Archive for category: Blog

By Colonel Genevera Vincent

After first moving to California, I was amazed and somewhat amused at how excited people became when it rained! I remember a thunder and lightning storm early last fall, and when the rain started, people ran to the windows, excited to watch the rainfall, albeit very brief. I must confess, I didn’t find it terribly exciting, as I was accustomed to rain pretty much every week where I came from. We usually ran to the windows when the sun came out!

Having been here for nearly a year now, I totally understand the excitement that comes with rain. The land in Southern California is very dry and the rain is needed and very refreshing. What amazes me now are the beautiful flowers in such a dry climate. Even in the dryness, they flourish and fill their surroundings with beauty and an inviting aroma.

It really is a perfect example of what I desire my life to be. Flourishing in the dry season. We all experience the dry seasons…times in our lives when God seems far away, when life is very routine, when ministry seems to be routine and somewhat uninspiring. During times like this, I must remind myself that the change is in me and not in God. God is always present, always powerful, he knows me better than I know myself. These are the times that call for a deep trust and faith in the one who holds me in the palm of his hand.

The Psalms are a great read as we work through the dry seasons of our lives. They are brutally honest about what is happening, how one is feeling. Those feelings of dryness and despair are often resolved as the Psalmist recounts the past mercies and grace of God. That is not always the case, however. In Psalm 137, we are given a quick glimpse of what it was like for the nation of Israel to be in bondage. There they were, sitting by the rivers of Babylon, weeping about what they had lost, having been taken from their homeland. They hung their harps on the poplar trees…they had lost their song…they were experiencing a dry season. When their captors asked them to sing some of the songs of Zion they refused, responding instead with, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” (v. 4) I have often wondered, while reading this Psalm, if the people of God had missed a chance to witness about all the amazing things God had previously done for them because they were somewhat self-absorbed in this moment. Their dry season left them without a song, without a testimony. How very sad!

Then I am caused to think about the dry seasons of my own life. How many opportunities have I missed to witness of the power and provision of God because I interpreted the dry season as distance between God and me?

How many opportunities have I missed to witness of the power and provision of God because I interpreted the dry season as distance between God and me?

Colonel Genevera Vincent

In Psalm 77, we encounter another example of a dry season. The Psalmist is feeling abandoned by God and questions if God will reject him forever. “Has God’s promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be kind and compassionate?” There is a remembering of songs sung long ago, but troubles …the dry season…are now keeping the Psalmist without a song. Verse 10 of Psalm 77 is a resolution verse. The verse reads: Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High.” I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. Suddenly the tone of the Psalm changes and the Psalmist is recalling the goodness and faithfulness of God and the dry season becomes a flourishing season!

That, my friends, is the beauty of our relationship with Jesus. When we are experiencing the dry season, the times when we feel spiritually wilted and running on empty, recalling the past goodness, faithfulness, love, and mercy of God will bring about beauty despite the dry season.

Just as the flowers in Southern California bloom despite the dry season, I pray that my life will flourish and bloom with the beauty of Jesus, whatever the season.

By Colonel Genevera Vincent

It seems very natural that we would flourish in the seasons of joy and the happy times in our lives. Joyfulness and happiness just seem to lend themselves to growth and beauty. We don’t typically couple flourishing with words like grief, sorrow, and tears. However, as children of God, we know that when our lives are rooted deep in Christ, we can flourish despite the season we find ourselves in. It may take a little more reliance on God and less on self. It may take many moments of contemplation and seeking God but flourishing in the tearful season is possible. It most certainly has much to do with our perspective. As believers, if we look at a healthy perspective as our “up look”, how we view God in the seasons of our lives as well as our “outlook”, the things that are happening in and around us, our lives would be so much more blessed and balanced.

We would be so much better served if we viewed the seasons of our lives as opportunities to flourish, rather than always questioning why. It’s natural for us to ask questions and I’m grateful that God is never thrown off course with my questioning. He created me, He knows me, and He knows the types of questions I will ask and the things in my life that will cause me to question. The real beauty I find in serving God is that he can take all the seasons of my life and create his beautiful masterpiece! I give him my joys, happy moments, ordinary moments, contentment, peaceful moments, busyness, my valley seasons and like a patch work quilt, he puts all the pieces together and our lives become a thing of beauty. How good God is!

