Since my last blog only featured pictures, I decided to give you all some writing as well…so here’s month 1 in review
Wow. What a month this was. I have learned so much about myself, my team, and about what the Lord has to say about his people. Month 1 was filled with lots of joy as I continued to grow in my relationship with the lord, and began to take steps in obedience in many different areas. It was filled with lots of hot, sweaty days, pulling weeds, painting, getting to know my team on a deeper level, and getting to know, my squad.
One thing that we do here on the race, is once a week our team gets together and gives each other feedback on what we see in each other and try to call each other higher. I have never really done this, and at first, I did not like the idea of other people telling me what I needed to do better. However, on second thought, it has been one of my favorite things so far. While yes, some of the feedback is a little hard to swallow, all of the feedback has been really helpful and has taught me a lot of things that I would otherwise have not addressed or would have gone unnoticed. It has shown me that my team really does value me and that I’m also doing a lot of things right.
Along with the good days, there were also some not so good days, as expected. Those were the days when all I wanted to do was go get wifi and call home, go to the store and get some good snacks, and not talk to anybody. Through those bad days, I learned that all of those remedies are temporary and would not cure my desire to escape. Oddly enough I found that the only thing that would cure my desire was investing in my community, and diving deeper in my relationship with the Father. Another thing that has been difficult is learning to walk in obedience with the Father. Before the race it was I lived a “my way or the highway” mentality where I never heard the voice of God or was down to simply obey Him. It has truly been a blessing to see the fruits of obedience. I have learned that he rewards small obedience with more and more fruit each time and it is nothing short of remarkable.
This past week our whole team went to the city of Siem Reap for our month 1 debrief where we did a lot of resting and reflecting on the month that was and talked about what went well and what didn’t. A few nights we got to go out into the city and explore. On the last night, I was walking around with my teammate Parker (you should go check out his blog on the left of this page), Eliza and Stephanie when this girl stopped me and asked if we were from the World Race. She said that she recognized Parker from a picture that I took of him that ended up on the World Race’s Instagram. She said she was considering signing up and asked us a bunch of questions and then we got to pray for her and told her that this was God telling her to do it! It was a really special moment that we go to share with her and my favorite part of debrief. It was definitely a God moment!!
We have now returned to Battambang where this whole journey started along with 2 other teams to continue building relationships and loving on Gods people here in this city. We aren’t sure what that will look like yet so stay tuned for more updates!!
Don’t forget you can also follow along on my Instagram where I post regular updates as well!
@SAMADAMSPHOTO
