I deeply apologize for my lack of updates over the past couple of weeks. The time has flown so fast that I feel like I just posted yesterday! Obviously that's not the case...so I'll update you now!
Killing the Giants
I know I explained Killing the Giants week in my previous post, but let me follow up on that! God was so good and did amazing things during that week. As a project, we had set a goal of about 2700 spiritual conversations initiated and 1400 Gospel presentations. At the end of the week, the totals added up to 2400 initiations and 1015 Gospel presentations! While we didn't meet the goals set at the beginning of the week, these numbers are still huge and we never could have reached nearly that much on our own - God was definitely present and obviously at work in every conversation that took place that week.
All for One Week
Unity week was awesome. It was all about us coming together as a team and building strong communication with everyone else in the group. Staff's way of doing this was by giving us clues throughout the week in the form of cryptic poems that gave us guidelines or rules to follow for certain events or activities going on during the week. Anytime we tried to get info out of them, their response was, "What one of you knows, all of you know." I'll be honest...I was really sick of hearing that by the end of the week! Some of the clues told us how we were to act during the group picture, and most of the others explained guidelines for the upcoming Student vs. Staff softball game on Saturday. The tricky part of these clues was that we weren't allowed to use Facebook, texting, or any technology for that matter, to communicate the clues to one another. One person usually got a clue in their mailbox and was to share it with everyone else by word of mouth.
When Saturday rolled around, we followed the instructions from one of the clues that said we all had to be united as we walked to the park a couple of blocks away. Wearing white shirts, white face paint, and carrying a banner with all of our names on it, we marched down the street chanting, "Who are we? WHITE NOISE! What do we do? WIN." I must say...it was pretty epic and fly. During the game, certain awards and penalties made things more exciting and were based on times that we were united during the week, and times that we were not. We cheered and yelled and screamed the entire game, and I felt like we were all one big happy family (of 97 people!). In the end, we lost by 3 points, but I have never had so much fun losing a game, and I'm pretty sure the rest of us would say the same. We walked back down the street chanting in hoarse/almost gone voices about being united and the best team ever. ;)
World Vision Week
Well now here we are, in the middle of world vision week. It's all about learning to have a heart for the lost, especially internationally. We have lots of different informational meetings, dinners, etc. for those of us who are interested in learning about international Summer Projects, STINT, or being on staff overseas. Our Sunday night meeting was the kickoff to the week, and we learned lots of stats about countries that are almost completely unreached. Some countries only have one missionary per hundreds of thousands of people, and it broke my heart.
I have always thought it'd be really cool to do missions overseas, even if it's just short term, but I always just brushed it off because I'd never felt like I had a really strong calling, I felt like I just wanted to go because it'd be a good experience. In December at the TCX conference, I realized that I have a strong desire to go to East Asia for missions at some point in my life. I have no idea if that means one week or my whole life, but regardless, I have a heart for the people who are not supposed to even listen to the Gospel, let alone believe it themselves. At TCX, my question of motives was answered. When discussing how to know if we are called to missions, one of the speakers said, "You don't necessarily have to have a really big calling or sign from God to go. Sometimes just wanting to go is enough." That really spoke to me because it addressed that doubts I'd been having about how to know when you're called to go. Since then, I've really been praying that God would show me His will and plan in this area, and who knows! Maybe I'll be on Summer Project in East Asia within the next couple years. :)
Work has been pretty cool. It's definitely a huge challenge for me to be getting up before 5am everyday, but God's teaching me a lot through it. I've always really struggled in the area of self-discipline, as well as not complaining. This job is hugely testing that and I'm having to consciously make the choice to go to bed when I'd rather be having fun, and to not complain about being tired or needing to get up early the next day. Please pray that I'll continue to trust the Lord to get me through the early mornings everyday!
I wish I had time to share more, but if I told you everything that's been going on this post would be a mile long! So this will have to be it for now unfortunately........PEACE OUT.
Hi Lauren,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for posting what you're up to on the trip. It's exciting to hear what's been happening. How much time do you spend each day out trying to engage people in spiritual conversations? and where are you doing this? Beach? in town?
As you serve and grow, I'm praying that you continue to see God work in amazing ways. Praying for His continued guidance and you look ahead to future possibilites. I'm so thankful for your heart that is open to His leading.
I love you, girl!
Brenda
Hi Brenda!
ReplyDeleteThere are two times a week that are specifically designated for outreach in the sense that we go out onto the beach or local shopping areas and initiate conversations with whoever we find there. One time the entire project goes out in groups to different locations for several hours and comes back to share how the Lord worked during that time. The other time is during individual discipleship - we spend an hour or two sharing on the beach and then come back to go through some content. The reason there are only a couple designated times for sharing is because the staff wants to encourage us to be stepping out in faith on our own and taking the initiative to go out and share without being "forced" to. Also, most of our time during the day is taken up by work, and we're also definitely encouraged to be sharing with coworkers. So to answer your question, I guess I can't really pin down how much specific time we have to share other than those two days a week. Some weeks have been pretty packed with sharing, others not so much. It's more about constantly looking for opportunities to share with our neighbors, the people we work with, and whoever else we come across. :)