Jeffreys Bay. J-Bay.
Wow! God has left me totally awestruck by His goodness and His beauty already this month. As I sit here at the kitchen island in our house, looking around at our bedroom with our bunk beds (yes, beds! Such a blessing!) our hot showers and the curtains billowing in the salty ocean breeze, I can’t help but feel loved and papered by my Creator. We’re at a camp this month, and if you have this vision of the woods, cabins/tents and seclusion, think again. We are a two-minute walk from the ocean where dolphins play in the waves, there are cute coffee shops along the beach and Billabong factories/shops, Rip Curl shops and just about any other surf brand you can imagine (this is where the world surf competition is held!). It’s amazing, just amazing. To top it all off, our ministry is to be camp counselors! If you know me well enough you know that I loved camp growing up and when I was old enough I wanted to make that step to be a counselor, but unfortunately that was not God’s plan for me at the time. This month that “not now” became a strong “yes.” We just finished our first weekend camp. The kids went home about three hours ago, and I’m just so happy; tired, but happy. We started off on Friday. We got our campers and split into groups, one leader to about eleven campers. This is my group!
Five of those girls were also in my room and the other two girls were in the adjoining room, so I was blessed to be able to spend a lot of time getting to know them. We did some worship… camp worship that is. And here that means the monkey. (look up that video on youtube!)
We played a ton of games, and had a great time with everything, really. It was amazing to be able to fill a role I had so long desired to fill. The girls in my room said I was like an older sister and that they would miss me. It meant a lot to me; I loved it all. We have two more camps while we’re here and I’m already sad that this is not a more long-term thing. After a month that, despite the incredible people, was really hard for me (see my “I hate the world race” blog) I feel so surrounded by Gods love and provision. But this feeling also brings on guilt. Why, you ask? Well because it, yet again, brings to light my mis-trust of God. I knew I was not entitled to a ministry schedule or personal space (see my blogs “story of the entitled world racer” and “S T R I K E ! ! !” to hear about my journey with entitlement and about my month in Botswana) but I still had this underlying feeling of being somewhat abandoned by God last month. A fact that I didn’t realize until I got here and felt so surrounded by God. Last month we had these flyers or “tracks” that we used for evangelism and one of the sections talks about not letting your feelings dictate your faith in God. Because like most of us probably know its easy to have faith when you feel Gods love, when you feel Him with you there is little room for doubt. When you don’t “feel” him is when I get into trouble. Doubt, frustration, even contempt are things that the devil whispers to me in these moments when my feelings are not being satisfied. When my faith is weak, because I have let it be attached to my feelings AGAIN.
This is one of those lessons that is hard to put into practice because right now I find myself in a place of feeling His love and provision. I’m not sure what my next months hold or even the rest of my life, but I know its in those non-feeling moments that the “yes” is hardest, but it is also the most necessary. So if I could ask you to be praying for that for me that would be awesome. As always I love you all.
Thanks for stopping by,
Lyndie
