God is on the Move

Wow. It feels like I have been here at training camp for about two days but it also feels like I have been here for months. So much has happened here already, I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us when we are actually on the field. Even in the short time I have been here I have heard stories of healing, both physically and spiritually, I have seen God change lives, create disciples, and renew spirits. I can even testify to change in my own life to a degree far greater than I ever thought possible in this amount of time. God has been providing blessings here so abundantly that I don’t think I can share every detail of training camp, but I am going to share the highlights of what He has been doing and a little bit about what life is like here at the Adventures in Missions base.

Life on Base

I have officially been living in a tent for 16 days now. This far exceeds my previous record of exactly 0 days. Tent living actually has not been that bad, and in some ways, it was really peaceful. I enjoyed hearing the sound of birds and leaves all around me and waking up to God’s creation praising him. Although, sometimes the nature got a little too close. Several spiders lost their lives attempting to make their homes inside my tent.

Beyond just living in a tent we also had the opportunity to use port-a-potties as bathrooms the whole time as well as take bucket showers on some days. Honestly, the bucket showers were pretty nice. We did get to shower inside most of the time in showers that had been built inside some shipping containers, but other than the water being cold I preferred the bucket showers. The buckets at camp are also dual-purpose. We use them as our washing machines too. We hand wash our clothes in the buckets, the first time we just used dish soap, and then we hung them up on the line to dry. Well, mostly dry. The Georgia humidity doesn’t allow for anything to fully dry, but it is better than dirty, sweaty clothing.

Growth

The majority of my time on base was spent in sessions and meetings, along with a mix of times for worship, team building, and meal time. Most days we had two sessions ranging in topics anywhere from hearing from God to cultural training. I have learned so much from being at training camp and being surrounded by men and women who are absolutely on fire for the Lord.

Worship is one of the aspects of my walk with Jesus that I have grown in over the. Past two weeks. At first, worship felt uncomfortable because the way they lead the service is very different from how it is led at my home church. God used that uncomfortableness to teach me a lesson though, as He always does. During worship, I would see other people worshiping so genuinely and afterward sharing stories of how God was speaking to them and it was beautiful. I was so excited for all my teammates and their experiences with God, but it made me question if I was connecting with God. I thought that because I didn’t have all these exciting stories to share about visions or newfound freedom my experiences with God were somehow less. I thought how I worshiped and connected with God wasn’t enough.

What I learned is that worship is personal and how I worship is going to look different from how others worship because we were all made uniquely. Our worship is to please God not to please the people around us or to feel like a competition for who’s worship is more valuable, more genuine, or more inspiring. One verse that stuck out to me through this was Galatians 1:10 which says, “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man I would not be a servant of Christ.”

I also wanted to share that I got baptized! On Saturday the 9^th they had a baptism service that was open to anyone. I knew that I needed to be baptized and had put it off for sometime so I decided to be obedient to Jesus’s example. Many of my teammates were also baptized that night. Some for the first time and others were re-baptized to renew their commitment to God in a different way.

Next Steps

After that amazing 16 days of connecting with my team and growing in my faith and trust in the Lord, it’s time to launch! This means that my squad has been split into smaller teams to do ministry in several locations in Guatemala. On each team and within the squad we have different roles to make sure things run smoothly and we stay connected to God because He is the only reason we are out here doing these things.

I am on the smallest team, but we are mighty. There are four of us on the team, plus one of our alumni squad leaders. Our team lead is Shua, Lucas is one of our squad leaders, Jacob is in charge of storytelling for the whole squad, Sophie is our treasurer and I am on the Logistics team. My other Logistics teammates are Emily and Sarah. Basically, we are in charge of travel days and debrief so we will be doing things like booking hostels/hotels and planning adventure days for debrief, and then booking transportation to and from airports or between countries.

My team has been placed at a ministry called OneWay in Poptún Petén. The 5 main things they focus on are health, education, medicine, housing, and recreation. It sounds like a lot of what we will be helping with is the kids that attend their free school on their campus and potentially with things like soccer ministry and outreach to nearby Mayan communities. Please pray over this community and cover our paths with prayer as we minister to this community and the missionaries who serve them.

Prayer

I asked my team for some specific prayer requests as we move into this ministry for the next 6-7 weeks and here is what we are asking for

• Safety during ministry

• Discernment to do what the Holy Spirit is leading us to do

• Strength and unity for the team

• That the Lord would go before us

• good health

• open hearts

We did make it to Guatemala safely and arrived at ourministry location at 4 am last night after an 8 hour drive. Today we had our first day of ministry

Fundraising update

As of writing this blog, I am 87% funded! Praise God! He has provided far beyond my expectations. Thank you to everyone who has partnered with me so far. God is going to do great things through this trip and through the people it touches.

If you feel led to give and think you have missed your opportunity to give you still have time. I still need $2,318 to be fully funded. I have until December 30th to continue fundraising so if God is calling you to partner with me financially please click on the “support” link on the home page of my blog.

Thank you!