I had a really good morning. I woke up, and was groggy as usual. I did my normal morning routine, I pray first thing as I wake up until I get into a place physically and mentally where I can read and hear from the Lord. Sometimes I break routine as the Lord directs and I break up some of the morning reading for later in the day or evening. Today was one of those, so I read a chapter in Exodus and a Psalm. I have some other good stuff still waiting for me later :). After reading, and listening and praying I do the very normal things of brushing my teeth and eating breakfast. This morning I had a small potato I cut up and pan fried with an egg, a tomato, and a little cheese. It was good. Then I had about an hour before our 10 am “team time”. It’s sort of like our daily morning meeting for the day. We align together with the Lord and we go out and do our thing with the Lord’s direction.
Every other morning in our daily team time we also do “feedback”. Feedback is good and difficult. We call each other higher and call out the good things we see in each other. Sometimes the best feedback is the hardest to take, but as a rule we aren’t allowed to get defensive. Only say “thank you” and take the feedback to the Lord in prayer to see if it really is for us or not. As another rule, these things aren’t just preferences but have to do with character, behavior, and fruit from each other’s lives. Conflict should be handled outside of feedback. They are not one in the same and if feedback is overly charged with personal emotions, there is a good chance it’s not from the Lord. We’ve done some of it wrong before and had to learn the hard way, but for the most part, it’s been super powerful and helpful. I recommend it as a habitual practice and so does adventures in missions in fact they “make us” do it ;).
Anyway, today feedback was included in our morning meeting. And there as always was some difficult feedback, but also tons of love and encouragement. Our emotions are all really high right now. It’s our last week in this town where we’ve been building relationships for over a month. We have to say our goodbyes and it’s really hard. I didn’t feel particularly sad this morning myself, but “randomly” I felt tears well up in my eyes. I asked, “Is anyone feeling really sad this morning?” and I mentioned why I was asking. Three of my teammates spoke up about different reasons they were feeling sadness. Some of it was the leaving, and some stuff was more personal. So we prayed, and by the Holy Spirit, it turned into a powerful moment of spontaneous worship. We sang, laid there on the floor, stood up lifting our hands giving God the emotions we are experiencing, and inviting in His comfort into the midst of our struggle. By the end, I was giddy with joy and excitement for what God’s gonna do in this last week. Our team time was over about an hour later than a normal morning with feedback! It’s so cool how God can guide us in the midst of our sadness and pain into His presence. It’s so awesome to experience joy and peace in the face of difficult circumstance. It’s only possible by our great High Priest, Jesus. We can come boldly to His presence where there is fullness of His grace. He made it possible by His sacrifice once and for all for our sins. Anyone, who calls on Him will be saved and can too join in this sort of experience!
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tested in every way as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time.”
Hebrews 4:15?-?16 HCSB
After all this we talked out how to chase after the things God has for us in this last week. We have a couple meals we want to do with our closest friends here, and we planned that out. The Lord is good y’all.
Here’s a random pic I took during our spontaneous worship. (Not the best picture, but it’s hard to capture everyone being moved by the Spirit!)
Here is part of the Psalm from my morning devotion.
Other fun things I’ve gotten to do today:
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Eat some interesting local food (I think this might be cow hoof soup? Either way, it was lunch!)
2. Talk to squad leader Eric! (At lunch)
3. We saw a dead horse on our walk back. It was very sad and jarring, still processing that. I don’t have a photo of it, no worries. I do have a photo of me on a horse from Saturday though… One of our friends had an in with the beach horse-guys as he is a police officer who happens to ride horses on the beach erry-day. He had me hop on. I got to ride for free! Pretty dope.
Thank God for good Mornings y’all!
BLOG PART 2
This next part is for Tyler, but please read it 🙂
The other night I told Tyler who is reading “God Smuggler” a book that rocked me when we were on the Camino a story that related to the book. He really wants me to write a blog about it, but I haven’t been able to think of all the details from when it happened. I don’t think the story warrants an entire separately blog, but here is the story. Basically in the book, Brother Andrew who wrote the book about his own life smuggling Bibles into countries that at the time didn’t have them and didn’t allow them, isn’t able to communicate with a pastor of a persecuted church because of a language barrier. Then the Lord gave Him an idea to have a conversation using the Bible. He would point to a verse in His Bible and the pastor would find it in his Bible in a translation he understood. They had a great conversation using the Bible and the pastor became a major contact for Brother Andrew in that country.
Our host was talking with a couple of the girls on my team and asking questions about denomination back home. He asked me and I said something like “I’m Christian. I love the Lord and that I don’t have a denomination.”. Maybe some things got lost in translation, but he understood and smiled. I know because like Brother Andrew in the book he told me to look up a Bible verse. I believe the verse was Matthew 23:8. It was a cool moment.
More stories to come! Pray for final funding for my squadmates and teammates who aren’t fully funded. I’m above the mark for this next deadline (end of next week), but not yet fully-funded. We are all trusting God for our provisions, so we know it will happen but want to do our part in keeping everyone updated and aware. If you feel led to give, please do! I specifically would love to see some people from my community give to my teammate Amber. She is approaching this next deadline a little behind, but the Lord has certainly called her to stay here with us!
Here is her blog link if you’d like to give:
https://ambersmith.theworldrace.org
In Christ,
-Daniel
