PAUSE 3.28.10

I am alive!!!!

It has been an amazing, grueling, weary, blessed three days. I have stories to tell, but not enough time to tell it! After getting off the plane on Wednesday in Vienna, Austria at 11am local time, I met the other 13 teams, including mine, and we began the Amazing Race to our training center in the mountains of the Czech Republic. I can't tell you in full details of this journey, because ONE blog entry will simply not do it justice. I will say that it was a difficult one. The beginnings were welcomed with awkwardness, culture shock, and frustration. Upon traveling with my team I struggled with connecting with them, I was faced with my own fears, comforts, and personal trust issues. The journey demanded group cohesion and was intentionally placing into chaos. I was traveling with 2 leaders and 2 other interns. The leaders were not allowed to help, translate, engage at all. They simply just were along for the ride. For three straight days, we journeyed by foot, trains, trams, and buses from Vienna, to Bratislava, Slavonia, and Brno, Czech Republic. We had to find our own ways, with only certain amounts of money to these destinations and complete challenges. Personalities were clashing, friction grew, frustration and confusion drove me personally to the point of wishing to go home.

But the Lord was faithful. I prayed and prayed, and I know you all did too. And the next two days the team grew. We began to ease into the culture and started finding our way through. We began getting competitive cohesively. Three days later we made it to where I am blogging now, in Malenovice!

I am tired. I have traveled in the same clothes I wore since I left on Tuesday. My gums are sensitive to the foreign touch of my toothbrush. My stomache is reacting convulsively to the taste of food, strangely enough, for the first time since Wednesday, aside from pieces of bread, granola bars, and snickers. But my spirit is alive and ready. I led worship tonight and to hear the voices of these people who God will use this summer was a sweet and tender moment, like nothing I have ever heard.

I have been journaling at every chance so in these next few days I will try to post those up so you can get some good stories...at my expense..haha

PLEASE PRAY FOR:

Growth and training as we being training for English Classes, Czech culture, Discussion groups, Evangelizing, etc.

Pray the I personally confront everything that would hinder my effectiveness this summer, in self-awareness, confession, and repentance as I meet the Lord one on one

We grow as a whole body with all the teams for the same goal, and within my own intern team in unity with the same spirit and love

The Holy Spirit would work through me in times of worship, picking songs, utilizing other musicians, and leading

This summer the Lord will show me what He is calling me to and what He is NOT calling me to

THANK YOU ALL!

I LOVE YOU!

BLESSINGS!!