This is a God Dream
God gives people dreams for His purposes and His people. In December 2019, God gave us a dream to start a gathering of women in our community called cultivate.LA. Cultivate.LA’s motto is, “Gather the girls. Scatter the girls.” God revealed to us the need to unite women from all ages, backgrounds, and denominations in West Monroe, Louisiana. At first we were overwhelmed that God would choose us, a 17 and 23 year old, to do something this big. Cultivate.LA was bigger than us, and we knew that before it even had a name.
For the past five months, we have prayed, planned, and worked nonstop to host our first gathering of women. The gathering was set to happen on March 27th, and with over 450 RSVPs, we were working our tails off with the help of so many amazing women who had joined with us in helping make this God dream come true. We were and still are thrilled to be a part of God’s plans for West Monroe, Louisiana.
Two weeks before our first gathering, we received the call that gatherings over 250 were banned due to the global pandemic. We were at lunch, and as disappointed as we were that our efforts of planning would be stalled, we were not disheartened. We believe wholeheartedly that God’s plan for cultivate.LA will prevail despite any setbacks. That’s the thing when you put things in God’s hands, nothings going to stop the will of God for His people and His purpose. Paul said it best when he said, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28) God saw the days of quarantine and sickness coming even when He gave us the initial dream. We had peace in the storm because cultivate.LA was never in our hands. When you place your dreams in God’s hands, you can dream and plan through life’s unknowns.
Cultivate.LA was God’s dream first, and we are only the stewards of that dream. We are so honored that God chose us to lead and foster community for the women of our area. What a fun thing to get to do, host, learn from, dream alongside, and love on other women! Some days our work is not always what we want to do. We don’t always want to sit through meetings about the logistics of event planning or explain to women the importance of doing something that’s never been done, but it is a calling from God so we’re going to run with it. We don’t want to miss out on something God wants to do, so the second we had the dream of cultivate.LA we decided right then and there that from that day it was our mission to serve the women of our area.
Something we’ve had to learn in our short time of making this dream a reality is that our gifts, talents, and callings are never for ourselves. The dreams God gives us are always for others. God gave us the dream to start cultivate.LA for the women of Louisiana. It was never about us, and it will never be about us. We have said it before and we will say it again, God’s dreams are for His purposes and His people.
Godly community has changed both of our lives, and through the community of cultivate.LA, the lives of the women in our community will be changed as well. We desperately want this for these women. We have seen the power of community firsthand, and we are blown away that we get to do this for our area. We are committed to living out God’s dream for others. Our motivation is just like His, His purposes and His people, always.
Bella Robertson and Kaylea Mayo are the founders of cultivate.LA, whose mission is to unite the women of Louisiana with the love of Jesus. Bella and Kaylea saw a need for a united women’s ministry in their community, and felt called to meet it. Their motto is “Gather the girls, scatter the girls.” Once a season, they gather the girls together and empower them to scatter back into their individual lives to make a difference in our community.
Find out more at cultivate.online and follow them on Instagram @cultivatela.online
