Hey! Here are some closing thoughts and praise reports from Guatemala 🙂

First off leaving Guatemala hadn’t hit me until the third week I was in Romania so that was sad but in the best way. I was able to look back on pictures and reminisce all the sweet and funny memories I had in Sumpango with my team Para La Gente. The relationships built in Reindom and the people of Sumpango will forever have a special place in my heart, I loved being able to say hi to everyone and anyone and people responding with a big smile on their faces.

 

Debrief Recap:

Here on the world race we debrief each country to ensure the mental, spiritual and emotional health  of everyone is okay. There is a big debrief at three months, five months, eight months and at the very end, the big debrief includes our mentors and life coaches woohoo! Debrief is a time to relax, unload all the thoughts you had been having the past two months or so and get as much advice and wisdom from coaches, leaders and mentors face to face. So for two weeks all 26 of us stayed in a hostel in Antigua, Guatemala 🙂 I was stoked to be with the entire squad in Antigua to be able to pour into the relationships with people I hadn’t seen for 8 weeks. It was also just a sweet time to also focus on my time with the Lord and pour into quiet time reflecting on the testimonies from what he has been doing in my own life in and out of ministry.

The second half of Guate involved a lot of information on how to live in community according to the Bible and how to live the way God wants us to in community with different kinds of people and how to work as the Body of Christ effectively.

I GOT DELIVERED FROM THREE SPIRITS! Praise Jesus! Praise God for repentance! Praise God for his love! Praise God for his endless grace. Praise God for fellowship! Praise God.

Okay so this was wild, like actually wild. I had felt the Lord nudging me to confess my sins to a leader at debrief a couple weeks before debrief. Then by the second week of debrief it was basically eating me alive, I kept trying to avoid actually saying anything about my convictions. Finally I broke, the moment Jenna mentioned the importance of integrity in leaders as well as the another session about repentance and that healthy leaders should be the most open with their mentors/leaders about their struggles otherwise their struggles will pour into the lives of those they are leading & I surely did not want my teammates to struggle in the same ways I was. As soon as Jenna ended her session on that topic I went up to her with tears in my eyes asking for deliverance. Turns out a lot of us needed deliverance so Jenna cleared up the next few days to meet with people individually.

Fast forward to my deliverance with Jenna. Long story short I spilled every single thing I had ever done wrong to Jenna, memories from when I was 5 came up, words that had been spoken over me since a young age by people closest to me came out revealing lies that I had come to believe. Struggles that I had been dealing with since junior high spilled also revealing generational curses that had been oppressing my family for years.

Snot and tears were rolling down my face because of the shame the enemy had me in for years! But the way Jenna, my mentor met me with so much grace and love. Jenna met me the same way Jesus would have if I had brought all of this to him face to face.

If you do not read anything else from this post I pray that the Lord will lead you here: Confession and repentance are so so crucial for fellowship with God and your brothers and sisters in Christ.

• 1 John 1:6-10 is beautiful. God knows that we will fall short, we will sin. But the key is that we would seek God’s strength to help us not sin. The key is humbling yourself before the Almighty God and asking him for his help, recognizing that you can not do anything on your own, we were meant for fellowship with God,  (2 Chronicles 7:14, Proverbs 28:13, Matthew 9:13, 2 Peter 3:9, James 4:8 etc.) we are meant to live this life WITH God. (since being on the race I have learned to really understand the Bible word for word! to not just skim over words but to truly understand and asking Holy Spirit for help in comprehending the word of God)
• 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” Like– read every single word for what it is! God will forgive us and purify us from all unrighteousness! Praise GOD!

After confession Jenna told me to repent of everything I confessed and so I did and it was just so good. A huge weight off my shoulders! Opening myself up to fully receive God’s love was just so sweet. Then we went into deliverance, that was a whole other journey in itself text or call me if you want more details I would love to glorify God some more through it 🙂

Being here on the world race I went in with the mindset that this whole 11 months is to grow closer to God. I am laying down my life to realign myself with God and his will for my life and to become more like the woman he wants me to be. I confessed everything to Jenna so that the enemy would no longer have any strongholds against me. I can confidently say this has brought me closer in fellowship with God and the community around me, I can be real and open because God is healing me.

Debrief was relieving

Debrief was just so refreshing to be able to be real with my leaders, coaches and mentors about how much I really struggled with being a team lead. My leaders met me with so much affirmation from the Lord, I realized I had been leading from what others expected from me and what the world would expect from a leader.

• The world wants a leader to be a commander, someone who tells people what to do, someone who always has it all together all the time, someone who gets tasks done without a care for what others are going through or feeling.
• The Bible describes a leader as someone who is humble, has integrity, leads by example, exhorts others in their strengths rather than handle everything on their own. As a Christ follower we are called to be like Jesus and he is love. A leader’s main priority is to love and serve their team.

My leaders reassured me that the reason why they chose me to be a team lead for Guatemala was that they saw God through me by way I loved and exhorted others. I unfortunately lost some of that in the heat of Guate, I began to suppress feelings of sadness from the past because I wanted to have fun on this trip, I didn’t want anything holding me back from enjoying this. The reality is that when you turn off one emotion you eventually turn off all your emotions and you become numb. I believe this is why God told me to confess and open up to Jenna, I was just a shaken up soda bottle of emotion ready to burst in the tears I had push away from the past 2 months. God wanted me to come back to him and grow into a deeper relationship with him. Praise God. He loves me and I love Him too.

Being here on the world race has completely blown my mind, it has been so much better than I could have ever imagined. Even just learning that this relationship with God is so much more spiritual than I thought, it’s been so reassuring to me that I belong to God and he is so good, gentle, powerful and kind. And he shows me this in the Bible, experiences and by the way he loves me through this community.

Praise God for the leaders in this season of my life. They have been so open with us in their own struggles and I look up to them and the way they have opened up to us so that we wouldn’t struggle the way they did.

Heading into Romania

A week before we left for Romania we were reassigned teams. I am now a part of a new team, our team name is Ruach and in greek it stands for spirit/wind. In Genesis Ruach was God’s spirit that was looking for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. We want to resemble Holy Spirit as we are in Romania considering people are less social here than in Guatemala and the spiritual heaviness is powerful here because there is a lot of witchcraft. We want to be a light and we pray that God would take the lead when we evangelize on the streets of Romania. Another note is that God has called me to team lead again, this time will be very different. I am solely relying on God and His strength to shine through the way I lead this team, I will be honest, open, humble, allowing people to help me when I need it and realize that I cannot do this alone at all. Even if I am strong in something I would rather God lead me with His strength, so being in that constant state of kneeling before the Lord every day for Him to lead me and show me what he wants me to do. Going into Romania with a whole lot of hope and expectancy that God will make miracles happen and I am so eager for more of Him!!