So week 1. There’s a lot that I want to say, so hopefully I can put all into words. I’m not so great at that, but I’ll do my best. To begin let me tell you what we do and what our living conditions are like. We live with our ministry host Bouern, his wife Mu (pronounced moo, it’s a nickname because us foreigners can’t pronounce her name), and their 2 year old son Mannah. It is a 3 story building. Guys live on the top floor which is also the classroom, girls stay on the 2nd floor, and the 1st floor is their kitchen/living room. Fridays and Saturdays are our rest days. Sunday we have Kids Club, it’s like Sunday school, from 1-2:30 and we teach guitar from 3-5. Monday through Thursday we teach English. We get up at 6 so we can be ready by 7 so we can clean and set up by 8 for the preschool class that starts at 8:30 and goes until 11. After that we eat lunch. We have some time to do whatever, and then we have elementary schoolers from 4-5, middle schoolers from 5-6, and high schoolers from 6-7. All of our stuff has to be out of the room for the 4-7 classes so we pack it up and stick it in the girls room. After class we break everything down, have dinner, have team time/feedback, and then we bring all of our stuff back up from the girls room and get ready for bed. We usually get to sleep around 10 or 10:30.
Now. The actual important stuff. This first week has been tough, but it’s been really good. The week started off with some stress, and we as a team were still tip toeing around each other. A couple days in we started giving some real feedback which of course causes some friction, but it invites growth as well. I found my self getting easily irritated because I neglected to spend time with God, which of course leaves me drained. But I think the biggest steps/developments happened in the last couple of days. Our team has been stirred by the Holy Spirit. We were pretty comfortable, and God decided to change that. He spoke to us, revealing that our prayer life and our pursuit of ministry had been lacking. We were not praying enough, I mean we are on a spiritual battlefield everyday and were not fighting but sitting in the trenches being passive as our brothers and sisters were dying out on the battlefield. He revealed that our free time was being spent selfishly, we weren’t being restful, we were being lazy. So what did we do? Like I said, the Holy Spirit stirred in us, and the rivers that had gone stagnant for a short while became dangerous rapids. We started praying with a passion. When our teammate hurt his ankle we prayed for healing, when we saw darkness at work we prayed, when we saw other teams struggling we prayed, when we saw people becoming disheartened we prayed. We prayed because we were no longer content sitting in the trenches pretending we were safe, because we weren’t. The enemy is present here, and we refuse to watch him win because of our own laziness and passivity.
So not only did God do that, but He also lifted a great darkness from over me. Two nights ago we did what we call Journey Markers. They are like a planned out team time with a specific focus. The focus this week was our false self. The question asked was “what part of our false self have we been putting forward to the team?” and we were also asked to call out the false self of others. Of course God had a wonderful plan. He used that time to bring up hard parts of my past. Parts of my past that I had buried deep, parts that I had refused to acknowledge or talk about, parts of my past that were a curse to me that the enemy has used for a long time to keep me from living as the man God has made me to be. For the first time I brought those things into the light. It was hard, there was shame, anger, tears, and a lot of fear. But God gave me strength to say it, and when I said it immediately a weight was lifted and I felt freedom from that part of my past for the first time. God is good, He’s definitely done more than I thought He could in a week.
Thank you to everyone praying for me. Please continue to, because I know now that I have tasted freedom and life the enemy will try that much harder to take it from me. Like I said, we are at war and we need as many people fighting alongside us as we can get.
