My time in Georgia has sadly come to end this past week but the Lord has shown up and taught me so much in these past two months! God has taught me what it means to spend intentional time with Him daily and that there is nothing better than being wrapped in His love. He’s taught me that my identity isn’t rooted in other people but in being known by Him, that I’m a child of the King and I was chosen before the beginning of time. Woah! This is the best news ever, and is such an encouragement to share His love with others just as the Lord would want! 

After a month in Georgia going through discipleship training, we got the opportunity to work with Samaritan’s Purse in New Orleans, Louisiana, providing hurricane relief to the area. At Samaritan’s Purse I saw the brokenness that is present here in America; broken families, homes that were destroyed by flooding, and spiritual darkness. Part of our ministry with Samaritan’s Purse was gutting out homes that had been damaged by Hurricane Ida. That included tearing drywall out, ripping up flooring, tarping roofs, and removing mold, so that homes could be ready for remodeling. Through this the Lord revealed to me that He wants us to come to Him with our brokenness. He wants to take our moldy and broken souls and gut out all that isn’t of His character so that He can rebuild and make us whole again.

The next season my squad is about to step into is one of excitement, adventure, the unknown, and fully trusting in the Lord. During our silence and solitude time with the Lord yesterday, I was thinking about how we are embarking on this wild adventure that only the Lord knows where we will end up. While thinking about this, a picture of Bilbo Baggins leaving the Shire in The Hobbit popped into my head. The Dwarves came into his home, they shared with him their vision to take back the mountain, and they extended an invitation for him to be a part of it. Bilbo then went back and forth in his mind, trying to decide whether he wanted to go on this crazy, unknown, and dangerous adventure with a bunch of Dwarves he had just met the previous night. He had no reason to go on this trek and try to take back a mountain he had never heard of before. He had the comfort of his own home, wealth, and peace. He was complacent, but deep down he longed for something more. That’s why he decided to go for it. To go for an adventure that made no sense to any logical Hobbit. When he’s running to catch the Dwarves who had already left the Shire, a fellow Hobbit asks him, “Mr. Bilbo, where are you off to?” “I can’t stop, I’m going to be late! I’m going on an adventure!,” responds Bilbo. 

When I saw this picture in my head I thought, “This is exactly what my squad and I are about to do!” The Lord’s mission is to bring people back into perfect harmony with Him and He did that by sending His son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins. The Lord has invited us into sharing the good news of His love to the whole world. “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Matthew 28:18-19). We now have the option to either be a part of that and join God in His mission, which, by the way, is full of unknowns, or we can sit in the comfort of our homes like the Shire. Bilbo decided to jump into the unknown and adventure just as Gap I is doing today as we land in Costa Rica. God has called us to jump into the unknown with Him and to fully surrender our comforts and desires at the foot of the cross. As I’ve learned to die to myself daily, I’ve learned that there is nothing better than experiencing the Father’s deep love for me. Now that I’ve experienced it so much for myself, and have truly been filled up with that love, I want to pour it out to others.