Less than two weeks after I moved here to the Western territory, a very precious aunt, who is more like a second mom to me was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Just five weeks after she was diagnosed, she was Promoted to Glory. During the weeks following her diagnosis, I will admit I asked some questions of God. Why, after six years living only one hour away from her, is she taken away so quickly when I am on the other side of the continent? In this time of sorrow and grief however, I have been grateful for Facetime, which a few years ago would not have been a possibility. So, I had the opportunity to Facetime with my Aunt Becky and tell her how much she meant to me, how much I loved her. I was able to pray with her.

My flourishing during this time has really been tied to memories. Memories of my growing up years and the love and nurturing I received from my aunt. She gave her heart to God as a child and for her 81 years she loved God and it showed! In addition to many positive childhood memories, I also have memories of heart-to-heart conversations after I became an adult, these I cherish. My parents and my aunt, prior to her passing, lived in a senior’s residence not in the town they lived in and raised their families. However, family homes still exist and this past summer, I was able to enjoy three weeks in our family home with my parents; with my cousin in the house next door with my aunt. We shared many lovely moments, sharing meals, sitting on the patio, enjoying the sunshine and good conversations and a few…well, maybe more than a few good laughs! I realize now what a gift God gave us, as this was the last time we would physically be together. In that tearful season, God has been showing how faithful he is!

The Scriptures give us many beautiful pictures of God. I think none more beautiful though, than a God who keeps account of our tears. Psalm 56:8, in the Message paraphrase reads, “You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book.”

That verse encourages me to believe that none of the seasons of my life are wasted. God is constantly at work, using the joyful seasons as well as the tearful seasons to shape me and make my life to flourish. May God help me always to recognize him in every moment of my life!

By Colonel Genevera Vincent

We often equate positive experiences, feelings of elation, and times of being in a “good space” in our lives as mountain top experiences. Conversely, we have equated the valley experiences with those times of pain, grief, dryness…the opposite of the mountain top experience. I am here to say that the valley seasons in our lives can be some of the most rewarding and spiritually enriching when we sit back, take a breath, and have very honest conversations with God about what he wants us to learn in this time.

If you’ve ever hiked to the top of a mountain, you may find little growth, depending on how wind swept the top of that mountain is. However, in the valley below, there are often wildflowers and luscious green grass that is flourishing. So, I wonder why we speak of the joyful times of our lives as being on the mountain top and the painful experiences like being in the valley? I guess it really depends on our perspective. I think I get it though. Real growth doesn’t usually just happen. If you are a gardener, you will know that to enjoy a beautiful garden there is a lot of weeding and tilling the ground and pruning. I must admit, these are the aspects of gardening I least enjoy. I don’t know about you, but it seems that in my garden, the weeds always grow much faster than the flowers! But the pruning and the weeding are necessary if we want to get to the real beauty. There is a beautiful spiritual lesson tied to gardening, weeding, and pruning.

When I look back over my life at the mountain top and the valley experiences I have had, I can honestly say that the times of deepest growth in my life have been borne out of the difficulties, the hard places. I remember an especially difficult season as an officer. If mountain top experiences are joyful and exuberant, this was not a mountain top experience. We struggled to work through some difficult situations, uncovering some deep-seated problems that resulted in people taking sides and making life and ministry very difficult. I remember feeling very helpless at times and literally crying out to God for help. This was my “valley.” Years later as I look back on that experience, I am grateful for the lessons God taught me in that valley season. Lessons like…doing what’s right and honorable are not always easy; when you stand up for what is right, God will have the final word; before a seed is planted, hard ground must be tilled.

It was this last lesson that I have gone back to many times, these many years hence! In ministry we all talk about planting seeds of faith and watering those seeds with our prayers and our relationship with people. The Bible talks about that after all, in I Corinthians 3:6, Paul says, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” Before a seed is planted though, it is necessary to disturb the ground, to dig up, if that seed is to germinate and produce growth. As the Scriptures remind us again, a seed thrown on hard ground will be eaten by birds and will not produce anything. We are often okay with planting the seeds and the occasional watering but not everyone enjoys preparing the hard ground before planting. We love the result, the beautiful flowers, but we often want to bypass the hard and difficult task of tilling the ground. The life lesson I learned was very valuable to me. God said to me then, and says to me now, that I’m never in the valley alone. He is there with me-guiding me, teaching me, loving me. We sang a chorus back in my home province of Newfoundland that speaks of the work of God in our lives in the valley. It goes like this,

He leads me beside still waters,
Somewhere in the valley below.
He draws me aside to be tested and tried,
But in the valley, He restoreth my soul.

