Incase you don’t know what a wildflower is, here is what google has to say…
Wildflower- A flower of an uncultivated variety or a flower growing freely without human intervention.
To this day we still don’t know why the Lord orchestrated our team the way he did, but its truly something beautiful and something I wouldn’t have traded for the world. We are a group of girls with a bunch of different personalities fit into one team that I guess all needed to witness a similar thing from the Lord during those next 9 (7 I guess lol) months. (we always joke around and say that if we went to high school together we wouldn’t have been friends)
I mean, I like to think Wildflowers had a bitttt of a different race experience. He had something better in store for us than anything we could have dreamt up ourselves. He knew what specifically we needed to see/ experience even if it didn’t look like what we saw previous racers doing, or even what the rest of our squad was doing.
A lot of the time our ministry as a team was behind the scenes. For example, like in Jbay, we would cook for our squad, or build things to renovate the school campus we were living on, or just help Wendy out with some chores around the house.
For the first few days of ministry in Ecuador, we were pranked by the Lord… thinking ministry was going to look very similar to how it was in Jefferys Bay again. We stayed at home and cooked for our squad, gardened for Mabe and Fabi, or just tidied up around the house once again. Later after helping teach English for a while at our first school we ended ministry in Ecuador at our second school, sitting in the teachers lounge grading papers for most of the day just as a team.
(The bodes was completely different and we were going out in the village since the day we got there… but of course we only had a couple short weeks there lol.)
AnYwAyS… pretty much what I’m trying to say is that for ministry we were never really in the spot light. We had to learn different lessons than a lot of our squadmates. Things like: were not on this mission trip to take pictures with cute African kids or see physical miracles in Ecuador… we came to be vessels and allow Jesus to move through us the way HE wants to.
We learned that God, just wants to spend time with us. Especially in Jbay, we had to come to terms with the fact that we might not like ministry… but we do love God lol. I will never forget this analogy Marissa gave us during our month 3 debrief. She said “If your friend calls you to come over and help her move, you don’t go over because you love moving stuff, you go over because you love your friend.” and thats what Jbay ministry was for us. We didn’t necessarily love picking up rocks or sanding the same piece of wood all day long… but the Lord was just trying to get us in a space where we could simply jus be with him and spend time with each other. How special is that…. If anything, that almost makes me feel like I have my own spot light!
Well I guess what I’m trying to say is that our team name, Wildflowers, couldn’t have been a more perfect fit for us. Honestly, we picked this name kinda randomly at training camp… and everyone had their own reasons why they liked it … but I think now after the race it has a different meaning that we all can find special.
Wildflowers often go unseen. They are constantly reflecting Jesus in all of his beauty but don’t need recognition or to be put in some sort of bouquet for people to see.
I could make that a whole lot longer cause once I start typing these things its hard for me to stop lol. But I think it’s as simple as that.
My Wildflowers are doing their best to reflect Jesus in all of his beauty everyday even if they don’t get recognition from it… even if they don’t get that tingly good feeling inside… even if the Lord calls other people to do things that might look more appealing. My team and I are deeply rooted in an intimate relationship with the our Father and no worldly pleasures mean more to us then solely spending time with our Dad.
And how stinking cool is that…?! That long before we even launched for the World Race the Lord was already telling our team what lied ahead of us. He’s not a God of sneakiness or deception.
He’s a God that LOVES us way more than we will ever know. …even if its hard to see sometimes…
(Im oh so very thankful for my Wildflowers and that we got to do life together. I love you guys <3)
