CCMI Brussels, Belgium: Week Three

I think just in addition to how God's been helping me to see that my attitude wasn't quite, er...um...stellar before coming here, he has been giving me gifts left and right by way of my teammates and comrades here at this training. I am always just blown away by how God lavishes his love upon us, even when we don't deserve it or if you're like me, you're worried for some reason that God won't continue to carry me on this journey. But I think for a lot of us, I am more humbled any day by how good, consistent, and faithful God especially when it's clear that I am not those things back to him oftentimes.

This week in training I was asked to do the morning devotional, which is just like a ten minute spiritually focused reading and sharing whatever is on your heart. I decided to share on how Philippians 1:19-21 has been such an encouragement to me in this process. One of the ways it does this is just to quiet my fear about doing this journey alone. That usually is what is the hardest about this is the feeling of having to do this without someone specific experiencing this with me. Sometimes it's hard for me to be self-motivating and to push forward because this missionary stuff & all that's involved can be really daunting. What's been neat about this is that the verses talk about how God is going to work "these things out for my deliverance" which to me is saying there is a bigger purpose to what's going on and that God is going to make me more like Him throughout this. He also has shown me how He is so good, by His character shown in these verses, and then I've been really noticing how he plants gifts in my life as reminders that He is taking care of me.

One example of this at this training is that before I was actually thinking "what if these other missionaries here aren't cool and like don't want to hang out and go places and I have to do things by myself all the time." What's happened in reality, is that I am staying in the only three person room here, so I have two roommates with me almost all the time, and we're living in a dorm style place, so it's really like missionary camp and we're all living together in a dorm- couples, families, singles, etc. Between that and the small number of missionaries at this training (12), we're together a lot. And I'm being totally honest when I say that I am with the most incredible bunch of people. I have been able to have some really good heart-touching conversations where I have felt heard and affirmed and edified just being with someone who knows what it's like to be doing something like this. Everyone is also a lot of fun, and everyone seems adventurous and travels well together. For anyone out there that has had to travel around with groups of people you know, this is a gift from God!!! It's funny too because although I am enjoying my roommates and this dorm so much, there are aspects of it that are making me look forward to living by myself once I got to Ethiopia. Just to have my own space to be able to reflect and think and rest sometimes I think will be good. But when I need people time, I know I will have to trust God to provide that either with His presence or the presence of others cause I'm not sure how that will look over there.

It's helped me to relax a bit and trust that God's going to also take care of these same needs in Ethiopia. Of course it won't look the same, but that's the point. He knows and has been preparing who will be my new support system there. And, I've already been praying that He would bless my support system back in the US, and that He would allow me to trust Him for His plan for those relationships and people I will miss talking too so easily and so much as I do when I'm living in Atlanta. He does have a plan for how that will work out (as I talked about this with Debbie & Ellie this week about what it's like to say goodbye to the kids in your life- like your nieces and nephews- already was crying and I was barely talking about it). It is definitely on my heart to pray for you all- my support team. It is a calling and a cost and a sacrifice for you guys too to have to say goodbye; to let me go. I know that God will also bless your faithfulness and sacrificial love in loving me and being a part of my team.

I wanted to mention a few other highlights from the week. I didn't mention in my last blog that we had a chance to go over to one of the families' houses for dinner from the Persian Church we've been a part of here, and I'll include the picture we took afterwards. It was a wonderful night of fellowship, hospitality and AMAZING food! I've never had Persian food before and man was I missing out. We also got to do a little retreat on Monday morning, using the book "Life Together" by Bonhoeffer as a guide for our prayers and journaling. It was a great focused time to just think about the benefits and challenges of living in community and how to foster healthy ministry with others. The rest of this week Tuesday-Friday we did the PILAT language learning training. This basically teaches you tools on how to learn a second language, and then you practice the tools by learning bits of a language while you're here. My group learned German, but the other group learned Persian (Iranian). It was sometimes a lot of fun but sometimes it was hard and I definitely wanted to quit. If anything though it deepened my commitment and desire to really work on learning Amharic, which I'm going to try to do as much as I can in Atlanta with my friend Nadia once I get back.

I've included also pictures here of the tulips we got when we went to Amsterdam last Saturday (three hours one way by train), and also of a fun pic of our group that we took on our day trip to Brugge, Belgium yesterday.