And that really sums it up. Being tested and tried in the valley doesn’t always feel good, but it is there that God restores us and renews us and causes us to flourish.

So, if you are in a valley season right now, ask yourself, “What is God wanting me to learn during this time? And then, position yourself to listen and learn and flourish as a result!

By Major Beth Desplancke

In the middle of October one of my yearly holiday tradition begins. Before Halloween even hits the calendar, the Hallmark channel starts its “Countdown to Christmas” airing romantic holiday movies 24/7 until the New Year. Despite the busyness of the season, I make sure to fit lots of Hallmark Christmas movie viewing into the schedule. I note the new Christmas movie air dates and try to fit in one “live” Christmas viewing a week; yes, that means sitting still for 2 hours at a time. I set my DVR to record those movies I can’t watch at the time they air (and yes, I might be still viewing Christmas movies until almost March).

Perhaps I love a good Christmas romance because my husband and I started dating in December over 25 years ago. Perhaps I love them because they are fun, whimsical and simply help me relax. I think the real reason I enjoy them is because they all basically boil down to the search for hope. In case you aren’t familiar with the Hallmark Christmas movie genre, let me share with you the basic premise (and yes, once you’ve seen one or two, you really have seen them all). The main character is usually unhappy, unsatisfied or unfulfilled in their life. During Christmas, something causes them to step away from their ordinary life, to leave the big city to go to a small town, to set aside their daily schedule and experience Christmas fun, and in the process, they find the love of their life. And yes, they always end with a kiss.

Well, the real Christmas story is so much better than any Hallmark movie!

In the beginning when God created the world, everything was perfect. He created man and woman and they lived in a garden, naked and unashamed. They walked and talked with God. In this garden of perfection there was one and only one rule – one tree out of all the trees in this garden that they weren’t to eat from, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The enemy, the devil, tempted them and twisted God’s word, and then woman ate from the tree and then gave the fruit to her husband, and he also ate. Immediately they were aware of their nakedness, ashamed, afraid and hid. Instead of walking with God and conversing with Him, they were hiding from Him.

At that moment, sin entered the world and has caused separation between God and us ever since. God said there would be pain and suffering due to their sin, but at the same time He gave the first promise of Savior in Genesis 3:15. He told the serpent, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” From that point on, God’s people have been waiting for the promised One who would crush the enemy’s head.

In Genesis 12 God calls Abram out to be His people. God promises that Abram (later renamed Abraham) Abraham would be a great nation and his nation will be a blessing, and declares, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (v. 3b). Abraham’s descendants become the nation of Israel, and throughout the Old Testament God promised the Messiah would come from Abraham’s line.

The Old Testament ends with the word curse or destruction (depending on what translation you are using; Malachi 4:6). Throughout the Old Testament, prophets spoke of the coming Promised Messiah. And then, between the Old and New Testaments there are 400 years of silence – God sends no new messenger or prophet. God’s people are still under the curse and waiting for the Promised Messiah.

Talk about a hopeless situation. It appears that things will never get better. And then the Gospel of Matthew begins the New Testament with the words telling of the birth of the promised messiah. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him that Mary is pregnant, and what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. The angel gives this message: “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:22). Into a hopeless world, hope is born. God’s people are still under the curse of sin, but finally the Savior has come.

Jesus, our Savior came to bring the hope of salvation. When sin entered the world back in the garden of Eden, it created a distance between us and God. In the garden, innocent animals paid the price for Adam and Eve’s sin – an animal died so that God could clothe Adam and Eve with garments of skin. Centuries later, God sent His Son, Jesus, with the sole purpose of being the Savior of the world. He came to earth as a baby, a grew up to be a man, lived a sinless life, and gave Himself willingly to die on the cross for our sins. Why? John 3:16-17 tells us: For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

The Christmas story is a love story. The Christmas story is a story of hope – there is a possibility for a better life. The Christmas story is a story for everyone. In Luke chapter 2, angels appeared to shepherds heralding the announcement of Christ’s birth: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:10-12).

