Alright so I am not the best at blogging.. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat down to type something out and then ended up abandoning it because I didn’t feel like it was good enough or worth sharing. That is selfish of me and I am sorry I will do a better job of sharing this experience with you all even if it seems like I am sharing very miniscule things or stories. I think I am going to change up the format a little. I am still going to continue to do the “Chapter” blogs but in those I am just going to talk about how I personally am growing and then going to also do smaller blogs about maybe something cool we did one day for ministry or maybe just a blog full of pictures. With that being said let’s get into what the Lord has been doing with my life.
I am continuing to grow in prayer, not just praying to God but almost with God, allowing him room to talk with me, almost like having a conversation. I am amazed at how much God is a part of my life. At this point I see him in everything, every interaction, and every conversation. I have started to pray and talk to God about almost everything, it baffles me how I have lived the majority of my life based off of my own ignorant judgement and instincts when the creator of everything has been right there the whole time just waiting for me to initiate a conversation. I have also been growing a lot in the word, Bob, our ministry host, knows his bible forwards, sideways, and backwards. Something I had never done before which has been amazing for me and my growth is, after hearing a sermon or receiving a critique, or really anything, taking it to God and praying and simply just asking like okay, what do you want me to take away from that? What was true? Was there anything said that wasn’t true? I would encourage all of you to do that if you ever hear anything that you are skeptical of. Y’all, worshiping in Spanish and English with believers that are so far away from my home is incredible. I don’t have the words to describe it. With all that being said this has been my biggest take away, my eye opener so far. One of the first days we were here our host plainly told us, “We are not doing anything special for you, we don’t have extra stuff planned, we are simply going to live our lives and you are going to live them with us, you are going to see what long term mission work is really about” and that is exactly what has happened. We are just living life here in Cuenca, ministry looks different every single day, the only thing that I am doing different compared to my life in America is that I am passionately chasing after Jesus, I am for the first time ever, legitimately living for him, not for money, not for that next promotion, not for my own self gain, not for grades, not for friends, not for anything. This is the first time I can honestly say that Jesus is the number 1 priority in my life. But my schedule doesn’t necessarily look all that different, that is the crazy thing, I could being doing this exact same thing in America, ministry can be anything we do. Bob tells us this quote all the time and it hit hard “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words.” That sorta shook me, I could be preaching the Gospel in how I act, how I serve and treat others, how I show grace and forgiveness. I could preach the Gospel through forming relationships with people and loving on them. I can preach the Gospel by going to the park and playing pickup basketball with random people in our free time ( That has been my personal favorite ). I feel like sometimes we think that passionately following Christ means we needs to completely abandon everything and change our lives completely, and to an extent that is true, but at the same time you sitting there reading this can also start living in a Christ like matter simply by changing your priorities. That is the next thing that has really hit my hard. For the longest time I was more worried about how much knowledge I had, how many people I saved, could I speak in tongues or not. But I wasn’t focused on my heart, and that’s where our focus should be, if our heart is in the right place then our actions and our thoughts and ultimately our lives will reflect that. Christianity is not about how much scripture you know, money you donate, and people you save. It’s about your heart, everything else will fall into place after that. I think I am going to wrap this blog up right there. Picture blog coming soon!
