Well.. it’s been a while since I’ve hopped on to post a blog! Lots of things have been going on and I’m now across the world in BALI, Indonesia with my team.
Its been ROUGH to say the least.. I’ve cried about 15 times in the past 3 days, missing home, lots of bugs, VERY HOT and VERY humid constantly – no AC where were staying – but I am learning to let go and let God move and work.. I mean, I asked for and signed up for this didn’t I?
So without further adieu, here is a blog I typed up without WiFi on a 26 hour bus ride from Jakarta Indonesia to Bali:
At this point in my journey with The World Race, I’ve had countless sessions on culture and how to make the good news of Jesus actually good news to someone else. I’ve said bawled my eyes out while saying goodbye to my family and I’ve flown from Atlanta to Chicago for our first layover and am now flying from Chicago to Tokyo for our second layover. More importantly, though, I’ve wrestled again with the thought “am I good enough?” For this journey? For my family? For my friends? etc. At training camp a few months back, I wrote a blog post about a friend of mine and one of our squad leaders, Ashley, speaking truth over me that I am “the apple of God’s eye”. That hit home for me because it made me see myself and my relationship with Jesus differently than I had in a while.
Back to the present – It’s a few hours into our flight to Tokyo and I wanted to stretch my legs so I decided to take a walk around the plane, very short walk.. and see some of my other racer friends who were sitting another second behind me. I sat down in an empty seat next to Mackenzie and started chatting when an elderly man carrying a baby cane to chat with Seth and Anna who were sitting across from us. He asked us questions about where we were headed and why and such and we came to learn in turn that he had been a missionary for years and was currently headed back with his daughter and son in law and their 4 month old baby boy to Indonesia. I asked what his name was and the man said, “Ishon” which means “the apple of His eye”. He began to say how he prayed over his grandsons name and felt the Lord saying “the apple of My eye”. The man admitted that would of course be too long of a name for a child so he looked that phrase up in Hebrew and saw “Ishon”. I was so taken a back. I thought to myself, “ok God, I see what You’re doing.. I see the theme here”.
Jesus has already been revealing more and more of Himself to me and I haven’t even made it to Bali yet (currently on our 33 hour bus ride through the country and it is beautiful). He’s been showing me that if I will just ask for His help, He’s always there. Yesterday He taught me that even when I ask for His help that it’s HIS TIMING that is perfect. We, 2 of our teams, were on our way to the bus station which isn’t as easy to find in a foreign country, mind you, and part of my team made it there first. It was about 5 minutes until our bus was scheduled to depart. We got all the bus tickets and started to load our luggage on the bus, but we were still missing over half of our 2 teams. They were lost. We began trying to contact them and explain what buildings and colors were around us and even put the driver of their car on the phone with a bus company worker to help them figure out their way to us as the worker then told us we HAD to get going. I immediately started praying for Jesus to show up in a big way to get our team there. I kept praying and asking for Him to help and to “show up” and I got to thinking.. asking God to “show up” is like asking for something you already have. He’s already “shown up”! He’s already with us. About 15 minutes later of lots of phone calls and lots of prayer and asking our driver to please wait in the best way we could, our teams made it to the station and we all boarded safe and sound.
I’ve been practicing this phrasing lately of “I believe He will” instead of hoping God will come through. I realized it’s as if I don’t fully trust Him to do what He’s said He will do.
“Even when I don’t see it Youre working, even when I don’t feel it Youre working, You never stop You never stop working, YOU NEVER STOP YOU NEVER STOP WORKING”
