The joy of The Lord is my strength!
Thats something that I’ve been working on and trying to live by everyday. I said that before I left for the race, and I continue to say that now, especially on our hard days on the race!
See… As you all may know by now, I am on my 3rd month on the race! Exciting, yes, but also getting harder to be away from your loved ones. Our honeymoon stage with the race is starting to dwindle down, and this life is becoming more and more a reality that we live on it 24/7!
Don’t get me wrong, this mission trip is not bad at all, it’s amazing! God is working in my life in so many ways, stretching me, calling me higher each day, but as all of this happens, it also gets harder. Especially when you start to miss home, miss my family, and my church family, and mainly miss special events such as missing the birth of my beautiful first nephew Noah!
So yeah…. Honestly this month has been hard for me….. BUT… The joy of the Lord is my daily strength. He is where my daily manna comes from! And I am currently feeling like I’m wrestling with God asking Him to give me His blessings of joy, even in the middle of hard days. I feeling like Jacob, wrestling with God until He blesses me!
And I praise God for this season, because not every season is easy… But He will never leave me nor forsake me! Today, on my day off, I had the joy to go to Costa Rica’s national worship day in their national stadium, and it was so beautiful to receive from God as we all worshiped together and feeling His presence!
And than God allowed me and my team-mate Kerry run into some other people from our squad, and it was a blessing to see them, to hear how they are doing. And I actually got to talk to my squad leader Ryan, and he just blessed me with so much encouragement from The Lord! He reminded me that in the middle of it all that God wanted me to rest in Him! Ryan told me to read Exodus 33:14 “The Lord replied, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (NIV) and the craziest thing about this, is that I had just heard a message the day before about the same thing, that God’s presence will go wherever I go, and to rest in Him!! how crazy is that! God knew how much I needed to hear what he told me in that specific moment, and that’s why He wanted me to run into my squad leader! So…. Shout out to Ryan for being such a blessing to my life! Thank you!
Thank you God for every season! Because even though I still miss my home, and I’m sure I’ll have more days like this on the race….I know that I have to learn to rest in You and that You would never leave me nor forsake me!
I thank God for divine appointments, I thank God for my family because I know that they are my biggest supporters and they always pray for me, I thank God for my church family because I too know that they love me and pray for me, I thank God for you, who are reading this because I know you love me and you support me!
Please continue to pray for me and my team as we continue to run this race with God so He can continue to use us for His kingdom and so we can continue to get to know each other and love each other as we’re learning to live in a real and raw community!
I thank you all for reading this!
With much love,
Jhacky!
