Month one finished.
Time came to say goodbye to family we’d made. It wasn’t easy.
I wanted it to be easy. I wanted it to just be service in the name of Jesus, to love on others – and yes to learn and grow and feel and see and experience so that i could grow more in love with Jesus and know more about how He loves me –
But deep down i wanted to be that cool cucumber who comes and loves on and reaps and walks away ok, still a cool cucumber.
I thought i knew how to be more than half decent and knew how to love well.
But then, as you know if you’ve read my blogs so far i struggled. I found i wasn’t as nice as i thought i was and i was struggling with self righteous comparisons. Holding myself and others to a standard of righteousness i felt was staying on the side of being a Jesus follower. Like “yal, im doing pretty good here!”
And then the nudges inside my soul that cried out, “is it your works? Or Christ’s that you wanna be holding onto?!”
And a big chunk of the growth and revelation happening in my soul was due to my time in LosAndes, inside that simple little building on Simpson street.
And whether i want to admit it or not my team was winding itself in inseparable ways into the fabric of what i was starting to define as my life, and so were our hosts and people in LosAndes.
So when we left wednesday morning i was leaving family.
I found myself fighting tears i hadn’t anticipated when i’d arrived at the first of the month.
And now i’m in Vina del Mar for debrief.
And i’m having to process the last month and still find myself fighting tears.
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It’s amazing the things you realize when you really know things!
Like how i wrote in one blog about seeing other teams doing what i thought i would be but wasn’t. And how coming together with the rest of the squad allowed me to hear so many stories and realize that actually what i thought was going on wasn’t at all. And how blessed my month actually had been.
Our hosts gave us feedback and some of the other friends we made there did too.
And it was such a blessing both to hear the testimony of what fruit the Lord brought forth when many times it didn’t seem like we were doing much.
How our hosts were blessed, and how the teachers we worked with were blessed, and about how one man told us we came to Chile for him; to renew his faith and bring him back to the Lord.
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This week we are staying at Pepe Hostel in a nook up a district of windy streets and mixed architecture.
Debrief is a time of rest and reflection and encouragement.
Both Squad Leaders, our Mentor, our Mobilizer, and our Coaches are here to help us process our last month and different team conflicts and to speak into our lives and help us grow as individuals.
This place is truely a joy to experience, and all the textures and colors in amazing variety sooth something in me that brings enjoyment and relaxation to a mind that has been working a lot this year.
And then there’s all the different ways that our leaders have challenged and blessed and encouraged and affirmed us in the past few days. Wow!
Here are 5 questions they asked us to reflect on and take to the Lord the first night we arrived:
1. Father, who do you say i am?
2.Father, is there anything in my life that is stopping me from walking in deeper levels of intimacy, community, or mission?
3. Father, how have i allowed my expectations to shape my attitudes on the race so far?
4. Lord, is there anyone im holding resentment or bitterness towards on my team or squad?
5. Father, what are some changes i can make in my life as we head into the next month?
I thought i’d share my answers with you:
1. I went where i go in my heart to meet with the Lord, and he handed me a beautiful exotic blue flower and then showed me a bunch of different flowers; none of which i’ve ever seen.
Then He said, “Right now you’re a flower. What will you allow to pollenate you? If you let me, i will help you to produce fruit that would never come from you apart from me. I know what you were made for, but in this world there no longer exists the pollen to bring forth the fruit you were made to produce. Wait upon me, wait for my voice and my prompting.”
2. That i too easily have a pattern of doing what i know i should do. When instead i need to commit and acknowledge Him in everything and seek His face FIRST! Even if i know.
3. That my decision to not have expectations in order not to be dissapointed resulted in me observing and tending to isolate myself rather than engaging. And that He wants me to live in expectancy, and engage!
4. He pointed out some feedback in my team that i needed to give; without which would result in resentment.
5. To gird myself every morning with the armor of God in order not to be tripped up with the small things that in the first month often tended to consume a lot of my daily thoughts.
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Praises:
I am currently $3,700 away from being fully funded which absolutely blows my mind.
Thank you to everyone who has faithfully sowed into financial partnership with me!
I spent a full year unwilling to recieve that blessing, and seeing Him provide for me in this way has been extremely humbling and brought a whole new awareness of God thru experiencing a love i didn’t know existed for me.
More next time!
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ps. Street art/views from Valparaiso during a team adventure day; with our Mobilizer John Harbold at Adventures in Missions.
