I want to tell you all how God has been working in my life since I accepted the job at Los Pinares. This summer I had plans to work with Uncharted Waters sports ministry for at least the first session and their international session. When I accepted this job, I knew I had to stick with this commitment and not do the third session, so I could prepare to move to Honduras. I want to explain my job with UW sports ministry for those of you who do not know what this ministry is. They are a ministry that equips churches with sports related activities for effective communication of the gospel to children all over the world. I worked for them last year and loved it! I knew that this is where I needed to be again this summer and through my summer God confirmed that. With UW I get to run sports camps with basketball, soccer, cheer, and team 45 (4 and 5 year olds). We have music, bible stories, and teach basic skills to kids 6-12 years old. It’s a five day camp that we run with churches who bring us in to assist them. Every Thursday we present that Gospel to the kids. This ministry has showed me great things the two summers I have worked with them. I want to share with you my story from this past summer and how God worked in my life through UW.
I accepted the job at Los Pinares on Monday and left for UW training week in Oklahoma City on Friday. I was super excited to be going to training, but the fear and nervousness of my upcoming move to Honduras kept looming in the back of my mind. I had enough excited and busy schedule of training to put off thinking about Honduras and how to prepare my heart for this move. Training week with UW was great. I loved working with my training church and team. It was hard for me to have to leave early for my sister’s wedding. This training and working with these kids and teammates showed me how much I do love this ministry. I was having a great week that had to end early to begin wedding celebrations with Heidi. Heidi and Matt’s wedding was great and danced to the late hours and then went straight back to camp. At 6 am the morning after the wedding I was off to meet my team in South Carolina to do a week of sports camp. I had a great team and the camps were great, but my heart was still very heavy. I knew that through this first session, which was the next two weeks of when I was in South Carolina and Florida, I loved sports camp but something was tugging heavily on my heart. I was battling with something that was holding me back. I tried so hard to not think about it and forget about it. I knew I was nervous and anxious about my next step in life in Honduras. I had been praying about it and felt like I had fully given it to God. The next things I never would have expected. God spoke to me in many ways.
With UW, after the first session is international. I was placed on one of the three teams going to Haiti. I was excited about this trip and really looking forward to it and praying hard that God would open kids’ hearts to him as we traveled to Haiti to share his love with these kids. I also knew I had to pray about something else. I knew that part of my struggle first session was that I wasn’t fully comfortable with this idea of moving to Honduras. I knew it’s where God wanted me but I was still battling with it and struggling with trusting him in taking care of all the details to this move. I prayed to God in a desperate plead for help to find a more settled heart towards this move and help me be able to trust God in every situation more. I didn’t know how he was going to answer this, but I should have known he was going to answer this in a big way. I never would have expected this.
The next step in the summer was Haiti. We all fly into Washington D.C. on a Saturday and we were in Miami by Saturday night for an early flight into Haiti Sunday. Sunday was the day that God began to answer my pray in a big way. When we arrived in Haiti, my team was the only team of the three that was working independently of the other teams there the whole time. We arrived and said good-bye to the rest of the group and did not see them until we left the country ten days later. The six of us (Kim, Leslie, Carissa, Chelsea, Spencer, and I) got into a top-top and headed for the mountains outside Port-au-Prince to spend the next 10 days running sports camps. The next thing none of us saw it coming. When we arrived to the place we were going to stay, they said that they had no idea who we were and were not prepared for us. God began his work that very second. (Probably sooner actually) Luckily, the owner of this place was a Christian and made arrangements for us to stay. This day was a little stressful for us all and unexpected. That night the six of us met together and prayed for our trip and began to getting to know each other more. The next day, the chaos continued. The mission we were to work with, half of the people knew who we were and the other half didn’t. We spent all Monday working out a lot of issues that were in our schedule and figuring out what exactly we were to do while we were here. Sitting in this meeting this day was exhausting and tiring. We all were drained and struggling very much with what God had planned and didn’t realize that nothing was set up for us. I remember lying in bed that night feeling completely helpless, and just wishing I knew people there that could help. I wanted to fix the problem. I like control and I wanted to fix it and make it all better. That was not the case because God had bigger plans. Looking back, God was visible through this whole process and things worked out great. In the end, we got to share the gospel with about 1300 children in four schools over six days. God’s plan was amazing even though in the beginning none of us had no idea what to expect and were completely stripped of everything we knew how to do but pray and depend on God to work things out.
This trip gave me so much reassurance and comfort from the trials we went through. It made me completely trust God and watch his faithfulness through it all. I feel like this is a continually thing I am always learning about God. Through this, it gave me comfort in that God will be with me when I move. I realized through this situation in Haiti that I had not giving God that control and trust with my preparing to move to Honduras. From then on, I knew that I had to give this whole next step of my life completely to him and remove me from the picture. I realized I need to step back, depend on him and let him lead me and take care of me. I arrived back in the USA with a little more peace about my future and a better understand of how God will be there with me and I need to trust him. I can’t do this alone. God has to be involved. Even though it won’t always be easy, he is there to walk through it with us and take care of it all in the best way according to his plan. Even though there was confusing and chaos in Haiti, God used that to help us tell 1300 kids about him and taught me that I need to trust him more because he is faithful in every situation in life.
After arriving back in the USA, God did not stop teaching me and preparing me for my move with using UW as a way for me to learn more about him. When we got back into the country, UW has us go through a debriefing process. We spent the next two days processing our trips and what God has called us to do. Here God gave me complete peace, confirmation, and trust him related to where he has called my life this next year. I felt like everything that was talked about in debrief was directed to me and for me. It helped give me understanding and confirmation that I needed, and it helped me begin to prepare me heart for this major move in my life.
Everything time one of the staff members at UW spoke, it showed me that I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. They spoke about God calls us to do things and we might not be comfortable but God doesn’t call us to be comfortable but uncomfortable and used the story of Peter in Act 10. It went right along with what I felt God was calling me to do. Another was about priorities. It showed me that I needed to make sure that I keep God in my top priorities, even though it is not easy to do all the time. I just need to keep focused on God and he will take care of me. I can trust him with everything. A third thing they spoke about what making sure God has a part in your every day life. The whole theme that was stressed even at the beginning of the summer was private discipline before public display. It taught me so much about my life, and how much I need to remember in every situation good, bad, stressful, or discouraging that God is there and he is taking care of me.
Through all this, it gave me the peace about moving and confirmation that I am truly where God wants me to be. I feel like I never would have learned this if it weren’t for the time with UW this summer. God used a ministry that I love participating in each summer to teach me and show me that I am doing what he has called me to do! I’m grateful for these lessons and keep them close to my heart as my time to leave is quickly approaching and my comfort level will change and my life will begin to be completely different. I know from what I’ve learned this summer that God is faithful, will always be with me, and his plan for me in Honduras is far greater then I can imagine and I need to trust him and let him lead my life.
