Do you ever feel thick headed? Like God has to teach you something 6 times before you actually get it? Well that’s how I felt last week, on a few occasions. Thank goodness for his patience! God started telling me a week or so ago the I was going to be with Team Ascend the Hill (ATH) for my last month, I was getting the feeling like we were going to do a month of Ask the Lord (ATL). Well, I didn’t do a very good job of communicating what I was feeling during team placements, and that’s not where they were placed. But I kept feeling it. ATL for ATH, and I was supposed to be there. And then, things started falling apart. Frustrations, high levels of stress and 6 phone calls later, I finally stopped and said enough. “God told me this last week, I should have said it then and if I did, none of this would be happening right now!” So I apologized to Steven and Lizi for not speaking when I should have, and we changed the teams around. (There you go, a sneak peak into squad leading) Things were finally as they should have been. If only I had listened sooner…
So all the teams came back to Riga for two nights together before the squad headed out to Estonia, and team ATH still didn't know where we are going. They had been praying, but nothing was coming up. We had been talking to friends here in Riga who have friends in Estonia, to see if we can partner with them for a month. Nothing gives. It’s the evening before we are supposed to head out and we had no idea where we are going in the morning, and I'm exhausted. Chip, the team leader, asked me what I want to do, and I had no idea at all. “Let’s just stay in Riga another night.” I say, partially because I think that’s wisdom, and partially because I am just too tired to think.
So we ended up spending two extra nights, and it’s exactly what the team and I needed. A little extra time. Time to pray, time to connect, time to regroup before heading into a month of complete unknown.
The next day, we were praying a lot about where we were supposed to go, and at this point we had opened the door wide to whatever God had wanted. Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania, point us somewhere God! Now original plan, was to go to Estonia with the rest of the squad and do ATL there. But every door was being shut. After two days, Lithuania kept getting pointed out. It kept being brought up.
We had loosely decided on Lithuania before having to leave the hostel, yesterday morning, and then reconvened outside one of my favorite spots in Riga. A beautiful little tea shop in the park. I have never felt more homeless. We had to be out of the hostel, and we had a few phone calls out to friends in Riga, but we hadn’t heard back yet so we were kinda stuck in the park until we found a place to stay for the night. With all our bags on the nearby park bench, I posted up outside the tea shop and sipped a yummy, spicy drink until we figured out where we could go. Of course, the lovely people at the Baptist church and some friends of mine took us in for our final night’s stay in Latvia.
Before we went our separate ways for the evening, we decided for sure on going to Lithuania. Everyone had a peace about it, even though all we had there was one phone number. One pastor, who was a friend of a friend. That’s it, that’s all we got. So we bought bus tickets to Vilnius, Lithuania.
In Matthew 10 Jesus sent his disciples out and told them not to take much for the journey. He said to go and leave their peace wherever it was worthy, whatever home they were welcomed in to. I don’t think this is a command that everyone is supposed to live by, all the time. I like planning and responsibility very much, but for whatever reason, God is pointing us right into this kind of faith walk. We have no place to stay, we have no ministry set up for us, and we are just going. It’s a walk of faith that I have a very strange peace about.
So I am now on a bus, heading to Lithuania. I didn’t plan to come here at all, but I’m glad we are going. This team is the team that is supposed to be doing ATL, I am supposed to be going with them and apparently, we are supposed to be going to Lithuania! I think God likes changing our plans sometimes.
Catch you up on how it goes soon, because I think it’s going to be good!
