.

You are responsible for yourself — and to others, but not for them. You can walk alongside a friend through hard things. You can listen, support, and love. But you cannot carry their choices for them, and they cannot carry yours. “Each one should carry their own load” (Galatians 6:5) — and “carry each other’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). Both are true at the same time.

You have power over yourself. Not over what others do or feel. But over how you respond, how you speak, what you choose. And that is enough.

Bill and Glenn talked about respect — that honoring someone else’s “no” is just as important as having your own “no” respected. They talked about motivation — doing good from love, not fear. They talked about speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), and being proactive rather than reactive when your boundaries are tested.

And they talked about the Golden Rule — “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12) — as the foundation beneath all of it. Every boundary, rightly held, is an act of love toward yourself and toward the other person.

It is not a small thing to watch two men — men of integrity, men who have walked through life and come out the other side with wisdom — sit with a room full of young girls and say: your “no” matters. Your heart is worth guarding. You are worth protecting. For girls who have not always been told that, it lands differently than words on a page.

“Guard your heart — for everything you do flows from it.” Bill bringing boundaries to life for the Faith House girls.

Bill with some of the Faith House girls — a man whose life speaks as loudly as his words.

Heart Talking — Kathleen Brings It Home

After the lesson, Kathleen gathered the girls to fill in another section of their Identity Mobiles — this time around the theme of boundaries. The heart is nearly complete now. Section by section, day by day, these girls have been building something that is entirely their own — their values, their goals, their identity in Christ, their voice.

You could see it in Kathleen’s face. The quiet satisfaction of watching something she poured herself into come together in the hands of the girls it was made for. The whole team has marveled at the care and creativity she brought to this mobile. We are so deeply grateful she is here. She has given these girls something they will carry home — a tangible, beautiful reminder of who God says they are.

Game Time!

What time is it? It’s GAME TIME.

If the worship songs show you the passion in these girls’ hearts — the games show you everything else. These girls are competitors. Natural, full-throttle, will-not-go-down-without-a-fight competitors. The energy in that room was something to behold.

But here is what made it beautiful: in the middle of all that fierce competition, if a girl stumbled, if a team fell behind, if someone hit the floor — the other girls cheered them on. Across teams. Without hesitation. These are not just players. They are sisters. And sisters look out for each other, even when the candy is on the line.

The energy in that room. Pure, unfiltered joy.

Cone on the head. Balloon between the legs. Real joy doesn’t require WiFi.

Sisters. Competitors. Champions. All three at once.

Tea Time, a Cartoon, and Then — Joelle on Obedience

At 3:30, the afternoon slowed down in the best possible way. The team and girls gathered in the air conditioning, settled in with tea, and watched a cartoon together. Rest. Laughter. The simple pleasure of being cool and comfortable and together.

But before Joelle stood up to teach, the ladies gathered for something that set the tone for everything that followed. They prayed together — the full armor of God — speaking it over themselves, over the girls, over this place.

The armor of God — prayed together before the lesson began. You do not walk into this work unprotected.

Then Joelle opened Nehemiah 8.

The scene she described is one of the most extraordinary in all of Scripture. Ezra stood before the entire community — men, women, children old enough to understand — and read the Word of God aloud from early morning until noon. Hours. And the people did not drift. They listened. They leaned in. They wanted every word.

When they finally understood what God had been saying to them, some of them began to weep. The weight of it — the gap between what God called them to and how they had lived — landed on them all at once. And in that moment, Nehemiah stood up and said something that has echoed across three thousand years of history:

Joy. Not in spite of understanding their failure — but because of finally understanding who God is and what He calls them to. The people went and celebrated together. And then, in the same chapter, they discovered something written in God’s law that they had never done before — a festival where they were to live in simple shelters of branches for seven days. They had comfortable homes. They could have reasoned their way out of it. Instead, they obeyed. And the Bible says there was tremendous joy.

Because that is what obedience does. It opens a door that reasoning around God never reaches.

“The joy of the Lord will make you strong.” — Joelle walking the girls through Nehemiah 8.

Then Joelle did something that took courage. She told her own story.

Not long ago, she was praying about her job — where God wanted her, what He was calling her toward. And in that prayer, she felt something that made no logical sense: quit your job. The job that sustained her. That paid her bills. That was safe and comfortable and known.

“But God,” she told Him, “my job is what sustains me. How can I quit and still survive?”

And the answer that came back was quiet and clear: “I can’t move you into something new if you won’t let go of what you’re holding onto. I will sustain you — not the job.”

She let go. She obeyed. And God showed up — just as He promised He would.

A woman sharing her story honestly. The girls heard every word.

Joelle moved into Nehemiah 9, where the people remembered their history — the times God showed up, yes, but also the times they turned away, grew stubborn, forgot. And instead of God walking away from them, He stayed. Patient. Kind. Full of mercy.

She asked the girls: “Have you ever felt that God no longer loved you? Have you ever felt abandoned in a moment when you knew you had failed?” Quiet fell over the room. These girls know what abandonment feels like. They know it in ways most of us will never have to. And the answer — that God does not leave, that His mercy outlasts every failure — did not land as theology. It landed as truth they needed.

God is doing amazing things through Joelle. You could feel it in the room.

God is doing something remarkable through Joelle. Her willingness to share not just the Word but her own life — the fear, the obedience, the faithfulness of God on the other side of it — is a gift to every girl in that room. And to every one of us watching.

Dance Party & Night Swim

And then — thirty-five minutes of pure, unscripted joy.

The music went on and the dancing started. From the oldest girl to the youngest, from the team leaders to Grandpa Glenn himself — everyone was in it. No performance. No audience. Just people who love each other, moving together in celebration of a day well lived and a God worth celebrating.

Thirty-five minutes. Every age. Every person. All in.

Then the pool.

Dee didn’t ease her way in. She jumped — literally — and immediately started teaching girls to swim. Bill organized water volleyball, racing competitions, and breath-holding contests. A note on that last one: the girls won. Every time. Bill was not prepared for this. The girls absolutely were.

Grandpa Glenn was in the water too. Steady, watchful, present — as he always is.

And at some point in the evening, a little girl made her way to his arms.

Naw Mua Wah — the youngest and newest member of Faith House. When she arrived, her condition was so fragile, so broken by what she had come from, that they had to shave her head just to begin caring for her properly. She came with nothing.

Tonight she was in the pool, in the arms of Grandpa Glenn, learning to swim.

Safe. Held. Unafraid.

The amount of joy and light that radiates from this little girl — given everything she has walked through — has a way of making your own troubles feel very, very small. She is here. She is loved. She is flourishing. And watching her trust the arms holding her was one of the most quietly beautiful things our team has witnessed all week.

“He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” — Psalm 23:2–3

Day 4 is done. Boundaries in the morning. Hearts nearly whole by midday. Laughter and candy and sisters cheering for sisters in the afternoon. Obedience preached from a life actually lived. And a night swim that ended with the smallest, newest girl held safe in Grandpa Glenn’s arms, learning that the water is nothing to fear.
God is so good.
— Dee, Brenda, Glenn, Joelle, Kathleen, Sally & Bill