Hello everyone! I know it has been a little while since I last wrote, so it’s about time I filled you in. In my last blog we had come to the end of our time in the Ukraine. The last month of ministry was spent in Romania. My team was in a small village called Sistarovat. There are around 300 people in the village, and all are over the age of 50. Well, besides our host who was a 27 year old from Scotland.
The month went well, we spent our days doing manually labor setting up for a kids camp in the summer. We built a zipline, obstacle course, painted rooms, stained cabins, cleaned stuff up, just about anything that you could imagine needing to be done. It was a bit of a different month, being away from people for most of it, but I enjoyed being able to work and have time to just relax and unwind with the team in the rolling hills of Romania.
Now we are on to Albania, we are working with a Church helping them with the different ministries the Church is involved with such as: Bible studies, youth and senior ministry, kids camp etc. We are staying in an apartment above the Church in the city of Durres which is along the beach. It’s quite a location for ministry for the month. Also Albania is just across the way from Italy and our team is going their for a long weekend, yes we are quite spoiled this month.
If you don’t know this already the journey is getting quite close to the end. Next month is month 11, the final month. We will spend our last month in Spain, it originally was a couple of different places but when those fell through we were handed Spain to finish the race off and everyone is very excited about ending our journey their as a whole squad.
We are at an interesting place on the journey, we aren’t at the end although it sometimes feels like it with the conversations that are had about the future. You can feel a shift in the atmosphere. Yes, I believe we are still present and doing the work laid out for us, but it is starting to become real that the journey is coming to an end and I have spent some time looking back at everything trying to put together all that has happened, and have an eye towards the future as what does it mean for what lays ahead?
I don’t know what the future holds but I am not too concerned, as of now I feel God has helped me just be focused on where I am currently at, both literally where I am, and the season of life I am in. I still have close to two months left of this trip and I pray he gives me continual strength to finish well. As far as the past, looking back, God has brought us across many places and people and all kinds of experiences.
We have stayed in all kinds of different places, done many different types of ministry, and have done life together with God as a body of believers through thick and thin. I don’t think I will really be able to fully grasp all that the journey means until after I am back on the other side of it.
A verse that I read recently resonated with me greatly. In Ephesians 3:19 Paul prays for the Ephesians “to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” That is what I desire, what I believe we all desire most, whether we know it or not. To know God’s love that surpasses all knowledge.
God loves us, there is nothing we can do to change that. But we can come to a greater realization of that love. It is easy to believe that his love for us is a result of our performance for him, but it isn’t about our performance, it’s about Gods performance, on the cross, which is perfect and final. He loves us enough to die for us and give us new, abundant, and eternal life with him regardless of what we deserve.
That’s grace, which is easier to articulate in a blog post then it is to have and let take root in our hearts. But that is my prayer for us all, that we come into a greater realization of this love God has for us which surpasses knowledge, to which we can’t help but love him back with our whole heart in return.
