Abandonment. It’s truly a beautiful thing and yet it’s truly a scary thing as well. I came onto the race already with a few little things honestly just because I didn’t want to carry around too much stuff on my back for the next 11 months. At the end of month one I was already thinking about what I could get rid of before going into month two. During month two in Romania I did some kids ministry with my team near what the locals called the “gypsy neighborhood.” The gypsy neighborhood is one of the poorest places around, some of the people in these places can’t even afford to buy firewood to heat up their houses. Firewood, people. Something that we in America take full advantage of. The second time around we did ministry with these amazing kids, I noticed that some of them had the same clothes on as before. Some of them had shoes with their toes popping out of them held together by the mud in between the soul and the bottom from running on the muddy streets. After talking to Veronica, our host for the day, she told me that most of these kids had 1, maybe 2 pairs of clothes to wear and nothing more. Playing with these kids I learned a lot and it motivated me, how little can I live with for the next several months if they live with so little for their life? So I prayed about it asking God to guide me and after a solid week of this I officially decided to get rid of everything that makes me comfortable in my big bag. I’m down to 2 shirts and 1 dress shirt, 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of shoes, my mess kit, and some other miscellaneous things like soap and some journals and books. I felt so free after getting rid of a lot of things and realizing that I need to rely more on God to give me what I need. I’ve never been much of a materialistic person anyways, but after some serious thinking and praying, I’m now wanting to push this even further and get rid of so much that I only have to carry just one book bag. If I felt so happy and free after the first time, what’s to say I won’t be even more happy and more free?! Everyone of us could always rely more on God to make us happy right? Here’s to abandonment and allowing God to step in more and more everyday!
P.S. My team is currently on our 2nd week of Malawi in Africa. WiFi is super limited here and will be hard to post updates but I will try as often as I can! Thank you once again to everyone reading this!
