Hey lovely and mighty prayer warriors!! I covet so greatly your prayers and the words the lord is giving yall for me, my team, my squad and this trip!! We are gearing up already to head to Bolivia!! Only 9 months left!! It blows my mind!! But the Lord has been doing a mighty work in all of our lives!! He has been healing many racers from the past and the pain they brought on the race with them along with the wild living they we holding onto as idols ! We have seen 8 people come to know the Lord during this month and have been able to love on hundreds of sweet children!!
The Lord has been showing me things here in Peru that parallel to things He had shown me during my first international mission trip to Indonesia. I am learning to be so thankful that we are always being refined and that He doesn’t leave us in the season of easy for too long! He knows when to draw us back in and take us through another season of teaching us more about himself and more of how we need to die to ourselves. It does humor me and perturb me that its often a revolving cycle of the same crap He has asked me to die to. Like my image, my wounds from the past, my family, my friends, relationship, and keeping my eyes on him. It perturbs me knowing that I have walked through these seasons with Him and I listened and I repented of the things He revealed to me and I arrogantly check that box off my healing list to be a better Christian. Then He turns me around to see more that needs to be done and my pride gets a little perspective. So, then it humors me because He is good and gracious not to give us too much at one time! Not in the sense of the saying, “ God won’t give me more than I can handle” Because I don’t believe that, how are we going to need Him if he won’t give us more than we can handle? But I say this in the sense of He won’t reveal to us more than we are truly going to be able to digest into heart knowledge and spirit knowledge. I fully leaned on Him during every season, but looking back those steps don’t seem as grand as they did then! During my time in Banos, Ecuador for debrief, He called me to let down my image of having it all together, and live in the freedom of realness with Him and with my squad. Then following some conversations with my squad mates I felt pushed to lay down feeling of taking care of my family, and enjoy sitting at my daddy’s feet and just being with Him this year away. That is so hard for me, I have so much Identity wrapped up in care giving and self sacrificing but to the glory of my self and not to honor and glorify the lord. I shared my story with my squad during debrief and it was such a relief to be loved so well. These people here love me so well, and like me so much, no matter if i fail or succeed at ministry or logistics, which honestly surprises me daily because they just met me!! One of my Squad mates came up to me and thanked me for sharing my story and for being vulnerable because she related to it and it helped her go to a place of vulnerability she was not wanting to go. It was good to lay down my false identities in banos and walk into this all squad month ready to enjoy me as the daughter of Christ. It was weird and I failed a bunch, but I made some amazing friends and found a peace in just sitting and enjoying people and not serving them or trying to figure out how I can make myself more pleasing …. but just being and they still liked me!
Through this beautiful time with the Lord, He asked me to draw closer to Him in obedience with asking me to trust the healing He had done in me and Trust that what He was calling me into was good and He wanted to redeem the things that were used for hurt in my past and make them a blessing to see His Glory in them and It has been such a beautiful experience to follow Him in that.
