Hey everyone!
I thought I’d give you a quick update about the end of our
time in Iringa, Tanzania and what’s coming up for O-squad.
First of all, HAPPY
(late) THANKSGIVING!! I am so abundantly grateful for each of you in
my life and for all the Lord has blessed me with. HE IS SO GOOD and we all have so much to be thankful for. 🙂 I hope
you guys enjoyed the day, ate some good food, and spent some quality time with
loved ones. 🙂
Our Thanksgiving consisted of an outing to Neema Crafts (love it!) where papa
J.Jue bought us all Thanksgiving lunch… so sweet. I had a chicken and avocado panini,
fresh mango passion juice, and a brownie for dessert, mmmm! It definitely wasn’t
your typical Thanksgiving meal but it sure was delicious! It was fun to be with
my new family and be able to love on each other throughout the day. We then had
our goodbye service in the evening at Pastor Chacha’s church and we all gave a
mini sermon/ word of encouragement/ goodbye to the community that has blessed
us so much this past month.
The next day we said
our goodbyes to all the phenomenal people in Iringa (no fun) and hopped on
a nine-hour bus to Dar es Salaam – the capital of Tanzania. We stayed the night
with one of the other World Race teams (thanks for hosting us, Team Pulse!) and
then got up at 4:30am to make it to the bus station to catch another 6am bus to
Nairobi, Kenya. Sixteen hours later we arrived safe and sound and were grateful
to be off of moving vehicles for a while. 🙂
We’ve been in Nairobi
for a few days now with our whole squad and it’s been fun to see everyone
and catch up on what the Lord’s been doing in our hearts, lives, and the lives
of others. It’s also been a good time to process through the growth that’s occurred
over the past few months and build some
altars to the Lord for the incredible things He’s doing. Wow, I am amazed
and oh so grateful! Michael and Kathy Hindes and Sean (members of the AIM
leadership team in Georgia) have flown out here to help with the debrief
process and do some teachings; it’s been such a blessing to have them. Thanks
guys! 🙂
We found out about a week ago that we’ll be having team changes going into Thailand, eeek!
This came as a huge surprise to me and I was pretty bummed about it at first;
our team has gotten really close and we’ve gone through a lot of growth
together so it was hard to think about starting that whole process over again.
I love them. But after some good prayer and taking it to the Lord I was
reminded that He knows what He’s doing and ultimately, it’s all gonna be good.
🙂 Anything that continues to push me towards Him, rely on His strength instead
of my own, and challenge me to become the woman of God He’s created me to be is
never a bad thing. Praise the Lord for change that allows me to trust more
fully in Him.
“Trust in the Lord with all your
heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him
and He will make your paths straight� (Proverbs 3:5-6).
We find out our new teams tomorrow morning and then we head
to Bangkok, Thailand the very next
day (December 3rd, crazy!) By the way, I can’t believe it’s already
December… where is the time going?! In order to get in the Christmas spirit our
team has been listening to some good ole Christmas tunes… good times. We’re
having a squad Christmas party tomorrow night as well where we’ll be doing a white elephant backpack gift exchange!
I can’t wait for this. We’re basically going to take something out of our
backpacks that we can part with but that’s still usable, wrap it in whatever we
can find (probably a plastic bag, let’s be honest), and have an exchange. I
can’t wait to see what people give away, haha. Should be a good time. 🙂
We’ll also be having NIGHT WATCH tonight – an all night prayer session with the squad to prepare for everything the Lord has for us and the people we’ll be ministering to over the next few months. Yay! 🙂
A little more about this next month… it’s really like we’ll
be having two team changes because Thailand is known as “man-istry” month; this is a time when all the girls and
guys split up and do completely different ministry. This mainly happens because
most of the girls will be working with women caught in the sex trade and will
be going into different bars/ brothels to try to build relationships with them
and speak hope, life, truth, and love into their hearts and situations. I can’t
wait! I don’t know what ministry is going to look like exactly but hopefully it
will be something along those lines. So we’re going to get new teams but we’ll only
be with the girls for Thailand and then reunite with our new boys for Cambodia.
Lots of change is coming up but I know it’s gonna be good… I’m really excited
to see what the Lord has for all of us. 🙂
Ok, that’s about all
I have for now! I hope you’re all doing wonderfully and you know how deeply
LOVED you are by your Father in heaven. 🙂
P.S. We had a great time in the village (Mkulula) during our
last weekend in Iringa. BP and I headed out together and did some door to door/
village evangelism (we felt like Jesus!), preaching in the church, hanging out/
singing with the local kids, and experiencing God’s incredible creation. Oh
man, it was a weekend I will never forget! God was completely leading us by His
Spirit, answering prayers, giving us words to speak, and allowing us to
experience a few crazy adventures in the bush as well. Good times. I was going
to write my own blog about it but BP already wrote one up that I think you
should read instead; we were in fact together the whole weekend. 🙂 The link to
her blog is below… check it out! Thanks everyone. 🙂
http://brittanypriess.theworldrace.org/?filename=a-weekend-in-the-village
p.p.s. We CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN before we left Iringa and had a
blast! I love hiking!
We also had an off day right before we left so we decided to
go on SAFARI!! Yay! It was
incredible. We went to Ruaha National
Park and saw sooo many different animals! We saw giraffes, elephants, LIONS
(both male and female… we were sooo excited!), a leopard (these are the hardest
ones to spot on safari and we saw one just chillen in a tree! So legit!), zebras,
buffalos, hippos, crocodiles, antelopes, kudus, impalas, meerkats (weasels!),
warthogs, (yup… we saw Timon, Pumbaa, and SIMBA!), lizards, all kinds of birds
(eagles, vultures, storks, etc.) and a vast expanse of God’s INCREDIBLE
creation. It was an amazing day indeed and I’m so blessed I the opportunity to
experience it! Thank you, Lord! 🙂
p.p.p.s. Oh yea, one more thing! I realized that it’s often
easier to post pictures on facebook (when I have legitimate internet) because
you can upload them all at once instead of choosing them one at a time for my
blog. Sooo… I uploaded a new album with a bunch of African pictures to my
facebook account (some SAFARI pics included!) Check them out by clicking the
link below. 🙂
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2150515&id=24500647&l=cb058d7da9
Thanks for everything
guys… I LOVE YOU!! 🙂
Me and some of the precious kids in the village – Mkulula 🙂
