The past couple of months have been a whirlwind for me. I began the month of June committed to Kingdom Journey with Adventures in Missions in September. I was in the midst of fundraising and preparing and praying for the rest of my team to come together. My short-term future was relatively settled. June 14th, I hopped on a plane to Gainesville, Georgia to volunteer at a post World Race event called Project Searchlight. I was expecting that the week would contain a handful of manual labor jobs and some cleaning and a good chance for me to connect with some friends there. I expected to be reenergized and fueled up to come back to Florida and prepare for launch with my team. I did not expect that my plans would be changed.
The week began and the volunteering part was mostly what I expected but there was also this unexpected gift of downtime and space to process. I was forced to just sit and be and think about what I was walking toward. I experienced this strange stillness without an agenda that I just hadn’t created enough space for in my daily life. And in the stillness came this unsettling. I began to explore the idea of letting Kingdom Journey go and was overcome by an incredible amount of peace. I talked it through with a handful of people and realized that it was indeed the right thing to do. As the week progressed, I began to explore what it would look like to pick up a new opportunity that lay before me: Squad Leading.
“What is a Squad Leader?” you might ask. Defining squad leader is a challenging task. As with any job, there is a lot of World Race specific lingo. So, I will start with squad. Each group that heads out on the World Race is called a squad. There are normally 40-70 participants on a squad, ranging in age from 21 to 35. Within the squad will be teams of 6-8 people, each with an appointed team leader. As a “Squad Leader” I will be heading out in September with 3rd Generation Y Squad. I will lead alongside 2 other people who have been on the race before— Brian Cooke & Benita Townsend. We will spend the first 5 months of the Race with our squad. We will get to travel to and minister in Serbia/Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, South Africa & Zimbabwe. We help facilitate community, pour into the team leaders and the participants, push, challenge and encourage the group, call out the greatness God has placed inside them, and help them follow a Spirit led lifestyle. After the 4th month, we will raise up new squad leaders from the participants and spend month 5 leading alongside of the new squad leaders, discipling them and showing the ropes. At the end of the 5th month myself and my co-leaders will fly home. We then visit them twice on the field during the rest of their 11 months for debriefs.
At the beginning of this month, I was able to spend two weeks in Gainesville getting to know my fabulous co-leaders, our wonderful mentor and the fantastic group of 45 people that we’ll be leading. And y’all, I have to tell you that it’s going to be AMAZING!!!!
I know that this journey will be challenging but it will be so worth it. Even in the short span of time that we had together at training camp, I know that I’m going to adore sharing life with these people and I know that sometimes they’re going to drive me crazy. I know that God has new, exciting things in store for me— hard things but valuable and sweet ones too. I know that I’m going to be stretched and pushed beyond my limits and I know that the Lord will continue to be faithful and trustworthy and good.
Would you continue to pray for me as I prepare to leave the country in just over a month? Pray for unity amongst our squad. Pray for humility and wisdom for myself and my co-leaders. Pray for the people that we’re going to come in contact with. Also, please continue to pray for my support raising. My goal is $6,500 which will cover 5 months of field expenses and 2 additional return trips to the field to debrief with the squad before they return home. To give online, click the “support me” button at the top of my blog homepage.
I would love to talk with you more about this shift in plans for me and what the next six months might look like. I’d happily gush about my wonderful little squad and share what it was like to experience training camp the second time around. Let’s get coffee & chat.
