I wrote this blog yesterday but since I no longer have cell phone service (actually been so nice!) and haven’t been able to connect to wifi until now, I thought I would go ahead and share.
All we heard over and over at training camp and launch was that we were going to be experiencing a year full of being uncomfortable. Although this has become a reality really quick, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world than sitting right here on my sleeping pad in the middle of Port Elizabeth South Africa. God is moving mountains already and although our circumstances may not be the best, our hearts are being filled day by day.
We took our last nice shower at the Atlanta airport Hilton Sunday morning around 10:00 to head out onto the field. It is now Wednesday afternoon and we just now arrived at our ministry home for the first month in Port Elizabeth. Yes that is 72 hours worth of travel for somebody who doesn’t necessarily like airplanes, trains, buses or all the above. Our travel has consisted of a 16 hour plane flight with a sick screaming baby sitting right behind me, a 24 hour layover in Jo Burg, 8 hours of laying on the concrete floor of the Jo Burg bus station, followed by a 17 hour overnight hot crammed bus ride to Jo Burg while our bus driver is flying through the mountains and valleys in a huge bus making close turns on every corner with nothing but a little guardrail stopping us from going over 1000s of feet down a cliff. Quite the descriptive run on sentence I know. Haha. Although the bus ride was hot and crammed in, the view of the country was absolutely beautiful and it allowed us to see his Glory in the midst everything we had going on.
In these 4 days: I have been tested more than I ever have before, been more uncomfortable than I ever have before, I have trusted more than I ever have before, been more dependent than I ever have before, felt his presence more than I ever have before, seen the Holy Spirit move more than ever before, grown into family with the 7 teammates I am living with, seen places in the world that I never have before, and met 22 of the most amazing boys that we have the privilege of working with for the month. For privacy reasons, I will not share the name of the ministry we are staying at this month and many more details about what we will be doing, but just know God is doing amazing things here and we should have many amazing stories, video, and photos to come.
You might ask yourself why somebody would sign up for a year of being uncomfortable, feeling broken, and abandoning most everything you know. That is a great question to ask, and honestly, my answer to that is still in the making. I do know one thing- Jesus brings us to places of brokenness, abandonment, and discomfort so that he can work in areas that he only can when we are there. I wait, through faith, with confident expectation and complete dependence on the Father, knowing that there is a lot of work to do this year and He has only just begun.
2 Corinthians 3:17
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
