Nope, that wasn’t a typo. Yesterday was a superb “Galentine’s Day”! Valentine’s Day, an international holiday for lovers, family and friends to celebrate the art of being loved and loving each other! That’s a very optimistic view of this couples’ holiday as most of the world views this day. However, here’s another perspective on love. GOD is LOVE. The Bible says…” let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God…In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us first and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; (but) if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us (1 John 4: 7-8; 10-12).
So one of my goals prior to launching on the race was to learn how to love better. By the grace of God, I have been rocking at that so far! Glory to God! To love on others the way Jesus loves us. A sacrificial type of love, to love someone else solely becasue of who that person is and not becasue of anything he or she has done or will do for you. This is actually a lesson that we taught during an assembly at a Christian elementary school last week. That lesson being loyalty versus self-gain in being a good friend. I believe that God puts certain people in our lives for different reasons, but for the same purpose and that is to give him all the glory-to love God. For example, prior to coming on the race I deliberately hurt a couple of friends. I was not being a good friend and our friendships were broken due to my selfish-gain. It was very painful on both ends, but I know that God redeemed this situation and taught me a very good lesson. God loves us soooo much that even while we were still sinners he sent his only Son to die for us! What a marvelous and gracious truth! God still loves us and wants to be with us…even in our mess! And even though I was the one on the messy side, I still feel loved by God in this situation because I know that he forgave me and I trust that He will one day restore this situation because He is a God of love and reconciliation!
Anyway, I titled this post Galentine’s Day because yesterday God loved me through my sistas! Being on the World Race, we signed a contract stating that we would remain single (if we were;nt already) to focus our hearts on our mission. Being single is such a great season in life and I am enjoying every minute of it! Anyway, yesterday was also “mission day” at the Christian School that we partner with. We joined the 5th grade class to go visit a Children’s home to spend the afternoon hanging out with the children that live there! And ‘lo and behold, one of our other teams from our squad was there! We had no idea they were stationed so close. So for those of you that don’t know I am apart of a bigger squad of 37 individuals. We are then broken up into several teams of 6 and 7 and spread out throughout each country we travel to. All that to say we are split up most of the time. However, our squad has grown to really love each other, especially when we had all squad months when we were all together! So that was quite a pleasant surprise! Later on that day the women on my team went to an all girls high school where we have been regularly visiting them to minister God’s love to them. They have grown so fond of us and we have grown so fond of them! We talked about how they viewed God and how we can view God as our Father in comparison to our earthly fathers. They are such bright young women! We feel honored to get to love on them!
So yeah. Valentine’s Day! Soooo much love! Here are some pictures of yesterday <3
Our friends from the other team that we bumped into at the Children’s Home!
My teammate Daiva and our girls from the all girl’s high school!
