Hard Day But An Amazing God!

Today was a day. We started with being blessed to go to the laundromat to wash our laundry!! That was such a blessing. I love doing bucket laundry with my squad but with the constant thunderstorms our clothes mildewed on the clotheslines and we desperately needed clothes to wear. We thought we kind of smelled. That’s saying something when you live outdoors and haven’t seen indoor plumbing for 10 days. It was so exciting to have fresh clothes (and to get to use an indoor toilet)!

I got to also go get coffee with my squad mates at this cute little coffee shop called Boarding Pass. It’s airplane themed where all the chairs are airline chairs with TVs that look like windows showing views from the sky. It was a truly awesome start to a day.

We are on the way back to camp when it’s announced we have a new scenario. We are given, every couple of days, a surprise scenario to help prepare us for the field. Tonight’s was there was some sort of emergency and we needed to leave the hosts home by “tomorrow” and we have to take a Spirit Airline’s flight to our new destination. For those of you like me who don’t fly much (or in my case at all), Spirit Airlines is apparently famous for losing your luggage. Essentially we needed to have our entire campsite packed up with our day packs packed with whatever we might want in case we are one of the lucky people who loses their luggage by tonight.

It was definitely a blessing and a curse to get to do this. First it is wonderful practice. This is something that very well could happen. Second with all the rain and wind all our tents and things has become insanely muddy and this gave us a chance to clean things up a bit. The curse part was trying to do all this while still being apart of a schedule that is planned down to what we are doing every 30 minutes. However we were able to do it and it’s sooooo nice to sleep in a clean tent that isn’t humid and musky.

Part of what made today really hard was our last  training session of the night. Our instructors wanted to prepare us for what we may experience at an international market. There was so much happening at once. It was definitely is any person who gets overstimulated’s nightmare. There was so many yelling voices from vendors, Evangelizing Mormons, Americans looking to party, con artists, drunks, and drug dealers. They had hungry beggars and a very good pick pocket. We had 15 minutes to navigate all this, exchange currency for food, and purchase the food for our squad. As the Treasure for my team I hold all the money and make the budget for us. By the end of this whole scenario I was completely shattered it felt like. I couldn’t help but cry. After almost getting robbed, constantly bombarded every step I took, and needing to get food with my team in 15 minutes (because this was actually our dinner we were buying) I felt like I forgot what God had called me to do. A fear had set in my heart and I didn’t stop to pray for anyone or try and share the gospel. I broke when God convicted me of that in our scenario debrief.

I was blessed that I had fellow squad mates who went through the same thing. It was like we all had this fear enter us and we knew we needed to pray. This fear was from the enemy. Our God didn’t create us to live with this fear. What can man do to me when the creator of everything is on my side? When did fear take over the faith and knowledge that God is my protector and guide? I am blessed that this scenario happened because we were able to come together and pray about this fear and know the enemy was trying to convince us of a lie.

All in all I definitely think I earned my rest tonight! I am so wonderfully blessed to be here. There is no where I would rather be and there is no place better for me than where God called me too. I know there are risks to this journey I am taking, but what would I give and what wouldn’t I do to have another soul adopted into our heavenly family. Jesus gave everything for me, everything. How wonderful would it be that another person that didn’t know God’s love will? That they will never be the same. One of my instructors said something today that struck me deeply. He said “You may get robbed, someone may short change you money, you’ll get catcalled, and probably so many other things and there is something in us that thinks this is unfair. We as Americans crave justice and fairness, but the truth is the gospel is one of the most unfair things ever.”

He was right it’s not fair that Jesus paid it all. It’s not fair He had to carry such weight so I could be free, that He will forever carry those wounds, and that His blood cleans me from all my sin freeing me from the weight of death. I am so thankful that the gospel is unfair. I would not be here if it wasn’t. So I will face any unfairness with grace and humility from God knowing that none of these things matter as long as someone who didn’t know God’s love yesterday now does today.

I hope you all had a blessed day! Thank you for reading and I look forward to sending out my next update!!

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