I feel as though there is no better word to explain the past few weeks than “Unexpected”. Sure, we went to Kentucky just like we planned, and yes the girls did go to Florida. However, our plans seem to be more fluid than the creek that runs through the woods of training camp!
Of course many of you who follow me on social media are already aware of the incredible opportunity that our squad was offered to travel to Vietnam, but so much else has happened and I feel as though today was the perfect day to truly capture the, almost, uncomfortable nature of the changes and adaptations that had to be made by our leaders and squad members.
Firstly, Kentucky was a blast! A whole week to just be with “the guys” and really enjoy fellowship between each other. Along with that, getting to go through some manual labor and bond with some members of the Samaritan’s Purse construction team. One of them in particular, Jack, had an incredible testimony of how God was working in Ukraine! I had the privilege to work on the framing of a house alongside John, Clayton, and Jackson from my own squad, Xavier from X Squad, and one of the AIM staff members, Aaron. All of these men poured into me on this trip, along with many others, just as much through example as their wisdom. I think that the most unexpected part of this trip was how much I truly enjoyed it, I simply figured that this trip would bring about complaining and impatience to get out of this country! But all it brought was excitement to spend the next eight months with these guys!
Soon we were back “home” in Gainesville and had almost a whole day without the girls, just the guys in training camp. During this time I had some special guests visit me at training camp: my missions pastor, David Glaze, along with our partners from Nicaragua, the family of Jadder Silva Martinez! The Lord truly blessed me by putting these people in my life at all, and to get to see them once again was simply incredible! My teammate Domynik, who speaks fluent Spanish, was able to have some very good conversation with Jadder and his wife, while I spoke to Dave and struggled to comprehend what all was being said by Dom and Jadder. While it was a short visit, what an incredible opportunity to see the people that were there at the start of my life in international mission trips.
Once the girls got back, things seemed to slip back into some sort of normality, as normal as things can be when you are camping out in the woods. I began to spend much more time walking through the woods, a lot more time contemplating the Word and even memorizing scripture, something that I have never been very proficient at. Along with this I joined our worship team playing the Cahone, which I promptly damaged in a passionate playing of “Death Was Arrested”.
However, what had truly captured the attention of my fellow racers was the chance of not going to Guatemala. I suppose that it truly had not dawned on us (or at least myself) that not everything we have planned is going to play out exactly as we would like. As many of you know, there are peaceful protests occurring in Guatemala, blocking many roads and running super markets completely barren of inventory. With conditions like this, going to Guatemala was beginning to look a bit bleak, and our leaders were gracious enough to calmly inform us of this on Tuesday evening. If we were unable to make it to Guatemala within a certain amount of time we may have been looking into different countries bordering Guatemala.
Of course, I am using words like “had” and “were” because, as of today, our plans are simply to fly out to Guatemala next Wednesday, a few days later than we had anticipated. Along with today’s impromptu worship session and off campus lunch, the Lord has truly shown that our plans may not even be on His radar. However, that does not mean that we will not follow Him wherever He takes us.
All of these events bring my mind back to our very first session here at training camp from Deon, while all of our parents were still here. He told us that God’s character is predictable, unchanging, and unfathomable. This consistent character, however, does not mean that His actions will always be the same. While the Lord is not chaotic in nature, His actions may seem spontaneous and reckless to our flesh. All this to say that the Lord has seemingly been throwing a lot at my squad and I, and although it may seem wrong to us or upsetting, it is our “plans” that bend to HIS will.
As I sit here writing this I think back on all of the times that a trial our a difficult time has been upsetting for myself. Then with this new mindset I look at that same scenario, and see how he used this thing that I thought was bad to bring out more fruit than I could have anticipated. My annoyance or anger from the scenario likely blinded me to the truth of the fruit, but it was there. He was there.
