“ATL”… three letters that have terrified me since before The World Race began. As soon as one of my squad-mates told me his team was doing ATL for month one and he explained what it was I thought to myself “I PRAY I NEVER HAVE THAT MINISTRY ASSIGNMENT” But honestly, understanding how God usually works I should have known as soon as I prayed that prayer that ATL was guaranteed to be in my future on the race.
So let me first tell you what ATL is before I tell you about my experience with it. “ATL” is an acronym that stands for Ask the Lord. What exactly do I mean by ask the lord? And how exactly is that a ministry assignment?, you ask. No worries I’m about to elaborate. So most months on the race we are given a ministry assignment by our leadership team. As a part of that assignment you are given a setup sheet that tells you who the host is, what the ministry is called, a brief summary of what you will be doing, what your basic budget is, what your living accommodations will probably be like, and so on. Some setup sheets are more detailed than others but the basic gist is that you get info on where you will be and what the next month will look like. If your ministry assignment is ATL you don’t get a set up sheet because you have to ask the Lord. And when I say ask the Lord I mean actually actively spend time in prayer asking the lord about EVERYTHING.
Now, this is the story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down. And I’d like to take a minute just sit right there, I’ll tell how I ended up in NOVI PAZAR!!!
For our ATL, the regional representative spent time in prayer and felt like our team should go to a place called Novi Pazar. But even in that, she said that we should spend time in prayer as a team and if we get something different from the Lord we should follow that. So while we were still in Albania we spent time in corporate and personal prayer about what city in Serbia we should go to.
Hearing the voice of God is such a deeply personal thing. And one of my biggest fears going into ATL, as the team leader, was being faced with a situation where one teammate is feeling like God is saying one thing and another teammate feels that God is saying something else and I have to make the decision as to which path we follow. In making a decision, I would inevitability feel like I was validating one persons ability to hear from God while simultaneously discrediting the other. I went into out time of corporate prayer with this fear weighing heavily in my mind.
During our corporate prayer I was asking God to show me where He wanted our team to go. As I listened I kept getting the letter “K”. While we prayed about where we should go we all had a map of Serbia. I kept looking at the map and every city that started with the letter K but none of them felt right. Our time in prayer ended and we all went to dinner and discussed what the Lord had spoken to us. We were sitting around the table and I asked, “Who wants to share what the Lord laid on their heart?” Schyler starts and she says that she got peace and confirmation about Novi Pazar. Instantly my heart sank. This is STEP ONE of ATL and here we are already divided. Literally under that table my palms started sweating. We go around the whole table and everyone basically says the same thing about feeling confirmation about Novi Pazar. The last person to speak before me was Hailey. Hailey opens her mouth and says I didn’t get Novi Pazar…I got something that starts with the letter K. I WANTED TO JUMP UP AND DOWN ON THE TABLE! Yay! Confirmation that I’m not crazy. I then shared that I also got the letter K. So on one hand I was glad I wasn’t off but at the same time our team was still divided.
EVERYTHING about our ministry in April would contingent upon our ability to hear from the Lord and here we were divided already. We took the night to sleep on it and we prayed that God would give us prophetic dreams with the answers that made sense. I did not have prophetic dreams but when I woke up the next morning for prayer the Lord reminded me of my own prayers. While we were in corporate prayer I prayed that God would give us each a piece of the puzzle. I prayed that we would come together and know what to do because of the parts that He gave each of us. I also prayed that He would give us each day the answers we needed for that day. That we weren’t seeking out the entirety of the master plan but rather our daily bread. And then I realized that is exactly what He had done.
At breakfast we sat around the same table we had sat at the night before. I asked if anyone had had any prophetic dreams they want to share. I don’t remember anyone having any. So, I shared with the team the fresh perspective the Lord gave me. I really felt that God had confirmed Novi Pazar through 3 people on our team and through our squad leader Kyndal (who would be spending the month with us in Serbia). Hailey and I got “KK” because that is further confirmation of something we just don’t fully know yet. By seeking God I was able to see how even though we received different things we all had important pieces to the puzzle.
After we decided on Novi Pazar Maggie and I worked to find us a place to stay. One of the many things that our team had experienced in the 2 months we had had together was separation. We were either saying in different rooms at the guesthouse or different rooms at the bible college. The separation was really causing a challenge in our ability to connect all together as a team. So as we were looking for a place I prayed that God with help us find a place where we could all live together and truly develop the depth in our relationships that we desired. We found a ton of places but none of them fit our specific needs. Then out of the blue Maggie did a search on Air bnb for a place but she didn’t put in a number of people. A great apartment pops up but the listing says that it could only hold a max of 6 people (we had 7 including our squad leader). So Maggie reached out to the owner and he assured us that the apartment could easily accommodate 7 people. So we booked it!
Fast forward 2 weeks and we have arrived in Novi Pazar. We settle into our apartment and it’s perfect for us. We walk out the door to our apartment on one of the first days after our arrival and I see the name on the door across the hall. The name read K**** K*******. KK!!!!!! (Side note: I am not actually going to post our neighbors name this blog). But, it was the KK God laid on both my heart and Hailey’s heart in the previous month. God had shown us directly to the city we were supposed to be in and directly to the apartment that was perfect for us.
This was only the beginning! I will be posting a series of blogs to explain what happened during our time in Serbia and how it really shifted my perspective on ATL.
