World Race Day! November 11th! Get it 11/11, the world race moto is 11 in 11. Anyway, water is something that is not expensive but has to be purchased from the store because water here is not safe to drink. I’m really bad with drinking water and so is my teammate Chelsea. So we challenged ourselves to drink a 5L jug in one day. This is how it went….
As a result of this I have grown into having s greater distaste for water (which is kind of ironic considering water has no taste). It has now been 6 days since this challenge and I have had maybe 1L of water combined over these last several days. Shoutout to Averi for the video editing.
The 14th was probably my favorite day of ministry to date on this journey. It started off with our first activity being a listening prayer activity. We were split up into two groups and one group would line up and close their eyes and the other group would walk and stand in front of someone who had their eyes closed. From there, those with their eyes closed would ask God what he wanted to say to the person in front of them without knowing who it was. In this we were practice hearing God’s voice and it was amazing how the words God was giving to those with their eyes closed made sense to those being spoken over.
After this we took an hour to pray for people who are connected to the church we are here serving with. Then we had lunch and went to the church to get picked up by our ministry partner. The church we are staying with has a lot of missionary individuals and families. The half of my team that I am a part of is serving with three family’s. From what I’m understanding a lot of our ministry with these families is going to be doing what we can to bless them and make their lives easier so they can more efficiently serve as a missionary. Though we aren’t going to be on “the front lines” per say we have the opportunity to serve those who are day in and day out and that’s pretty awesome to think about. The family we worked with on this day has 4 kids and they are a bunch of fun. It was awesome playing with them as we worked. We were helping clean out their garden and green house. Some of it we threw into a trailer and some of the other stuff we got to burn. As someone who loves working with kids, serving people through physical labor and fire. The culmination of it all made for a great day.
At the end of the day we had team time. As it is all squad month we have 22 living in our house (Our squad consists 19 racers, 2 squad leaders, and 1 mentor). Team time is a time (about an hour) devoted to being as a team and growing closer together. We rotate having the responsibility of being in charge of this time. When I was praying about what we should do I felt led that we should go on a prayer walk. This place is very spiritually dark and Hope church is doing a great job with bringing light into the darkness. As it was 9pm I felt like we should take some light through prayer into the literal darkness. On our walk we prayed over the church and talked to some new people. At the end of it all we headed back home and hung out with the squad before going to bed. Thank you to Tawnya Railing for sponsoring this great day!
The 17th has been another great day. I woke up a little late so I didn’t get to do the prayer walk I was planning on doing but instead I started my day with listening to a podcast sermon and petting our neighbors puppies for a half hour. It’s crazy to think about how much God loves us to give us things on this earth to bring us such happiness and joy. For some that’s the taste of good food, for others it’s the beauty of nature, or it could be the intricate complexities of the human body, but for me today it was being able to play with cute little puppie. Anyway, we went to the church and started off with a half hour of worship. After worship we had prayer for those associated with the church.
We ended up eating lunch at the church and then had our afternoon ministry. Today myself and one of my squad leaders, Drew, went to help teach one of the local missionary family’s english. The family consisted of the parents and 4 kids. The kids are 12, 10, 2 and 8 months. We taught the parents, 12 and 10 year old. If you know me, you know english is not my best subject so I went in a little concerned. Fortunately they were starting from ground zero. We started with “hello.” We also had a translator with us. Also, the family is awesome and very easy going. After teaching for a couple of hours we just talked all together to get to know each other. Once again ministry this day was great because it embodied what short term missions is designed to do. I may be gone for 11 months but spending only a month in one location is short term. The goal for short term missions is to serve alongside those who are here long term and bless them in whatever way possible. Today that looked like teaching some English to a family who will be able to use this capabiity to better their ministry. I’m excited to go back next week and teach them some more!
The rest of the night from that point to now has been pretty relaxing. We made some chicken mac and cheese , had a squad meeting, hung out and petted the puppies some more. Thank you to Sandy Harvey for sponsoring this day!
