7 days, 5 beds, 4 countries, and 1 squad-wide debrief… Wow, this past week has been a complete whirlwind! We left Albania on Monday the 26th and traveled to Kosovo for a girls’ night, and then taxied into Macedonia for 4 days of Month 6 Debrief. During debrief, we learned more about what this month is going to look like. Instead of having a ministry host during our Month 7, we’re doing ATL, or Ask The Lord. Ask the Lord is an opportunity to abandon expectations and simply seek the Lord, where He wants us to be, and what He wants us to be doing. On Friday morning, we got the opportunity to sit down as a team and spend time literally asking the Lord what He wanted our Month 7 to look like. My teammate Abby wrote a great blurb about what we feel called to do this month. “After praying, some research, some more praying, AND feeling some frustration that we didn’t hear from the Lord anything very specific, we finally felt led to head out of Macedonia for the month and do ministry in…..
GREECE!
HOW AWESOME IS THAT?! We’ll be in Thessaloniki, Greece staying at the same hostel as another team. We feel the Lord leading our team to do a lot of street ministry this month–doing some evangelism and sharing the Gospel and love of Jesus while meeting the practical needs of people where we can. Homelessness in Greece seems to be a big issue, so we are excited to dive in and be led by the Lord to love on a whole lot of people who are often mistreated, judged, or overlooked altogether. God sees these individuals who He created in His own image, and we are SO excited to get out of our comfort zones of hard routines and scheduled ministry to follow His leading and reach out to them!! Only the Lord knows what awesome opportunities and divine appointments He will lead us into this month! I pray we dare to ask for BIG and bold things to happen for the glory of Jesus!”
Please be praying that we would have clear and specific direction from the Lord as to how He wants us to proceed each day. We are going into this month with no specific schedule or direction, and are going to be starting each day with at least an hour of time directed to being in the Word and sitting in prayer. Our aim is to enter more and more into abandonment, whether it’s abandonment of our expectations, desires, or plans. Also, please be praying the Lord does BIG things in our lives and these precious lives we will cross paths with to increase His glory and further His Kingdom.
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As we prepare to travel to begin serving here among the streets of Thessaloniki, there are a few final things I would like to share with you:
-PRAISE THE LORD that I have been fully funded since the middle of Month 3! I know that this was by no feat of my own, but that God truly orchestrated the details in getting me to that place. I still (yes, still) thank the Lord for all of you who supported me financially and in prayer throughout my time fundraising. This month, we feel called to help the homeless population, and in doing so, to provide for the physical needs of those that the Lord brings into our lives. We are going to be starting a team GoFundMe, because we cannot do this alone. It is very humbling to have to again ask for financial help, but we are already so aware that this is going to be a month of the Lord is leading us out of our comfort zones and into further reliance on Him. I will update you as soon as we have officially created the GoFundMe, but please consider praying about helping us provide for the needs of those in Thessaloniki this month. We are excited to update you about all that your donations enable us to do!
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