LEAVING ALBANIA: I didn’t think that it would be hard saying goodbye to what had been my home for 2 and ½ months because God had been preparing my heart for the next that was to come. I’m normally not one to enjoy change but I was ready for it. Though when the time came it was a lot harder than I had thought. It started hitting me that I was most likely never going to be in this place again, and if for some reason I do it still won’t be the same. I won’t be 18. I won’t be traveling the world with 6 strangers who became family. I won’t be there for the same length of time doing what I was doing. And the people will have changed over time. The Tirana, Albania I lived in will remain in memories but no matter what it will never be the same. All of these thoughts started hitting me the morning me and my team were getting ready to leave to go to mini squad debrief in Lezha. And it was a hard thing to have hit me. Because of the sweet people and memories that will stay in my heart from that wonderful little place that became a home for me. Then it became time for me and my team to leave and we decided we needed to tell the little kids bye, so we literally ran to the church. But once we got there we were greeted by emptiness, the kids weren’t there. So we decided to run up and down the streets yelling their names. Some came out of their houses and we were lucky enough to tell them goodbye and hug them one last time. For me there was one little girl that was my girl and her face will forever be engraved on my heart. Her name was Ulta. I spent hours teaching her English and loving on her and having her be such a radiate light in my months there. I was hoping that she would be one of the little faces to run out of their house, but she didn’t. And at this realization I started sobbing and yelling her name louder and louder while wondering down the streets of Albania. Until the time came where we actually couldn’t stay any longer. And that’s when I realized not only will I never have that moment back but I had to leave her without any sort of goodbye or last hug or last anything and it kills me. She was my Albanian girl and I left her. BACK TO THE START: Being back in Lezha, Albania with the entire squad for three days was weird. This was mostly because we were literally back to where we all started the race together and lived for the first two weeks. It was being there that I realized just how quickly three months went by. I did a lot of thinking those three days being there. Over the past three months, how quickly the race is going by so far, how far friendships and even myself have come, and just of how this season of life was ending and how the next would begin within a matter of hours. Throughout all of this I couldn’t help but realize that for once in my life when I would be and was thinking back over the Albanian season of life I lived I had no regrets what so ever. I didn’t wish I had done something differently, I didn’t think I missed an opportunity or experience, and I didn’t think I cheated myself out of something better. I had lived three months exactly the best I could have, and I wouldn’t have changed a single moment. That was insane for me to realize, because I can honestly say that I have always regretted some portion of a season of my life. I have always let myself down and have always wished for more or better. Yet God gave me three months of pure bliss with him. That bliss wasn’t always easy and it was hard and full of days where sometimes the race wasn’t what I wanted, but as a whole it was a dream. I gave every day my all and he was a significant part of it all. NO RAGRETS MY FIRST NAME SHOULD BE JANE: My first name should be Jane as in Jane from Tarzan… because my new home for the next three months in San Mateo, Rizal is in the mountainous jungle of the Philippines and it literally looks like a real live version of where Tarzan took place. It is 30/45 minutes away from wifi which is at one of the ‘’small’’ malls of Manila. It is a 1 to 5 hours away from Manila depending on traffic. I am staying at a camp/ micro farm that is part of Grow International Ministries. Our host are the Mike and Natalie Bucher and they are probably the coolest people ever! They have five kids, are from the states, and run their ministry in such a way that if or when they are called to leave it will still be able to function because they empower the Filipino people and really make it all for them and their community. One of the ways that they do this is by having a family live and run the camp, which me and my team are so blessed to stay at. There’s the pastor, his wife who we call Mamma Joe (she cooks all our meals), and their two daughters (one of which is Jennifer and gets us to do Zumba with her). My schedule here is nothing like it has ever been. I wake up at 5:30 every morning and am doing manual labor by 8:30, having a lunch break at 12, then going back to ministry from 2-6 or whenever we are done, having dinner, and going to sleep by 9 or 10. It is a schedule that in the mini moments of free time that I have are 95% of the time spent in my eno on the porch my team all shares studying the bible and sometimes napping. I wake up every morning to a crazy view of the mountains with fog all throughout them and the