What a week

So for the past couple of years I had somewhat shadowed Ryan as he helped organize this team who came every year. I would go to some of the outreaches and see kind of how it's done, little did I know just how much work it would be doing it solo this year. Before the team came, I was honestly struggling with having a really bad attitude about it. I even had a good friend of mine basically rebuke me (although it was done in a very encouraging way) about how bad my attitude was and that I need to look at it as an opportunity for ministry. After that conversation and a little more smack down that only the Holy Sprit can do, we went through one crazy hectic week where I was stretched more than I think I've ever been before as every single imaginable thing that could go wrong that was out of my control did.

In the end though, we ended up going to several slum areas, a fishing village, a few schools, a prison, and a village where we have one of our churches and quite a few people prayed to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. That's really what makes all the stress, heart palpitations, and anxiety attacks (I may or may not be just kidding) worth it. If you tallied it up, there were over 1,000 people who heard the Gospel and the best thing about that was that in almost every area we did evangelism, we have a ministry that is directly involved with that area so we can plug them in to get some further discipleship.

I seriously cannot believe all that has gone down this past week... so so so many adventures, challenges, etc... but it really was a lot of fun. Yesterday in the midst of the worst chaos, I was just on the edge of loosing it and getting into the car with a few of my translators for the team and I was just warning them that I was having a really tough time, and one of them told me, "Don't worry, you have us". That seriously almost made me want to cry, because that one statement caused me to take a deep breath and just chill. My translators for this team were awesome, and even when the team wasn't running on time, they were. I could always count of them even when nothing else was going right. I love how God does that...giving a little glimmer of light in the midst of the storm - that glimmer was my translator team this week.

At the beginning of the week, the general counsel that was given to me was to just be flexible, which for me is not necessarily an easy feat. I was stretched so much this week in the realm of flexibility that I honestly feel a little like those cirque du soleil people who can basically make themselves into human pretzels. I think this week would have been tough for anyone, but for a girl whose life revolves around color-coded excel spread sheets, it was especially difficult. But God continuously proved Himself faithful in answering prayers and opening really sweet doors for ministry. God is definitely good!