“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3
This week, my team worked hard here running a Vacation Bible School for the church we are partnered with for our stay here in Albania! It was SO fun and just so cool to see all of the little ones here and get to know them. We got to talk to them about the Lord, do fun crafts, games, snacks, and a lot of singing and dancing. It was just so refreshing to see them so happy and ready for anything that was thrown at them. Their perspective on things is just mind-blowing sometimes. Sometimes I wish I still had the mindset of a child, untouched and not tarnished from experiences in the world but of course those things have shaped me and made me who I am in Christ and my identity in Him, what they are. SO, in the mix of all the fun, there was struggle but so much realization and learning in the challenge.
Grace.
I met her when she was assigned to my team, the Green Team, for VBS. SUCH a cutie. Kind of shy at first but, boy, did she surprise us all.
Grace was spunky, she was joyful, she was innocent. She saw life through the eyes of a child (probably because she was “5 and half” like she told me over and over again), she saw this life in total innocence and with openness and simpleness. It was beautiful. She had her own perspective, different than my own.
Come Friday, we all needed grace in order to work with Grace. Her boldness and her personality had us running all over trying to keep her under control. She blew in our faces, she wanted to use every sticker we had to decorate her crafts, she wanted to help the other kids and make their crafts look way better so she took them and added her finishing touches… yeah they didn’t really like that too much. Some how, for some reason, Grace was attached to me… She drew up both of my arms and all in on my hands with blue pen, she argued with me that craft time needed to be just a little longer, she wanted to play the piano and the drums during the message. She wanted to be free… And I wanted patience and a nice nap. What I really needed was different. I needed to show grace to Grace.
Grace.
The love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not because of anything we have done to earn it.
Grace.
Something we can show others. Something that is so hard to show others sometimes.
Its a high calling. Its showing someone love because YOU are loved by the One who loves the best.
Extending it to someone that doesn’t deserve it, man, isn’t that a lot like what we get every day? We are shown favor when we don’t deserve it at all and it is incredibly freeing. Our God loves us so much and shows us so much grace that we get to live a life that we do because of it. That blows my mind.
In showing the grace we are given by God every single day, we start to experience the JOY of our Father in ways we couldn’t even imagine.
Showing grace and working on showing grace to Grace, I saw the joy that came out of it. Childlike joy. A different perspective. A freeing perspective. I saw where I needed to give MORE grace. Life is better when its free. We are FREE because of the mercy, love, and GRACE we are given every single day. When we change our mindset from our adult, 9-5 mindset to a joyful, innocent, bold, openminded, childlike mindset, thats when we get to see more of the character of the One who gave grace first.
Team Tied is growing, y’all! I’m growing! This experience is more than I could’ve imagined myself doing a year ago. But this experience is also the only place I can imagine myself right now. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than right here, being challenged and taught more than I could have ever imagined or picked for myself. Its not always super fun, but it is SO worth it.
With that being said, thank you so much for all of your support! I have officially been away from home for a month TODAY! Its been hard. I miss my family and my friends and my comfortability but like I said, I wouldn’t change a single thing about this crazy life journey that the Lord has put me in the middle of right now.
I am currently NOT fully funded and have just a little over $2,000 left in order to continue on this journey SO, if you would like to donate to keep me here, or want to share this with your friends, your family, whoever you want, PLEASE do!! Any amount helps and is so so so appreciated, words can’t even say.
Thank you for all of your love and support on my journey so far. Words will never be able to fully express just how grateful and thankful I am for you guys. You are such a blessing.
More updates coming soon!!!!
Love you guys!!
Mckayla
