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
THIS IS AMAZING!! ❤️❤️❤️
I have a dream of becoming a teacher in Africa and teaching English to the children while sharing my own personal journey filled with encouragement defeat and Gods undeniable love.
I love this soo much! Bella and Kaylea + Sadie! Y’all are my biggest inspirations!!! I love you soo much!
This hit home my dream is to get healthier and its really hard to eat healthy and exercise thank you for this I’m going for it nothing is going to stop me.
How long have I guys done woman ministry
That is awesome!! God’s purposes in our lives are for His people! Truly opened my eyes to see that His plans in our lives will always cultivate blessings for others. I love what y’all are doing!! God bless!
God’s timing is perfect! I have been thinking a lot about dreams lately and the ones God has recently whispered to me. The initial reaction is to be overwhelmed with the fear of the dream being too big and too impossible. But when you step back and remember that this is Gods dream! You have to readjust your perspective to know that with God all things are possible. You have to put your faith in God and trust 100% in him.
With that I have two dreams that make my heart race.
1. I would love to write a book!
2. I want to start an organization called Love Chattanooga. It’s inspired by the organization Love Atlanta. I have no idea how to get started or why God put that on my heart, but I am being bold and brave to pursue the idea.
Wow! This is so beautiful. Growing up, my family and I have always attended church every Sunday. When I was younger, I mostly went to church because my mother made me, but I feel like as I grew older, church was something I really looked forward to. Even though I enjoyed going to church (mostly because I liked to listed to the homily) I noticed that I didn’t really listen to the readings and Gospel before hand. I felt like I was always able to relate to the homily, but my mind would start racing and I would get distracted thinking about other things when it was time to listen to the word of God. I made a promise to myself this year that I would start following along to all of the readings and if I didn’t understand it, I would read it again and I felt like I had so much more understanding by the time the homily came around.
About two months ago, when the pandemic started to get serious, I was very afraid. I started to think about my family, our health, and Heaven. When the churches closed, my family and I started to watch mass on the TV and sometimes we would cry because we wanted to be there. I thought that was so powerful. I started to notice the things I took for granted in my life: going to church, opportunities to visit my grandparents, hugs from my parents, it started to feel like none of this was real. I felt that fear grow inside of me and started to think more and more about what happens after we die. It started to test my faith, so I prayed and prayed and then one day, I woke up and my stomach didn’t hurt, and I wasn’t afraid. During one of the homilies on TV, the priest mentioned how fear, anxiety and depression could make us feel as if we are stuck inside our own tomb. That was exactly how I felt. I was never one to experience anxiety before and I felt like I was stuck. I would ask God to help me get out of that tomb, to be positive and to not be afraid. I told him that I noticed I was bringing others down around me and I started to learn how much my smile makes my family’s day. I asked God to help me get back to the positive Valerie, and he did. Now when I pray, I try to not ask God to help me, but to help others around me and I thank him for blessing me with the family, health, and faith that I have.
I guess where I am going with this is, prayer is so powerful!! I felt like my faith was being tested and I chose God. I also learned that sometimes we need the help from others to get out of that tomb. I also think it is important to thank the people who help you, even when they do not know it.
I am an engineer and I work from a desk most of my day. I usually listen to music with my headphones on. When I was going through that rough patch of having fear and anxiety, I started to look for podcasts and somehow Sadie’s message from Passion 2020 came up and I listened to it. The I listened to it again. And again. Then, I sent it to my brother who lives alone and has dealt with anxiety his whole life. Then, I started to listen to it as I walked after work. Then, I told my parents about her message and I actually grabbed my mom’s easy to read Bible and started to read it. Sadie’s message was so powerful and I felt like it changed me. Now, I listen to her podcast and looked up LO to hear more and came across this blog. I think Cultivate.LA that Bella and Kaylea talked about here will change some lives. This is awesome ladies! Didn’t expect this comment to be so long, but I wanted to let you ladies know that your messages are being heard and it’s changing lives. Thank you for putting so much time into getting God’s word out there. You all help me relate it to what I am going through in my personal life and I think others feel the same way too.
Beautifully written! I have so many dreams so this blog was perfect. It showed me to put them in God’s hands and to step back and watch him work! No matter how long the wait.