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     As I write this, I am sitting in an airport in Cyprus getting ready to head to Jordan. We have reached the end of month four and are about to begin month five. I seriously can’t believe how fast time is moving. In one sense, it seems like the days go by so slowly. But then I pull out my calendar and realize that weeks have gone by.

   This past month in Cyprus has been one of my favorites. My team saw God provide in ways I never thought possible. We landed in Cyprus with no host, no housing, and no where to go. We ended the month celebrating Thanksgiving in our mansion with 20 new friends that we made during the month.

I remember that first day when we landed in Larnaca and had no where to go. I had just come off of a long travel day and had pulled an all-nighter in London. The exhaustion had caught up with me and I couldn’t stop crying, I was just so tired. I felt so faithless in that moment and doubted that God would actually come through for us.

But, He did come through. And here’s how:

Housing.

First, we found an airbnb in Limassol (the city we were supposed to be in) for a week and our host finally responded to our request. When we met her to get the key, she said we were lucky that she saw our request because she hadn’t checked her email in two weeks.

Then, we met someone at church who had a free place for our whole team to stay for the rest of the month. This house just so happened to be a mansion with four bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen full of spices, closets with hangers, and a balcony all to myself to sit and watch the sunrise on. Oh, and it came with a free vehicle.

The people.

God blessed us with so many amazing friends this month. Our “host” was an amazing family who run a ministry to reach people for Christ in the Middle East through music and video productions. We got to help with this ministry by creating a newsletter and website for them.

Then we met this amazing girl named Natalia. She is a Greek Cypriot from the UK who lives in Cyprus as a missionary. And let me tell you, she has such a passionate heart for the Lord. Her friendship this month was such an encouragement to me and our squad.

At the end of the month, we got to invite 20 of our new friends over to our “house” for dinner. We went around the table and shared what we were thankful for and ended the night in worship.

Debrief.

As logistics coordinator for the squad (with my amazing partner, Nathan) our job is to find the location and housing for the squad for debrief. This happens five times throughout the race. At the beginning of November, we found a location for all 28 of us. We paid for the house and found separate housing for the staff flying in near our location. Now, this house would have worked just fine, the only thing was that it did not have enough beds for all 28 of us. This wasn’t really that big of a deal because we have spent the entire race staying in places without enough beds. But, on one Tuesday morning about five days before debrief, I started praying that the debrief would be restful and rejuvenating for everyone. A few hours after praying that prayer, I received an email that our host had cancelled on us. This seemed to be a common theme throughout our month in Cyprus.

I quickly called Nathan, who was in a different city about an hour away, and let him know what had happened. He dropped everything he was doing and caught a bus to Limassol. That night, we sat down and started searching for a new place to house the entire squad. As we were looking, we found a hotel on the beach that would fit all 28 of us with enough beds that was UNDER budget. What in the world? This place had two pools, a gym, a place we could hold group meetings in for free, and it was literally right on the beach. God is so good.

But that’s not all. Since my housing on airbnb got cancelled, they sent me a full refund, but it was supposedly going to take 5-15 days before the money would show back up in my account. This was a slight problem because the office in Gainesville couldn’t load any money on my account for a week because Thanksgiving break had just started and I needed to pay for this new place we needed to book. So what did we do? We prayed. And guess what? The money showed up in my account in less than 10 hours. God is so good.

So we get to debrief and the staff housing (which is separate from the squad housing) is now about a 25-minute walk from our new hotel. Nathan and I go to check in to the hotel and apartment for the staff and discover that we couldn’t get the key to one place and the other place was literally boarded up. So, we made a last-minute decision and moved the staff over to our new place, which ended up working out really well for the whole squad.

Throughout the entire planning process of debrief, I saw God move in amazing ways. From moving our squad to a new place that allowed everyone to get rest to putting the money back in my account in less than 10 hours—God is good.

The biggest thing I’m learning is that God is good and He delights in giving us good gifts. I love how God knows me so well that He even provided hangers in a closet this month. That may not seem like a big deal, but to someone who loves consistency and hates packing up every few weeks, that little thing made my heart so happy.

God is teaching me to ask. Just ask. No matter how big or how small or how silly it may seem. And then watch Him answer. Because he loves giving good gifts.

He is a good, good Father.