DISCLAIMER THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN WHILE ON A CAFFEINE KICK SO IT MAY BE A LITTLE HIGH STRUNG!
I am so happy right now. It is 9:30 in the morning. I have been awake since 5:15 this morning. I have had a great two hours with the Lord, pressing into the truths that are in His word aka the Holy Bible. I have just finished my fifth cup of coffee. If you asked me last month if I wanted to get up at 5:00am to drink coffee and pray I probably would have responded with something along the lines of I’ll pray when my body is fully awake, and why do I want coffee? But this month with the time change, team change and giving up soda for the month I have been making all sorts of personal changes that are allowing me to grow and to really feel the Lords presence in all things. Jesus has used the changes that have happened to open my eyes to the tools that He has placed in front of me long ago, but that I have kept turning a blind eye to. As much as I miss the comfortableness of being with Firestarters that had built up over three months I am so thankful that the changes have happened. I feel as though these changes are allowing me to be fully present to the Ministry that we are working with this month. It is allowing me to be fully present to my team and to be fighting for my teammates past and present in a way that I did not previously.
This month my team and I partnered with Pastor Edward at Bukangliwayway Baptist Church. We spent the first week living at the church which was a fourteen foot by fourteen foot room right in the government housing area of Manila in a neighborhood named Southville. The Children of the neighborhood thought we were movie stars so we could not walk outside without having loads of kids screaming our names and wanting to hold our hands. It was great to be able to love the kids in way that was tangible to them and to us. We spent the second week at a different but larger church because we were expanding the Southville church by knocking some walls down because it had gotten to small for the congregation that attended.
About a week ago I ate Balut with Johnny and Nathan. It was interesting. I will be eating some tonight (hopefully) with the ever amazing squad leader KK, who I had an amazing one on one with at a cemetery nearby called the Japanese Cemetery. It has the remains of Japanese Soldiers who were prisoners of war during WWII, and were hung by the Americans at the end of the war.
So basically this month Jesus has rocked my world. Even though Sarah had tried convincing me all last month to wake up early and begin my day with Jesus. It took Jesus throwing me in a completely new time zone, and new team for me to get up and praise His precious and holy name first thing of the day.
