Hey there, pals!
Sorry it’s been a while since my last blog! As time goes on, it seems to go faster and faster and gets more busy! So, here I finally am checking in with y’all to give an update on what the Lord has been doing on the Race and what He has been teaching me these past couple of months!
After my last blog, our team soon finished up our time in Africa, in the country of Rwanda. We had a special month there and saw the beauty of the Rwandan people being released from bondage and taking back all the enemy had stolen from them during the genocide. This country has remnants of pain and brokenness, and one of those remnants is drug abuse.
During our month in Rwanda, we spent a lot of our time with men that had just been released from a drug rehabilitation program to a halfway house where they would live for the next six months. We showed them what a relationship with Jesus looks like and how to live in community (something we have definitely been learning a lot about on the Race!) At the end of our time in Rwanda, we left with about 15 of those men accepting Jesus as their Savior and them saying that they want to be released from their past to walk into the new freedom and life given to them in Jesus. It was such a precious and beautiful thing to be a part of!
After that fantastic send off, we then hopped on over to Europe to spend the month of March in Albania. This was one of my favorite months! Our team participated in ministry in the capital city of Tirana, and worked with a house church that is planted in a primarily Muslim community. This church is the only Christian church in their neighborhood. That was a staggering statistic for us to learn as we arrived. This part of Europe is pretty spiritually dark and dry and we have experienced that this month in Bosnia as well as last month in Albania.
In Albania we were blessed to be able to do a lot of children’s ministry, youth ministry, and teach English to the kids. I LOVED it. We basically got to spend the month building relationships with the wonderful people in that community. I felt like I was back in Young Life pursuing high schoolers and I loved every minute of it. We walked away from that month with relationships that will last long past the time we spent there. We got to encourage those brave high schoolers as they are fighting to make Jesus known in a nation that is heavily Muslim; while also showing Muslim kids that they are so loved and so welcomed in all that we did. I am so dang proud of those kids. To be a part of that, even for a month, was so powerful! Those kids are going to shape their country and change the culture in Albania; I have no doubt.
Annnnnd…Now here we are in Bosnia, wrapping up our time in Europe before we head to Thailand on April 26th. It is crazy to think that after this month, we just have four more months in Asia to close out this wild, amazing journey with the Lord called the World Race. That concept has been hitting me a lot lately and making me evaluate a lot of things: like why I chose to come on this Race in the first place, what I want to say I’ve left behind, how I’ve grown, and how I still desire to grow. I’ve been reflecting on what I could have given more to and what God has done. I’m thinking about how I want to give my all these last four months, because it will be over in the blink of an eye. I don’t want to look back and think I could have done more. I want to look back knowing that I laid it all down for the Gospel.
Even now as I write this: I want more of Abba. I want more of Jesus. I want more of the Holy Spirit. I want more. I want to be so immersed in Him. I want to radiate His Good News. I want to know His heart. I want to see through His eyes. I want to love with His heart. I want to bring His kingdom to this earth.
If there is one main theme I have learned from my time on the Race, it is that there is never too much time we can spend communing with the Father. There is never too much time we can spend telling people about the gift that is Jesus. The deeper we go with Papa, the deeper revelations we will have about Him; about His character. The deeper we go, the more clearly we will hear His voice; the more readily we will operate from His heart instead of our flesh. I have seen this to be true. I have tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord and I can’t get enough- I never want to.
So, this month as my team is experiencing something new here in Bosnia, I want to experience something new with the Father. This month our team doesn’t have a set ministry host. We don’t know where we will be or where we will stay or what we will always do. We ask the Lord daily to lead us and we follow. We are learning a lot about trust and relying on the Holy Spirit this month. We have met incredible people and ministries that we hope will be future contacts for the World Race. We have learned what it looks like to fight in prayer for a nation that is still in bondage. This nation still has remnants of the war and genocide that happened in the early ’90s. The country is 80% Muslim. Jesus followers are few and far between. People have hardened hearts and walk around with an evident burden on their backs and lifelessness in their eyes. This being the case, we want to proclaim this nation for Jesus and pray for change here. Join us in praying for Jesus to be known in this nation as we live and move here. We don’t have much time left in this country, but we want to make the most of it. Join us in battling for the souls of Bosnia.
Thank y’all as always for your prayers, encouragement, and support. You make this possible and the Lord delights in your prayers; so do I! So thank you! Thank you for walking this journey right along side of me. Y’all are rockstars.
Prayer warriors:
If you could pray over our team and the other teams for health, that would be beautiful. Satan has been busy trying to knock us all down with sicknesses this month, but we won’t have that. So, join us in praying for health in the hopes that we can get back to fully doing the work God has set before us!
Miss y’all, love y’all, and appreciate yall! (I especially appreciate that everyone I know back home thinks it’s normal to use the word y’all :))
Until next time,
Xoxo,
Court
