This month has gotten off to an interesting start to say the least. I just came from Ukraine and I absolutely loved it there. I had a great month full of relationships, jesus, and adventure. It was a place I wasn’t ready to leave yet, but Ashley (my squads mentor) said we couldn’t stay sooo here we are.
We arrived to this compound we are living in (in Moldova) around 3 or 4 am? We were super out of it when we arrived. We put our things in our room and passed out. The next day we woke up and had a few meetings. We knew that the place we were coming into was going to be pretty interesting. We had read that past racers were not allowed to leave the grounds of the compound because of the situation that the government has with the church. (not leaving the grounds because of safety is nothing new by the way.. that’s how it was month 1 as well. don’t freak out.) We ended up finding out that not leaving was still a rule and that we were “not in Kansas anymore.”
My team had just rolled out of a month of complete freedom into a month that was super structured. I don’t think structure is a bad thing, but after last month it just took a little getting used to. So we can’t leave? That’s fine. We can do that. But then it just started to roll downhill. We were expecting to teach english classes everyday. Turns out that is not our main ministry of the month. We would only do that for a hour a few days a week. What we would actually be doing was filling holes with dirt…
I was like that’s fine. Holes. Dirt. Check. After a few days, it got tiring. 9-5. Hot sun. Skin burned. Patience started to get a little thinner. Ok, God.. what are we doing here. How in the heck is this bringing kingdom. No one knows we are here. No one can speak english so we can really only talk within our group of 7.. What’s going on?
We all felt this way. Each and every one of us. Just wishing we could go back to last month or maybe moving on to the next month. This is not healthy by the way. We were upset to say the least. Throwing a pity party for 7. As I was filling up these holes, I was chatting with Leah. At least she speaks english, you know? We were talking about our frustrations and discussing what the Lord could possibly be doing through us and I got this overwhelming sense of peace. The Holy Spirit started to calm me down.
Yes, this month is hard. Not how I imagined month 10 going, but we are here for a reason. It might not even be a big reason. But heck, let’s make our time here worth it. I set an alarm on my phone for 4 pm each day to pray for my friends who have no relationship with God or a difficult one. I pray for my families health and my friends education. I have set aside time each day to pray for them. I wake up early to dive into scripture. I have been tearing through the word each morning, asking my teammates questions while I still have them here to ask. My team works out 5 out of 7 days to train for the Camino next month. We will be walking 10-14 miles per day for 10 days. We wake up as a team and worship 2 times a week. Then we go out everyday to do whatever they ask us to do. AND IT’S HARD WORK.
We can’t really see the fruits of our labor here. I don’t know if we will see lives changed. I don’t know that when we leave here we will understand why the Lord placed us here.
What I do know is that we pushed. We chased after the Lord. We poured into each other and we made the most of our time here. That’s all we can really do sometimes.
Let’s make our time worth it.
