The Lord did far more than we asked for or imagined in the Philippines as we were on a mission to find contacts for future teams. It seemed like each contact we had multiplied into many more contacts, each ministry ended up being multifaceted, and one contact would connect us with yet another one…it was incredible! The Lord showed us that in the midst of all the poverty, crowds of people and seeming chaos, He has many of His children in place there and at work… and because of these obedient children, there are some really awesome ministries going on and many lives being reached! We have way more contacts and places crying out for help than we have teams to send at this point, but the dream is big (for many more teams to come through), and we know none of the contacts we made were without purpose!
Little Filipino plug: If anyone feels a tug on their heart to come over here to serve, we have all the info to get you connected! 🙂
We met some of the Sept racers today in Thailand, and it was such a strange feeling…like a senior about ready to leave and surrounded by a bunch of freshman who are eager to pick things up and run- I am SO excited for them and love that this thing will just continue on…and that each team is basically discipled by the previous teams and we get to help lift them up even higher than we were and help them to get off to a further ahead start. It’s wonderful!! Some relationships that we were able to build over this last year will be continued and supported by these racers who follow. It reminds me of Heb 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” We’ve all got this “great cloud of witnesses” that has gone before us, marking out the way as an example to us, to both learn from and be encouraged by as we follow on whatever path God has for us!
As we head into our final month, I will be MIA. Our final leg of the race is to China and we won’t be able to get on the internet at all while we are there. As most of you know, China is a closed country and it’s illegal to preach the gospel so we’re going in as students- if they find out we are Christians, we get kicked out, but for our contacts it could be deadly. So, we’re not taking any risks with blogging or even emailing. Once we get into Hong Kong on Nov 11 we’ll be able to once again communicate via internet. If you want to contact me over this next month, please be aware that I won’t get to read or respond until Nov 11. Please in your emails, don’t mention words such as God, Bible, World Race, etc…even Olympics… as the gov’t scans internet sites and emails, and will be hypersensitive to any of these types of words. Again, this is out of respect for our contacts and their ministry as well as their safety!
Please be in prayer for spiritual discernment, wisdom, God’s protection, boldness, favor, continued health, etc.
