HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!!
My year is off to a GREAT start as I have found out my team’s & I assignment for this month, but first a little background info for you to understand how this is all connected.
ATL stands for Ask the Lord & it’s a fun thing that AIM has in place where during one of the months on the race 1 or 2 teams pretty much arrive in a country with no plans of any kind & have to rely on the guidance from the Holy Spirit to partner with & serve a ministry.
I have a theory into how teams are assigned to do ATL month:
1. A team that needs to learn to bond or work together as one unit
2. A team (s) that are considered by squad leadership as one of the strongest teams on said squad
Guess which one Team Surrendered falls under- reason #2
Anyways before I go on- let me tell you the backstory of this & the fact that I nearly fell off my chair when Martha told us the news.
August- training camp
Once we were officially a team our squad leadership came to us & told us that they had gotten a sense from the Holy Spirit that we are destined to do great things as a team this year.
Flash forward to November in Honduras
During one of our team times, Martha reveled to us our ministry for December & also brought up the fact that one of the other teams got assigned ATL for the month of December. To me this was a relief for I have a fear of getting assigned an ATL month. As we were talking about it, I jokingly piped up and said ” watch we will end up being the team that gets picked for ATL for Vietnam”, we laughed at that comment & changed subjects without giving it anymore thought.
So either I have discovered my gift of prophecy or God took my comment as a way to challenge me.
Yeah I really still haven’t learned my lesson about watching my mouth in case what I say comes back to bite me in my butt….
*Cue the Mission Impossible theme*
Guess what team has ATL this month……
Yeah my team got ATL (along with 2 other teams but that’s not the point).
I don’t mean to be a debbie downer but,
*Cue eye roll*
Let’s just say that I am NOT happy about it all, but at least my teammates are excited for it, but not me
Add in the fact that Vietnam is a closed country and in a sense to be a missionary there is illegal which that is also going to make ATL very interesting as well. With that being said, I honestly really don’t know how much I will blog, or if I’ll blog at all during this month because of that reason, but if I do then my blog will be password protected. The password is Psquad2019 (just as it looks, but not in bold)
I really don’t know all of the details, but what is I do know is that we will be serving in Hanoi (every time I think about that name, the first thing that comes to my mind is Hanoi Jane-ok random I know but that’s the way my brain works), and our squad leader will be with us for half of the month.
As I’ve said before Vietnam is the country that I have been looking forward to out of all the 11 countries that we are serving in this year as it is just so personal to me to be serving in Vietnam as a civilian/missionary during peacetime 51 years after my dad was serving in Vietnam during the Vietnam war, and one of the cool things is that the main airport in Saigon is what used to be the air base where my dad served at during the war, so I’m flying into the same place where he served, which is so cool for me to think about. With my history background I am finding it a bit hard to think of Vietnam in its present day perspective instead of from my historian perspective.
Moral of this cautionary tale: Don’t mess with God in any way cause he will find a way to challenge you right back.
So to all my prayer warriors:
please pray for my team as we pursue ATL month & for guidance to where we will be called to serve for the month.
Please pray for me to try to attempt to be a good sport about ATL this month
Also pray for safe travels as we leave the 5th for Vietnam.
Till next time your fellow sister in Christ,
Bonnie
Team Surrendered
P Squad
Psalms 18:2
YOLO
