So I’ve been overseas for roughly 50 days now (time goes by crazy fast) and I know it’s been a while since my last blog post so I wanted to share something that happened where the Holy Spirit showed up confirming himself to me. Our whole squad of 50 people went to Montenegro and took some time off of ministry to just rest and meet back up with our squad mates we haven’t seen in a while. This is called a debrief and we have one in each country we’re in and they last 6 days.
We arrived to the hostel in Montenegro after a long 5 hour bus ride through the mountains that overlooked the Adriatic Sea. The hostel had such a cool vibe and all the workers there were super nice and welcoming. We got to explore the city so my friends and I went downtown to the port and looked through the shops, after doing this for a while, it was time to go and as we were walking back to the hostel being late for dinner, we came across a cheerful woman with her two nephews. We talked to her for a bit exchanging names and planned on getting coffee the next day. Her name is Nadja and she was so excited to meet us and had such a child like spirit. The next day came and we walked to a beautiful cafe overlooking the sea and the mountains and got coffee with her. The whole time she kept saying “thank you”, “I love you guys so much”, “thank you God!”. And when I say the whole time, I mean the whole time. She was overjoyed because we were spending time with her. At times she’d tear up and then stop herself by saying “thank you guys so much”. We sometimes didn’t know how to respond to all her energy so we would still embrace her telling her we love her too and that she’s amazing because honestly she really was. We finished up our drinks and realized It was time to go back to the hostel and on the walk back, she invited us into her home for some Turkish coffee. Of course we said yes because who doesn’t love another round of coffee? She told us to sit, still saying “thank you guys!” “I love you guys so much!” “thank you God!”, she came out with little gifts and gave each of us one. She then gave my friend Abigail a shirt, she wanted to give some more clothes and this made her go through all of her clothes. She pulled out a blue dress and said “this is my favorite blue dress, I love this dress!” Then showed us a picture of her in the blue dress and just really emphasized how much this dress meant to her (this will all make sense in a second). Nadja had heard Abigail sing earlier so she asked her to sing again, so she turned on some praise and worship music and started singing. We all started singing and Nadja said “thank you guys so much” and began to cry. She was weeping and we all asked her if we could pray for her, Nadja said yes and as we were praying for her, we could feel the Holy Spirit in the room. While praying for her, something clicked in my mind. I just sort of sat back in awe. The blue dress made sense to me.
I remembered how in the first month of being in Lezhé, I prayed and asked God to show me something; I asked him to give me a word or an image so I could know how to act or show his love. I remembered after asking God, I got an image of a blue dress. (I was going through my journal a couple days ago and found the exact day when I wrote this down) I remember after getting this image, I’d keep my eyes open for a blue dress and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. I’d see a blue dress in a shop here or there and think I’d have to go to it but nothing ever happened. I ended up forgetting about it after a couple of weeks. But while I was praying for Nadja, I realized she was the woman with the blue dress. This blew my mind. I didn’t have to do anything except show love to her. It was so cool experiencing the Holy Spirit when we weren’t even doing ministry. The Holy Spirit arrived on a debrief. God fulfilled his promise to me by putting Nadja in my life. I’ve been praying for experiences like this since before leaving for Albania and I’ve learned that God answers these prayers. You have to live in faith. Faith can seem crazy at times, for example: having the faith that I can raise $14,000. When you legitimately put all your faith into God, he provides. Right now I’m at $10,400 and honestly when I first started fundraising, if you were to ask me how I was going to do it, I’d tell you that I have no clue but that I believe that God will provide and look at where I am now! I still don’t know how I’ll raise the next amount but I know it will be provided. God has shown his love for me countless times now and I still have doubts but I know at the end of the day, when I believe, I will receive.
Anyways that was just an experience that happened two weeks ago. There will be a blog to come about what I’m actually doing ministry wise. A prayer request would be for more experiences like this to happen and that I will be fully funded by November. Thank you and I love you all:)
here are some photos of Montenegro, the hostel and my pals
