9 days until these feet hit American soil.
I was thinking about this past year and all the crazy stuff that’s happened… all the hard times with community, still raising money, getting through all my personal crap and now here I am.
I have been to so many places and met so many people. They all have desperate needs. They’re hurting. Some of their stories are just unimaginable.
Sometimes I was able to meet people that reminded me of people back home… on the outside things they looked nice and pretty, but inside they were hard and confused.
ALL over the world there are people that are broken and searching for more.
They all need Jesus.
And God allowed ME to meet them… to love and pray and worship with them.
I don’t know if I will ever get to go back to any of the places I’ve been this year… But I know that the prayers I’ve prayed are powerful and have left an impact.
And the stories I have now are going to bring even more awareness to America. To stir hearts.
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When I came on the World Race, I knew that I would go out into a world and be a servant of Christ. But I also knew that God was going to do things inside of me… and I was SO hungry for it.
I had so much crap I was carrying around with me all of the time.
So many lies that had wrapped themselves around me, that they became my truth.
I lived as a child who didn’t really know how to receive God’s love, because I’d never really had an earthly father’s love.
As I traveled around and saw the broken people around me, I realized that in a lot of ways I was no different from them. And when I spoke God’s truth over them, it allowed me to find even more freedom.
It wasn’t only the people around the world that helped me… it was the people traveling side by side with me. My U- Squad family… we ALL had our junk. And this year we learned how to really LOVE one another… and DANG, we love WELL.
Somehow God placed us all here together for THIS season. It still blows my mind at how well we function together. Only by His grace. 🙂
These people have challenged me and pushed me to be better. To go DEEPER with my Abba.
They’ve helped break off the years of hurt and lies. They have called out the God inside of me… and now I KNOW that His Spirit lives within me.
When we were in Mozambique we were able to meet a guy who had just come from Heidi Baker’s School. So he was SUPER spirit filled and led…
I remember when he came out to worship with us I thought he was really weird because of the way he was acting. Like “oh great… he’s one of those crazy guys. Maybe we can pray for him…”
haha
BUT it turns out this guy is insanely in tune with the Spirit and HE wanted to pray over US.
God gave him some awesome words about where we were in the Race (month 8), and about when we go home.
He was telling us that we were like Noah. When he was in the Ark waiting for the water to recede, he kept sending out a dove. One day the dove came back with an olive branch showing that new life was starting to appear, and then he sent it out again and the dove didn’t return.
(I thought that was SO cool because I had gotten a tattoo on my wrist of a dove with an olive branch in its mouth)
He spoke over us that when we returned home we were going to land and release new life wherever we go. The newness and change doesn’t stop with us…
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43: 18 & 19
I didn’t really think about it much after he said that, but now that we’re about to go home it’s been on my mind a lot more.
I’ve also started to see things happening with my family and friends. It makes me SO excited to see God moving in their lives in a NEW way.
There is still SO much for me and my walk with God… I know that this year isn’t the end of something. This year will NOT be the best year of my life… it’s the start of something new and beautiful and AMAZING.