My prayer is that you will know the hope that comes at Christmas through Jesus, our Savior.

By Major Beth Desplancke

On September 1, 2022, Colonel Genevera Vincent joined the Western Territory’s family as the Territorial Secretary for Women’s Ministries.  Her and her husband, Colonel Eddie (serving as the West’s Chief Secretary) hail from the Canada and Bermuda Territory. Commissioned in 1986, Colonels Eddie & Genevera had the wonderful privilege to serve as Corps Officers for 19 years. After being Corps Officers, they served 7 years as Divisional Youth Secretaries, then 4 years at THQ in Personnel. Before arriving to the West, they served as the Divisional Commanders of their home division, Newfoundland and Labrador Division, for 6 years.

When asked if she had a favorite appointment, she couldn’t name one. She mentioned that every appointment had high and low moments. She has enjoyed her different roles in each appointment and has loved the opportunity to journey with people. Their 19 years as corps officers were very special to them. Through the years she can trace God’s hand of blessing and faithfulness through her life.

In her words, they were “gobsmacked” when they got their appointment to the USA Western Territory. Having visited California before, they had said “we could live here,” but never imagined in a million years that they would get to. When I interviewed Colonel Genevera, (only being here two weeks) she commented that “It doesn’t look like home,” as she stares at a palm tree right out her window, “but it feels like home.”

They leave their son Stephen, a firefighter, and his wife Melanie, a preschool teacher, and their son Ryan, a software developer, back home in Calgary. However, they are now closer to them here in California than when they were in Newfoundland. Genevera is excitedly anticipating Christmas, her favorite holiday, when all the family will not be a celebrating a white Christmas in sunny Southern California, but will be together, for the first Christmas in 3 years. She loves to entertain and especially loves to cook.

When I asked Genevera to describe herself she said she was a sensible morning person, who wakes up immediately, rather than hitting the snooze button. For her, her glass is always half-full. When I asked her to describe herself with only three adjectives, she immediately said friendly. When she couldn’t think of any others, her husband was able to include a few more, “She is beautiful, humorous and compassionate.” After just a few minutes of talking with her she felt like a long-time friend.

When asked about a skill she would like to master, her response was sewing. One Christmas she said she would love to learn to sew, so her husband got her a sewing machine for Christmas. Her friend, Sylvia, casually asked her about what she had gotten for Christmas one evening at songsters. When Genevera mentioned she got a sewing machine, Sylvia was quick to encourage her to start quilting. Genevera panicked at first but signed up for a “Block-of-the-Month Club.” Each month she received the materials and directions to make a 12” block. The following Christmas, Eddie bought her the finishing kit for the quilt, and she made her first quilt, “Garden Trails.” Since then, she has made 2 more quilts. She says she still needs a lot of direction.

Genevera is a woman who is flourishing in her walk with the Lord. At the welcome chapel held at Territorial Headquarters she said, “We bring who we are. We consider ourselves servants of the Most High God. We have a deep love for God, love and appreciation for people, and long to see lives transformed.” She has walked with Jesus most of her life, having received Christ as her personal Savior at the age of 7. Whenever she was asked what she was going to be when she grew up, she always said a Salvation Army Officer.

I asked Genevera when she hears the word “flourish” what comes to mind? Her response, “growth and beauty and life.” What tips does she have for women in order for them to flourish in their daily lives? “Quality time with God is the key, if we want to make a difference and be a transforming influence.” As a woman of the Word, when asked what her favorite Bible verse was, she shared she has lots. The verse that came to her mind as one of her go-to-often verse is Psalm 18:1-2 which says, I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Genevera participated in Arrow Leadership program in 2020. During that time, she learned this quote that has become her motto for life and for flourishing: Live passionately, Listen More, Laugh often, and Love always. Genevera is excited to represent the USA West and is ready to make connections with the women throughout the territory. She said that if she had a warning label it would say, “Don’t get me started on story telling or laughing.” As she visits around the territory, she is ready to talk, share stories, laugh, and probably over a cup of tea, to flourish together.