Drinking from a Firehose

I will start this blog off by saying yes. Yes, it has taken me a million days to 
write a blog (sorry mom). But in all fairness, I have been soaking up more life 
and Jesus in the past month and a half than I have the past 18 years. 
I have lived a happy and full life. I have family and friends whom love me 
dearly and a God who blesses me daily. But people, this is real life. Traveling 
and loving and experiencing is real life. And that is what this blog will be 
about. 

There have been numerous occasions which would make complete sense to blog 
about. I've seen poverty and healings and children who have been left behind by 
parents. I've held crying babies, rocked kids with cerebral palsy to sleep and 
spoken more Spanglish than I ever thought possible. I've made friendships with 
locals and eaten street food and have made Guatemala my home. I have cried andlaughed and loved immensely. And this is life. 

My life changed so quickly from a normal college student with normal hobbies and 
a normal job to an extraordinarily weirdly filling life. Nothing here is normal. 
Nothing. In fact crazy has become my new normal. And I love it. 
The Lord called me to a crazy life and has shown me that what He has in store 
for me will bring me far more happiness than what I could ever forge for myself. 
I have no clue what I am doing most of the time. As one of my contacts put it 
"the world race is like drinking water from a fire hose". The Lord leads me to 
places to do things I thought were impossible. 

Here in Guatemala we do lots of ATL's (Ask the Lord). Which basically looks like 
pairing up and asking The Lord where he wants you and what he wants you to do 
for the day. So one day I was paired up with my teammate Faith. Long story 
short, we were lead to this market and began praying for many people. Faith 
started to get this feeling in her knees and felt like she was going to fall 
over. We realized that The Lord was calling us to heal somebody's knees! After 
walking around like dumb Americans asking if people had pain in their knees, we 
met our market friend Dacy's sister Mary-bell (we had previously healed a pain 
in Dacy's back weeks earlier and had formed a deep and caring friendship with 
her). Turns out that Marybell had been in a car accident and suffered from pain 
all over her body, but mostly extreme nervousness (get it, weak in the knees... 
Nervousness. The Lord has such a sense of humor)      

The we climbed a small mountain in jeans, got to a small village and became 
friends with many townspeople. 

On a side note.. Faith got an image that we were going to heal the blind that 
day. Well walking up this mountain a bug flew into my eye and totally blinded 
me. Then The Lord told me to have faith pray for it. She did and it was healed. 
Once again our God is funny. 

After our ATL we hiked back down and through Antigua in the pouring rain trying 
to debrief the day. So much happened, more than I could even write.. And that is 
just a "normal" day here. 

I don't want to write a blog to boast about all the amazing things The Lord is 
doing, or to make anyone feel like they must travel to a third world country to 
experience the Lords fullness like I am. The point of this is to encourage 
anyone who is reading to do the same thing I am doing. Give your life to The 
Lord and see what he has in store for you. Maybe it looks like volunteering 
somewhere at home, or finding something that truly makes you happy. But don't 
spend your days without The Lord, you'll miss out on the amazing things He has 
in store for you. Enjoy life, real life.