We sat at the cross overlooking Antigua. A new beginning. Seven women God had placed together for this next season in Africa. I’m sure all of us felt uncomfortable at first, being apart from our previous teams, but that feeling was quickly replaced with excitement as we anticipated what this next month would look like! We were all so different, but we complimented each other perfectly, and I could already tell our team would be incredibly centered around Jesus. We began discussing what our team name should be. After praying about it, a repetitive theme kept presenting itself to all of us. Power. We were a divinely orchestrated, powerful group of women and we wanted a title that represented that. The more we thought about it though, the more we realized, that power comes most when God’s children are still; when they stop and listen to his quiet voice. We decided that we wanted to call ourselves “Be still” in a language other than English…But what language?
We walked back to the hostel, where we proceeded to look up “be still” in every language we could think of, but most of them were too hard to pronounce, and the rest just didn’t sound fitting.
We continued bonding as we made our way to a coffee shop downtown. We decided to go up to the roof to discuss it further. Nestled in the beautiful hills of Antigua, surrounded by the ceramic roofing tiles of the building we were atop of, we finally discovered our team name.
In desperation, Kerry finally typed into Google, “God, what should our team name be?” One of the first search results was Elohim (Elo-HEEM) after further researching what this meant, we learned that Elohim is the first name God uses for himself in the bible. It’s a Hebrew word that means creator. It refers to His ability to make something out of nothing. You see, humans can reform things. We can modify and construct, but we can never create anything without already having something. God can, and he is.
He’s creating something new in us every day.
The name was beautiful, and it flowed from our lips so easily. We bubbled with excitement as we realized that Elohim would be our title. It was a name of peace, regeneration, and freshness. Only minutes later did we discover that in the very verse our original name came from, Psalm 46:10 – “be still and know that I am God” the word “Elohim” is used for our creator. It all came together! They Holy Spirit was so present in those first few moments as a team! He guided us to an amazing and incredible name that echoes his power. I’m so excited to see what he does this next season! We’re going to be in Zambia for month five and my team will be doing “Unsung Heroes”. This will be my second time, but a first for all but Kelsey and me. Please keep us in your prayers as we travel about Zambia looking for future ministry contacts!
Without further ado, I present to you,
Team Elohim!
please check out my teammate’s blogs!
Meghan Grant – Team Leader
