I am sitting in the airport. I am sitting in the airport and I am heading to Tokyo.
Yea baby!! We are going straight from Atlanta to Tokyo and then from Tokyo to Manila, Philippines. Is this real life?
I do not have the time nor will I use too much space explaining what went down at Launch, but it was awesome. Over the past few days, I felt my heart expand more and more with love for my beautiful, wonderful squad and my amazingly, great team. We received so much training, we had time with our teams, we had a $5/day budget, we sang, we prayed, we were challenged, we were encouraged, and we were empowered.
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One thing that I want to highlight is yesterday’s ATL. Although ATL is an abbreviation for Atlanta, in this case it stood for Ask The Lord. As teams, we prayed and asked God to lead us and guide us as we went out into the community to witness or pray or do whatever He asked us to do. And so we went, all together, and we began to walk and walk and walk. We had were looking for certain buildings while trying to be open and listen to God about where to go, but we weren’t seeing what we expected and at this point, I was just thirsty. So we stopped at a Subway and a few of us bought a Dasani water and that’s when we had the opportunity to meet Adrian.
Adrian was working the register at the Subway and Helene being the bold woman of God that she is, started the conversation and asked if we could pray for him for anything and he shared a little bit about his ambitions and goals and we got to pray for him right there. Full of Jesus juice and joy, we continued walking on, no longer focusing on the heat, but delighting in the breeze, knowing that God was with us.
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Before long, we had come upon Precious, a young, Black woman, and a little 2-year old, Kylee, waiting at the bus stop. Once again, Helene engaged them and we had the privilege of laying hands on her and praying for her and for her mother who had heart problems. So great! At this point, my soul is rejoicing. This is awesome! ATL wasn’t mystical and “supernatural” like I had made it to be in my head. It was walking in the earth with the authority and love that we were given and showing up and loving people where they are.
So on we walk and the breeze of God is just blowing over our souls and we pass by a car wash. This time Ekow takes the plunge. Woohoo! This is electrifying! We end up getting a mini-sermon from the one and only Donald, who is a 68 year-old, Black man who works 7 days/wk and had been dead for a minute and a half in 1995, but God brought him back. Oh yes, this man could talk and he had a lot to say. He encouraged and challenged us on our journey and praised God profusely and then allowed us to pray for his wife who suffered from nerve damage. Umm, thank you Jesus for the opportunity to love Your people.
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Time was winding down, so we headed back to the hotel so I could get to my Treasurer meeting (you can pray for me about being a good treasurer thanks!) and I felt like my soul was full. I felt like I could relate to the disciples who Jesus sent out two by two. I felt like God wanted me to understand that He loves His people and He wants us to see them, like really see them. See their pain, see their goals, see their hurt, see their excitement, see their souls and value them. He does not want us to just walk by them or shy away from them, He wants us to boldly approach them full of love knowing that we have something amazing to offer-not a Dasani water from Subway, but the water that never runs out.
Jesus, thank you for trusting us to love your people. We stand amazed by You. You are cool, man. So I challenge you to grab a partner and ATL! Tell me how it goes 🙂
