23, wow I have a feeling you’re going to be something so special. I mean it’s only been 42 hours & I’ve already seen God’s blessings poured out over my team & I, as if promising He’ll take good care of us this next year.
The beauty of being on Expedition squad is that we get a lot of freedom in the countries we live in. Sometimes we’ll have hosts, sometimes we wont & when we don’t it’s up to our team make connections, find housing, & basically establish a life & a daily routine within the community around us. Because our teams are currently located in a closed country, this is what most of our work will look like these next 6 weeks. Meeting women in local markets & café’s, inviting them over to our home to cook with us, & get to know them & love them as Jesus would.
I was a little nervous about being on expedition squad for this very reason. I have never had this much freedom in working in ministry before. But I have already found that the less you plan, the more room there is for God to work. When it comes to being used by Him, He doesn’t have boundaries. I think I get nervous & just make them for myself, but He delights when we smash them & simply say “okay God, how can I be used by you today?”
The day before my birthday my team & I said our sad goodbyes to Spain & traveled to our next destination in North Africa. The culture in this country is unlike anything I have ever experienced & my first 24 hours here were pretty uncomfortable. Culture shock is a real thing & I was experiencing it like never before. Like I mentioned these next six weeks would look pretty flexible, so the only thing we new for sure was the city we were placed in. As we got our hostel for the night we started to do more research on housing, praying praying praying that we would find a home we could call our own, close to the city, & within our budget, but so far it was proving to be pretty difficult.
I went to bed that night frustrated. This new culture was wild & I was struggling to see the beauty in it, I missed the little luxuries of Spain that I had gotten used to, & I was getting really tired of having to pack up my bag & travel to a new place every morning. I laid my head down that night venting to God about how uncomfortable I was here & immediately He reminded me of my blog post “stepping out of the boat,” a blog I had written about fundraising & the beauty of stepping out of your comfort zone & trusting the Lord.
“Practice what ya preach” I heard Him say.
Mhhm, okay, got it.
From then on, I’ve been praying to see this country the way He see’s it. Even though it is so vastly different from America, these people are His creation & He delights in them. He is the one who created different cultures & I firmly believe that I have something to learn here. I also told God that all I wanted for my birthday was a home. And guess what! The morning on the 23rd I woke up 23, to a message saying someone had generously accepted our offer on the sweetest, little apartment. I mean, talk about a golden birthday. We immediately boarded a train & headed to our new home for the next six weeks.
Awaiting our arrival was the owner’s wife, greeting us with fresh mint tea on the stove. She was kind & gentle & when she found out it was my birthday she took us to a local market to buy me a cake! God truly does go above & beyond our requests.
So here we are. Getting settled into our new home & the new culture, full of mint tea & kind hospitality. I’m so ready to see what God does not only in these next 6 weeks, but also in this next year of my life. I want 23 to look like loving more radically, living more selflessly, & embracing all different kinds of life with a joy & a trust in God’s plan.
*** Thank you all for the birthday wishes, for reading, for faithfully following my journey & for constantly pouring out love & encouragement! Trust me, your words mean the whole world to me!
IMG_0641 from Landry Petersen on Vimeo.
