Never have I ever encountered the Lord like I have the past 6 months of being on the race. He has turned my world upside down and made me fall more and more in love with him each month. The first four months of the race were hard, but because of that I had to lean to him for comfort as all other comforts were stripped away and because of those times my relationship with him has grown immensely.
There are times though, that life is still hard, I still doubt and fight off lies. Life hasn’t gotten easier, but I have been able to lean into the Lord to get me through those hard times.
The race has given me so many new normals, so when I got the email that Macedonia, month 7 of the race was going to be an ATL month, fear immediately filled me. ATL means Ask the Lord, which means that the team does not have a set ministry, but we are to ATL where he wants us to go and what he wants us to do.
Intimidating right?
The questions immediately started going through my head. What if all 7 of us get different answers. What if we all heard to go somewhere different and to do different things? What does a month like this look like and where do we even begin? What do you mean we just ATL and everything will fall into place, we only have 2 days to make these things happen.
BUT….
We serve a God that is all knowing and answers all prayers. Just before we met as a team to discuss what was happening this month I began praying that our team would just hear his voice clearly, and that what each one of us gets would be a piece of the puzzle rather than completely different answers or different directions. I didn’t know what to expect, but the Lord blew my expectations out of the water.
We were given 2 hours to get with our team and spend time asking what the next month was to look like, so my team and I got together and spent 30 min sitting quietly and praying, asking the Lord where he wanted us to be this next month.
AND…
The Lord had used each of us and allowed us to piece the puzzle together. I wish I could give you the descriptions of what each of us got, but I will summarize what we got.
We all got:
- Relationships
- Stay in Macedonia
- Praying
- Water
- Train
- Orhid
- Bringing light to dark places
- He is bigger than just Macedonia
- Serving
Orhid is a city in Macedonia that we all wanted to visit because it is absolutely beautiful, but we didn’t want our selfish desire to depict where we went. We decided to look at the meaning of the word.
Orhid is Macedonia’s chief resort, it is a tourist and commercial centre, as well as a railroad terminus.
Wow, that is crazy. Orhid is a city that sits upon a huge lake (water), is in Macedonia (Stay in Macedonia), is a railroad terminus (Train) and is a huge tourist centre (relationships, bigger than Macedonia). It was clear that the Lord was calling us to Orhid and that we weren’t just going because we wanted to.
BUT….
The Lord did not stop there. The next step was to find a place to stay in budget. This is incredibly hard when you are heading into a big tourist city in high travel season on our small budget. We looked for hours and could not find a spot that could sleep all 7 of us and stay in budget. We messaged a few places to get them lowered and were gifted a young man who couldn’t make his apartment fit our budget, but who generously asked around for us and found an apartment for LESS than our budget if we paid cash. Cash was better for us anyways, but he handled it all even without us asking him too. He was a life saver and definitely a gift from God. He than met us at the bus station upon arrival and brought us straight to our house, it was the easiest travel day I have experienced so far.
The Lord has continuously been showing us that we are where we need to be and has provided everything we needed.
After settling in we headed out to dinner and came upon the square, where there was a folk festival going on. I heard the Lord tell me to pray big things, pray for more than just Macedonia, he didn’t want us to leave, but he didn’t want me to constrict him. Low and behold he brought us across this folk festival that had people performing that represented countries all across Europe! Since last night we have come across a man from Czech Republic, Hungary, USA and Macedonia.
WOW, the Lord is amazing.
Another crazy thing is that before leaving the capital city, our amazing coach Toni was telling us what the Lord was speaking to her over our team. She told us amazing things, but one thing was that people are going to see us and tell us that they recognize us. In the one and a half days that we have been here, we have come across two different people who said that they thought they have seen at least one person in our group before! I am standing in awe of our Father!
God answers and we just have to sit still long enough to hear him!
I can’t wait to see how the rest of this month goes and see what else the Lord will do for us!
Until next time,
Quinn
