Thailand wow I can hardly believe that we are half way through the 11 months already. It all seems to fly by so fast and yet while you’re living it not so much. As I look back to where I started and how far I have come I begin to wonder, what will I be like in June? Starting off last July heading to Honduras not really knowing what I was getting into or what it would look and be like. The whole squad was together that month and the different teams had to work extra hard to be intentional with each other. It was so easy to drift and hang out with any number of people who were not on your team. My team had a bit of a rocky start but that meant that we could only get better.
Heading out into month two and Guatemala the squad started to learn what travel days look like with a very long bus ride. This month my team was with two others and it was a breath of fresh air. This was my battle ground with God. He was ready to do some real work in my life and I fought him the whole month. But to no surprise by the end of the month I was ready to give in and start looking at what he wanted to do.
Going into Nicaragua for month three I stopped and listened to the plan God had for destroying my “walls”. I still was not crazy about his idea by any means and who would be really? I am thirty years old and many of those walls have foundations that are older than some of my squad mates. I talked things over with a couple of team mates to get their perspective and that was it I was resolved to give it a go. Then at the end of the month before leaving Central America the squad had team changes. I was prepared for a change but not for as big of a change as I got. Heading into month four and Romania I now found myself with a completely new team. Not only did I not have any old team members with me but I was on a team with four people that had just spent the last three months growing together. How was I going to start taking down my walls with these people I did not know. It had taken me three months to get to a place where I was comfortable with my old team. God did not care and reminded me that I had agreed and had run out of any wiggle room I had once had.
So I took a deep breath and went for it. Romania ended up being the best thing that happened to me. I started to open up and let people in to see what was hidden. My walls were starting to come down and it turned out to not be the end of the world. It was the end of life as I knew it but that doesn’t mean it was a bad thing.
Moldova was just as different as the others months had been. I now had no other choice but to open up to my new team. We were alone this month and there were days when living in a two room apartment with six other people is ruff. At the end of it I can say that it was not all that bad and the growth we went through was good.
So in staying on par and having every month be different Thailand is no exception. Our guys are doing Manistry and the rest of us ladies have been split between two different locations. We were not divided by teams but seemingly random. I feel that I got lucky in having two team mates with me this month even though we are not on the same ministry team they are here with me. So this month I am will all women and I am often driven batty but I am making the best of it and trying to be open. I am learning about squad mates that until now knew very little more than their names.
God has not given me the month off by any means either. He has continued to work in me and made me take more of my walls down. How I wish that the end were in sight but right now I don’t see it. God has great plans for my life and the race has been his way of preparing me for it. I don’t know the next step. I don’t know what next month will look like. I don’t know what the end of the race will bring. I don’t know what I will do when I am State side again. But I do know that I am right where God wants me to be and that is all I need to know. Everything I don’t know will work itself out in its time.
