Two questions. These have been flooding in. A big part of looking to all of you lovely people for help with fundraising is bringing you along on the journey. I have some good news and bad news. I’m going to flip a coin on what to share first… hold up real quick.
I will start with the bad. Unfortunately, we are and will continue to be in areas where exact locations and cities cannot be shared. Doesn’t God want every ear to hear of the good news about Jesus? Yes, but the safety of people running underground churches is a very present and real thing. If I tag a location in a photo or post about real names, local governments and police could piece the puzzle together. I want to tell each and every one of you every detail possible, but it’s not worth these details somehow getting into the wrong hands. All I can say is Northern Africa. That is the bad news. I want to ask you a favor. Take a pause from my blog for one minute and pray. Pray for these countries. Pray for these people. Pray for their safety. Pray that God continues to show up in dreams, in the bold words of the believers here, and in many other ways. Thank you.
Here is some of the good news. Even though I can’t share where I am exactly, I can talk a little about what we are/have been doing. I have been blessed to engage with people and a culture who could be banned from their countries or, God forbid, killed because of their faith in Jesus. I think as a country (America) we take it for granted that we can practice our faith so freely. The term “a faith that moves mountains” is tossed around a lot. I will tell you in full confidence that I have finally found it. I have seen it firsthand. I have been able to touch it. I sang/danced to worship songs in the middle of it. I have listened to messages on Sundays in a completely different language and not understood a word but felt it. Man is it sweet. People who have church in a back room and have to close all their windows in 90+ degree heat. People who give up jobs and only work on trying to find believers in the area to minister to. People who have no money coming in but put their full faith in God to provide. When you struggle with faith, think of them. Remember what some of this world looks like. Again, I have been blessed to see it and I want to bring you all in as well. Be grateful and never hold back. America has the opportunity to live and share freely, use it every chance you get.
We have also been able to build relationships with so many people. This goes along so well with my Enneagram type. If you have never taken this test, go here https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/dotest. I am a 2. A helper. Someone who has love as their highest ideal. Loving these people and building relationships with them has been a dream come true. We have befriended corner market owners, coffee shop servers, surfers, homeless and crippled people, pro basketball players, etc. We have met so many people and have been able to spend intentional time with them. Friendly side note, I have a myth to debunk. “Short term missions don’t work”. This is and always will be so false 🙂 Let’s say you attend church 45 of the 52 Sundays a year and are there for 2 hours. That’s 90 hours of time to hear from the pastor and be with community. We get 8+ hours a day for 30 or so days to be with these people. It works. We have been taken into these people’s homes and fed like crazy. We have traveled to far off cities with them so they can show us everything their country has to offer. A lot of what we do on the Expedition Route is listen to God and His guidance. We didn’t have an organization to work with this month so we took prayer to another level. This means every day there is no plan for us. No script. No direction of which way to go. Some days we just walk the streets and pray for God to highlight people to us and then engage. We have found English speaking centers and engaged with them. We have gone to play basketball with some pros in this country to engage with them in their comfort zone. Every day is so different, but takes a lot of faith that God will protect us through it all and give us the perfect words to use in those moments.
Personally, I have grown so much this month with letting go of expectation. I committed to the World Race and had 1 year to daydream about it every day before we left. Daydreaming about it and what it actually is are two completely different things. It was hard for me at the beginning to let go of the “perfect” pictures I painted in my head and get down to the grind. Mission work is not always beautiful. It’s not always going to look like people committing their lives to Jesus every second of every day. We don’t wake up every day with a smile on our faces. Life still brings its struggles along and we have to continue to wear our armor and stay strong. Mission work is a challenge but a challenge I now understand and it became so fun once I caught on.
Also, huge life update for you friends! Our time in this beautiful country ends soon and all us dudes, along with some from Adventures in Missions back in the states, are heading to Turkey for a few days. A window of opportunity came up so we are jumping on it right away. That’s all I’m able to say about that haha. After our short stay there we will meet up with the ladies in our next country.
Of course, I’m going to add a song to my blog. This is a cool artist called Sleeping At Last. Some of his works can be found here on how he makes music about senses, life, emotions, etc. http://www.sleepingatlast.com/blog/2016/4/18/atlas-themes-explored. He has taken these Enneagrams I mentioned and made songs. He is in the process of making a song for each of the 9 personality types, how to honor the perspective of all 9, and the lens through which they see the world, others and themselves. He asks people he knows to leave “fingerprints” on each song. For example, he took all of the “ones” he knows and asked them to record things or find soothing sounds for them and he put them in the song. He plans to continue this for the construction of all 9 songs. It takes him months to make each song and I believe he has finished 1-5 so far. Take that test in the link above and find your song and see how amazing it is to relate! I had saved the song “Atlas:Two” long before I took the test. I just loved the song so much but never knew why. I then realized I had it on all my playlists because it was a well thought out song that goes along with my personality type. Enjoy! 🙂
