Hello everyone. I am currently in Mijas, Spain where my entire squad is gathered again for a time of debrief! Also, coming up this week some of the team’s parents will be joining us for fellowship and ministry. After that, we will fly to Peru to spend our last three months of the trip in South America! This week, I have had a really productive and fruitful time processing the past few months. We have had insightful meeting times filled with reading God’s word, learning about our Kingdom identity/character, our callings after this trip, and had a chance to receive healing prayer. We also had an all-night prayer session, where I got to lead worship for my first time ever! I picked three songs and was SO nervous to sing and play guitar for everyone but it has been something I always wanted to do so I pressed past my stage fright and it was a beautiful time of acoustic worship and prayer with my teammates. God gives us gifts to be used for the Kingdom and this is one gift I want to continue to use for His Glory. I am so grateful for this time where I can have the opportunity to do that. This blog talks about more of my time in the rest of Europe for the months of July and August and what God has been speaking to me, and that is:
Sometimes you have to go through a hard and dry season before experiencing the many blessings God has for you. It’s not always fun going through that process before reaching the other side, but once you receive God’s blessing after facing the trials you can see where it can be a beautiful story of God’s love and redemption.
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
– James 1:2-4
After praying about where God would place us in Europe, we felt we were being led to follow in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul to share the Gospel so our first stop after Bulgaria was Athens, Greece. However, my team and I faced this “hard and dry season” our first week there. We had found an Airbnb in budget just outside the main city area. Upon arrival, we quickly learned there was no air conditioning which was particularly miserable in the 100-degree weather. Also, being outside of the main city area there was not as many people or churches to connect with and we noticed a pretty strong language barrier right away. On July 4th, I found myself being really homesick for the first time since leaving for the trip. It’s one of my favorite holidays back home, but this year there was not going to be any fireworks. With the extreme heat and disappointments going on all around me and with it being the first week we were getting to know how to work well in doing ministry with our new team, each of us got a little short with one another. This led to some areas of conflict between us which was also not fun to walk through and process. Then something crazy happened. After one of our worship nights, a team member said a closing prayer. She was half-joking but in her prayer, she asked for supernatural air conditioning. Literally about 10 minutes later, the power goes out. Great, now we are without our fans to keep us cool in this heat! We called the host to come and see if it could be fixed but he said there was a problem with the circuit breaker and it was not going to be fixed that night. He apologized for the inconvenience and gave the money back for our next weeks stay there. We then called Airbnb to let them know what kind of situation we were in and without hesitation they were able to put us up in a 5-star hotel right in the middle of downtown Athens AND it was going to be completely paid for! A value of over $4,000 USD for the week. It also came with free, fancy buffet breakfast every morning. I can’t tell you how happy and relieved my team and I were to receive such a blessing. Looking back, this was just one of the ways I saw how God’s love for us continues despite the hard trials. No matter what spiritual battles we may face while trying to spread the love of Jesus to those around us, He comes through with His love and His blessings. This same pattern of “trial before blessing“ happened again while my team and I were in France and then headed to Spain. We spent 15 nights straight camping and spent some hard days in physical pain walking 10 miles a day on the Camino, but after that time period was over we were able to have a beautiful time of rest at a beachfront property in Altea, Spain. Again, God’s extravagant love and provision came through for us by way of a beautiful blessing as one of my teammates had a connection with the lady who hosted that house. She is a part of a ministry there called Edgeproject that builds faith in the community through art.
For the rest of my time in Europe, I have seen where God has moved in my heart regarding His love for me as talked about in my previous blog, “Reflections from the Camino”. Another way God has shown His love for me has been by surprising me with opportunities to meet up with old friends/connections I made on previous mission trips! While in Athens, Greece I crossed paths with a girl I met on my mission trip to Cuba in 2018. In Athens, she was working with the Helenic Greek Ministry which focuses on passing out Bibles to people in the surrounding villages. Then when my team and I were in Rome, Italy I crossed paths with a girl I met on my medical mission trip to Nicaragua in 2014! It was so amazing to see both of these girls again, to catch up, and to be in awe of how we met as friends in other countries on a mission trip and here we are again reuniting halfway across the world. God is good. So, even though there may have been some challenges during this time establishing more connections with people and ministries, it has been a time of lots of self-reflection, love, and lessons. I have also gained a new fire and passion for the people around me both on my team and those who we may have the chance to serve and minister to and I am excited for all that South America will bring. Please keep us in your prayers for unity, divine encounters, and connections to be able to share more of the love of Jesus to those around us.
