At the end of almost every month, my whole squad gets together for a debrief. This past debrief was in Belgrade, Serbia!
Lauren, my teammate from my first team, and I have the position called the Party Planning Committee (PPC for short). This means at each debrief we plan a fun activity for the squad with a small budget. We decided we wanted to have the whole squad go ice skating. In Belgrade, everyone gets around by a bus and tram system which can be pretty confusing. To make sure we could explain to our squad exactly how to get to the ice rink, we decided to practice taking the busses and trams. We had gotten bus and tram directions, but ended up meeting people who said they had a quicker bus/tram path to get there. Very long story short, their directions were wrong and we ended up in an Asian outdoor market lol. Getting home was even more confusing! We got directions from 4 or 5 different people who barely spoke English. Each set of directions were different and we were really confused and frustrated. Two and a half hours later, we finally made it back to our hostel.
That experience was frustrating, but we decided we would try the next day. So the next day we headed out again. In order to get bus and tram tickets there, you have to purchase them from the newspaper stands. We walked to a newspaper stand and showed the woman our bus ticket in order to show her we wanted to buy two tickets (she didn’t speak English). She shook here head “no” letting us no we couldn’t purchase them. It was weird because the day before, we had just bought bus tickets from her. We went to a second newspaper stand and the same thing happened. No tickets for us.
We were like, “Are they on strike or something??” We’re learning that God wants to be a part of every part of our lives, even the small things or the things we think are silly or dumb, so we stopped and prayed. We were seeking God’s wisdom on the situation and told Him it seemed liked He was keeping us from this ice rink for some reason. We didn’t hear or sense anything from God right after praying, so we decided to try one other newspaper stand. Same situation. Wouldn’t sell us tickets.
We then had the thought to take a taxi because there was one parked in front of us. Even if we couldn’t find the bus/tram route, we could at least go to the ice rink and see if we could even all skate for the budget we had. In the meantime, Lauren said to God, “If You don’t want us to go to the ice rink, can You please give us one more sign?” The taxi in front of us then immediately pulled away. We were like, “Okay God, we don’t know why You don’t want us to go to the ice rink, but I guess we’ll go back to the hostel”.
We walk back to the hostel and the receptionist was so helpful! She called the ice rink and found out that they had just taken the ice down for the season. So it turns out that God was keeping us from going to the ice rink for a very good reason: there wasn’t any ice! lol.
We ended up planning a different event for the squad, but I’m telling this story for a reason. God doesn’t only want to be a part of the big decisions in our lives like who to marry, when to try to get pregnant, etc. He wants to be in each and every part of our lives! When we invite Him in, only good can come out of it because He has GOOD plans for us.
I encourage you, next time you’re making a decision (no matter how big or small), invite Jesus in and see the difference!
