On to Eswatini!

HI Y’all a lot has happened since I last wrote an update so I am excited to share what has been happening in my life and in our missions work!

Our time with Dar Para Dar has come to an end and we have had to say good bye to prayer mountain and our wonderful hosts. This has been really tough as I became close friends with the guys that run Dar Para Dar in our time here but I am excited for the opportunity to return in the future. Through out my time serving with them I have learned so much about myself the Holy Spirit and God’s character. It was an awesome combination of serving others and spending quality 1 on 1 time with the Lord. During our time with this organization we served at a local school helping to teach English and phys ed. We also helped to build a family a home in a neighboring village and improve the infrastructure at Prayer Mountain. This was a great environment to learn to die to myself and affirm that I hear the voice of the Lord clearly and that He is beckoning me into a deeper relationship with Him. Lately He has really impressed upon my heart that I need to be more obedient to His calling for my life. I have found that as I step out in obedience His voice gets louder but also more gentle as He walks with me through everyday life. He has taken me a long ways already in my spiritual journey and the calls to obedience now sound more like requests to evangelize to a certain person while out in public and less like Him calling me to make major changes in my life style and surrender temptations to Him. It feels good to be set free from so many things that were keeping me chained down and I know that if I keep my eyes trained on Him, He will keep calling me deeper into relationship with Him.

On top of calling me to be obedient He has really highlighted that for most of my life I have cared deeply about the affirmation of man. This has been my number 1 obstacle standing in the way of being obedient to what the Lord puts on my heart to do. He has been kindly and slowly walking me through letting go of worrying about what others think of me and focusing more on what God says about who I am. As I learn more and more about my identity in Christ and HIs sacrifice and love for me it becomes more and more easy to place my trust in Him and just go for it, regardless of what He is calling me to do. It also helps knowing that God is not in relationship with us because of what He can get out of us but simply that He wants to be in relationship with us. This removes the pressure of worrying about doing things perfectly correct and puts the focus on the grace and tenderness of our creator who holds the whole universe in the palm of His hand. Obedience is simple when we know that He works all for His good if our heart posture is to serve and glorify Him. The last few weeks we have taken over a hostel ion Antigua and have been going through daily debriefing and training in preparation for our next country eSwatini. I am very excited for the new challenges that we will face there and the continued growth we will experience from stepping into a new environment and deeper into reliance on God. For the next few days we will be doing something that AIM calls ATL or ask the Lord. This time is “free time” that we are meant to seek God in what we should be doing and is intended to help breach the gap between structured ministry and living our everyday lives as evangelists. We will be heading to Guatemala City for this time and I am excited to see what the Lord has planned for us in this time.

I hope to keep you all up to date in the coming days with more info and stories from our adventures as we have more free time and get settled into a new place. In the meantime I would greatly appreciate prayers for our travels and continued revelation from the Lord. If there is anything I can be praying for you for please don’t hesitate to share or reach out directly! 🙂