Over the past month a lot has happened. I have joined a different kind of family that is strong and loving, not that mine wasn’t. We have grown together into one entity that serves God with one purpose.
I am just going to jump into the major events so far for me because are days are so packed and my time is so limited to tell you about everything. The first major event for me was in Georgia before I ever left for Kenya. We were doing a prayer walk type thing in which you pray for God to guide your footsteps to someone, so I prayed. This may sound kind of weird, but I felt God calling me to talk to the fifth person that I saw as I walked into a mall in Georgia. I was like, “okay God I’ll do this even though I think I might be going crazy.” It was an older lady that was the fifth person and she was looking through the ladies shoe section. The first thing that came to my mind was thinking that it was going to suck because I could strike up a conversation with anyone any other place, but I tried it any way. I pretended to be looking at the shoes like a dork and then asked for her name and she gave it to me and then I gave her mine. Over the next few minutes I told her what I was doing there and that I felt called to come talk to her and pray for her. I started praying for her and as I prayed I felt called to pray for something bad going on in her family that was bugging her. When I was done praying she told me that it was weird that I prayed for such a thing because her sister had been terminally diagnosed and found out the next morning how long she had to live. She told me this and I just broke down and found my way over to one of my buddies Clay and cried on his shoulder for a little bit. It was just remarkable to me the way God made sure that the little faith I showed mirror the love he has for this women through me.
Later when we were in Webuye, Kenya God once again broke me. We were doing a youth and pastors conference that had a few hundred people at both events when, Pastor Bruce, our lead speaker who we had joined together with to do this conference, gave a sermon. It really just convicted me and made me feel God tugging at me, and he was telling me that I was called to be a pastor and that it fits the skill set that he has given me and if you know me that is all I have to say and you can see I’m right. The sermon that Pastor Brace was giving was on a mix of topics that included faith and not being hypocrites. Since then I have been praying day in and day out and the more I do the more sure I am that I am suppose to be a pastor. Then I wrote my best friend Nick Sackett and told him and he just further comforted me that I would be a good pastor and told me how much he looked up to me and that just has meant more to me than he could ever know. I need to keep moving so that I can fit in the other amazing thing that God did in me.
The last huge thing was when I was at the Pastors Conference in Webuye the kids were everywhere outside and the Pastors didn’t really like this. Well the day before the kids and I had played a game in which they all chased me down and tackled me. On this particular day it had poured rain and it was extremely muddy but the one hundred some odd kids still wanted to play this game, so I changed into my drama clothes, and played it with them. Something that I failed to mention is that in this field that we played in was a mixture of livestock and human excrament and when it rained it mixed well. Well we played and by the end I was completely covered in mud and other stuff but the kids stayed pretty clean. The thing that really blessed me though was how many hundred pastors came up to me and told me that they were blessed by what I did, because in Kenya kids are treated as pests and I just showed them a new way to minister by loving others. It broke my heart that something so simple as loving kids can go overlooked.
Overall God has shown me a lot about myself and what I am capable of doing through him. He has been showing me the path that he has created just for me and leading me through it. He is giving me the words and the ability to love others more that I have ever had the capability to do and he is also keeping me together, rested, and ready for the next day because without him there is no way I would have the energy to keep this up. I can just feel myself growing closer to him each and everyday and I don’t want it to stop!!