jungle noises filling up the air. I don’t talk to anyone that I don’t see face to face (no wifi remember) and for the first time in a long time I find myself learning and acting out what it means to live simply day to day with God rather than putting my focus on the big picture of things. This is something he showed me I needed to work on in Albania, and somewhere along him telling me that, he has made me do exactly that. It’s a simple life I live, working, eating, reading my bible. It isn’t what I thought my time in the Philippines would look like, and it isn’t as boring as what it almost sounds like. Instead it is joy filled and it is light. I am not burdened. I am able to wake up and here God say and this is another day with me and walk beside him every step of everyday and I feel it as I move. I get to literally be the hands and feet that help and serve the community I am in, and it’s so far been refreshing and a blessing. GOD LOVES CONNECTION: I started this blog because I wanted to update you on how my life has been on the race recently through the transitioning of countries, but I also didn’t have one big lesson I had learned. Instead I had small moments through my travels of getting to where I am now on my heart that are honestly things I will never forget. And as I started writing this I didn’t realize that they all connected, but they do through a sentence that God gave me earlier this past week in San Mateo. That sentence is: IMAGINE WHAT I WOULD DO FOR YOU. Last Wednesday was November 9. To many people this is just a normal Wednesday in November or just a day that passes. To me and my family it’s a day to celebrate one of the most loving and selfless women alive… it’s my mom’s birthday. And for the first time in 18 years I was going to miss it but not only miss it I was going and was thousands of miles away with a 13-hour time difference, a full day of ministry meaning no time to go get wifi, and a sadness on my heart for missing family and wishing that just today I wasn’t where I was. Yet after ministry the Pastor offered to drive me on his moto with Jennifer to an internet shack which was about 20 minutes away. I wasn’t going to be able to talk to my mom how I thought or had wanted but this little hole in the wall shack offered me the ability to get one of their computers and facebook message her. On the ride there passing the mountains and grass and the greens of the jungle zooming down curvy roads with him and Jen I thought to myself this is kinda crazy. I am literally going to a shack that has some computers that are ancient and only allows me to get on facebook to send one message to my mom and I’m going to do this by flying down roads on a moto that should probably only fit two people but there are three on it. But while I was thinking all of this I was thinking well it is crazy but I would do it all again because I love my mom. I wouldn’t change anything of this crazy experience because of what she means to me. And so distinctly I heard God say okay, “SO IMAGINE WHAT I WOULD DO FOR YOU”. In that moment I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmingly loved, I almost cried honestly. It was such a sweet moment of realizing in an instant that all the crazy things I would do for someone don’t even compare to what he would do for me and while I can imagine what he would do for me the sentence itself the way he told me showed me I will never fully understand which just shows even more love and more of his character. Then while writing all my other encounters I realize they all connect to that same phrase. I was sobbing yelling up and down street in Albania because I loved a little girl so much that I wanted her to be with me. God would do this and more just for my heart when I stray or struggle, but unlike me he never has to walk away which goes into the imagine what I would do for you. Its more than what I was able or willing to do to find her. I looked back on three months of life and realized that I was able to live a short season of life without any sort of regrets. God would make it possible for me to raise $14,000+ to travel to three different countries for a total of nine months just to show and start giving me life with him that is full of no regrets. And I didn’t even realize that I needed that until he showed me. I became Jane from Tarzan and learned how a day can be all about God and neither feel too simple or boring but fill me with refreshing life. God would make sure my team landed in a place of beauty and isolation just to help show me fully what it means when he says on earth as it is in heaven, aka day to day life with him and what it looks like not to always look forward or dream of something else. I got to send my mom a happy birthday message in the middle of nowhere. God would send me on a crazy ride to bless me with the opportunity of giving me something I wanted just to show me that the crazy ride he will continue to take and has taken for me will continue to always be more than I have or can imagine. PS sorry but blogs will be random and probably never posted on the right time due to never really knowing when I will have wifi like this one is a week late from when I wanted to post it…but its all good, life is good, and I hope you all are doing so as well
