I am writing to you from Gainesville, Georgia.
I wish that I could condense into a few sentences the mental and physical chaos that it took to get me here,
but all I could feel is the fatigue in my bones. I feel it in the tiny atoms that comprise my entire being. I feel sore in places that I never knew existed in my body — yet surpassing all the limitations of my pathetically feeble 5'5'', 130 pound figure, I feel at peace. The little sleep that I did manage to get was the uncomfortable 3 hours I had on the plane, and I've said countless goodbyes and seeyalaters … only to arrive at this dazed state of numbness. I feel numb. Not in a bad way, but not in a good way either, as though my mind decided that the threshold of affective emotion has been met, and now I need to move forward with a strong spirit and desperately needing God to be that strength for me.
We are set to leave for the Philippines this Friday, with a few extra days in between now and then to wean ourselves out of the luxury of American living (as much as humanly possible, anyway), and before you know it, I'll be blogging about the humid Pinoy thunderstorms and naming the complicated constellations of mosquito bites on my legs.
Thank you, everyone, so much for making this possible.
Thank you for your prayers, your support, your time, and thank you for reading this now.
It is my hope that through this blog, I can take you on this journey with me, and keep you as my private audience — sharing with you the many intimate and glorious works of God.
If you feel called to prayer,
Pray for emotional stability among my team and squad members, as many are having a rough time with separation anxiety and now is a crucial time to ward off spiritual attacks of dismantlement and doubt.
To start this journey off right, I thought it would be fitting to have a bucket-list of sorts for this year…
If you have any of your own suggestions, please feel free to comment! I'm having a hard time coming up with good ones to cross off 🙂
- Witness a miraculous event
- See salvation and His glory in someone seemingly hopeless
- Witness physical healing
- Take photographs consistently
- Journal and Blog even more consistently
- Witness the power of prayer
- Learn how Jesus loves
- Spelunking in Sagada
- Throw on a makeshift pottery wheel
- Eat Lechon in Sebu (BALUT?! I just dry heaved at a google photograph)
- Sing "Be A Man" atop a tower of the Great Wall of China
- Memorize a Bible verse in Chinese (in general improve my Chinese)
- Learn a worship song in a foreign language
- Get a tattoo with my team
- Climb atop a vast mountain
- See Mount Everest
- Go running in a random field of Africa
- See Cape Cod… (via SAILING?)
- Horseback ride on the Balkan Trail
- Milk a cow. . . or a goat
- Spend Christmas serving others
- Drink Eastern European cider or hot wine (That stuff is DELICIOUS)
- Add a recipe from each visited country to my repetoire
More to come. . .
The entire room is quickly drifting to sleep and so shall I. . .
