One of the hard things about the race is leaving a location and not knowing what will happen. Three month’s into the race the team that I was on was located in the jungle of Bolivia. Our purpose for the month was to help construct a church. Yep, a team of seven ladies were there for construction. Bailey and I were the only ones with any type of construction background so we were asked to help with drawing plans for the church.
We got started working the first full day that we were there. Our job for the week was to start gathering large stones and clear the ground to start laying the foundation of the church. I was loving it. We were doing physical labor everyday, and had a beautiful location to work in.
Then a week into it most of team was plagued by a parasite due to our living conditions. I have never been so sick and weak in my life. On top of that, the same week, the pastor told us that the church did not have adequate funding to build the church. Our hearts were crushed. We were there for that purpose, to build and to serve. We left with heavy hearts at the end of the month, but we left in prayer that the Lord would provide the funds for the church to be built.
Last week on our off day I decided to see what the “outside” world was up to, so I got on Facebook. Pastor Juan Carlos in Bolivia had tagged me in a post of some pictures where I was working on gathering rocks. I kept scanning through photos in the post and came across a picture that made my heart flood with happiness.
The pictures were of the church starting to be built. I was so excited that I immediately found Melissa (she was my teammate on the other team also) and told her the amazing news and proudly showed her the pictures. The same day I ran into two other previous teammates and told them the news. We were all so excited you would think someone ran the lottery.
So here it is…..the start of a new church!
Praise the Lord!
