Hello everyone,
I have been putting a lot of prayer into my first blog post, post arrival to Adventures in Missions (AIM) and I have decided that I am going to walk you through a couple of the days so far, sadly due to length I can’t write about all the days leading up to today, because they all are definitely worthy of a post, but that will be for a later time. So without further ado, let’s jump into this post.
Day 3: Prevalent day, this day is when God really took over. I began this day by waking up at 7am, using my water bottle to brush my teeth and wash my face, then I headed down to the patio where we eat all of our meals. The first thing we have scheduled each morning is temperature checks, every morning at 7:45am we all meet at the patio before breakfast to get our temperature taken. After that we all ate breakfast, we have 3 amazing cooks who make sure we are being well fed everyday. After breakfast we all clean up, then head upstairs where we have our morning and afternoon sessions, which is normally where they bring a speaker in, or have a lesson planned for the day. This day we got to meet our coaches, who will be like our “gap year parents,” while we are on the field, which is awesome, but that wasn’t even the most memorable thing about that session. We were asked the question, “what is your why?” “what is going to keep you on the race when things get hard and you want to quit?” and these questions, though they may seem simple, took me about 45 minutes of prayer and bible reading to even get close to answering them. I continued to pray that God would clear my mind and allow me to listen and hear Him, because I wanted Him to tell me what my “why” was, because honestly I had no idea why He wanted me on the race. During this time I was able to clear my head and I heard three things, the first was “you are sent,” which I have always felt, the call to go out and serve, so that one wasn’t much of a surprise. The second was “you are heard,” which was so amazing, because I was praying so actively that He would allow me to hear Him and be heard by Him and I felt like Him giving me those words were His way of letting me know He heard my prayers. Then the third one, which is the one that really got me was, “prevalent” and I was like, “umm what now? What does that have to do with anything, am I hearing you wrong God? Maybe you didn’t mean to give me that word” So I went on with my day, but for the rest of the day that word would not leave my mind, all I could hear was “prevalent,” so I decided that at the end of the day, when I got my phone I would look up the definition, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I went to dinner, then we had team time, which is where we sit together as a team and work on building our relationships, by doing bible studies or fun projects. After that we normally hear someone’s testimony and then we have free time for the rest of the night. Well that night came, I got my phone and looked up the definition of prevalent and SURPRISE SURPRISE I was missing something. What does it mean when something is prevalent you ask? When something is prevalent, it is generally or widely spread and accepted, practiced, favored, dominant and powerful. Like whoa, that’s the word God gave me? How freaking cool is that? After reading the definition I was amazed and I could feel God saying to me, “I want you to help make My Name and gospel prevalent in today’s society worldwide.” As I wrote those words into my notebook I felt a rush of joy come over me, it was so crazy! God literally answered the question for me and He told me exactly what my “why” was, how cool is that? I don’t even have to worry about trying to figure out my purpose in life, because God just gave it to me. It was that easy, that simple and sweet, He wants me to make His Name and his gospel widely spread, accepted, practiced, favored, dominant and powerful in today’s society worldwide. The rest of the night all I could do was talk to my teammates about what God had said and about how excited and on fire I felt. After sharing this with my teammates and getting their encouragement it was time for bed. Bed time is pretty simple, I climb into my tent, use my headlamp to search for spiders and bugs, then after I get all the bugs out of my tent, I curl up in my sleeping bag and fall asleep.
Day 5: The fitness hike, whoa did this day bring on a lot of stress. What is the fitness hike? Well i’m glad you asked, the fitness hike is a 2.2 mile hike that must be completed in 38 minutes, sounds easy right? Well here’s the catch, we had to do this hike while carrying our 50lb packs at 3pm with the Georgia heat shining down on us. Now we were told that in order to complete this hike in the time we would have to run over half of the time, which wearing a 50lb pack did not make it easy. Neither did the hills, but the hills were also the part where God came to me the most, where I was truly in need of Him to lean on. The night before we had a sermon on surrendering ourselves and all of our pain to God and oh man, whoa did I surrender some pain on those hills, but the more I leaned on God, the more He took over. Before the hike we were told that this hike wasn’t made for us to do, it was made for God to do through us and honestly I went into the hike fully ready to do it on my own, but oh boy was I wrong. I still don’t even remember most of the hike, once I surrendered my pride to God, I went into auto pilot and He took over. All I know is God finished that hike through me in under 29 minutes, which is honestly so amazing. Then after the hike we got to take bucket showers which I was so grateful for. Oh, right, I haven’t told y’all about the bucket showers, a bucket shower is when you fill up a bucket with water, go into a wooden area outside with a curtain, then you use a cup to pour water over you from the bucket. It is very cold, especially since it’s outside, but after a long sweaty day it actually feels pretty amazing. We also got the chance to wash our laundry a few days after the hike and we actually wash our laundry very similarly to how we shower. We get to put our clothes in buckets of water, hand wash our clothes, rinse them out and then hang them up on clothes lines. Which made me so grateful for the past 20 years I’ve been blessed with washers and dryers.
Whelp, there’s the update for today, I would love to hear back from y’all with any questions or prayer requests you might have. Thank you all so much for your support, love and prayer that you poured into me as I prepared and launched for this amazing journey. I will try to post a blog update biweekly, so talk to y’all soon!
