This group – they got me.

To say that being at MTI was out of my comfort zone and really hard for me is a huge understatement.  I arrived with a heart that was very guarded and a desire to make it through the four weeks of training, learn good and effective tools to use on the field and return home with my heart intact.    Being vulnerable and real and making friends wasn’t my plan.  I wanted to protect my heart from connecting with anyone because I didn’t want the pain of saying goodbye to people I would most likely never see again.   God blew my plan to pieces!!

 

Tonight, I am back home and I miss my friends, the family we became through living life together for a month. What I wasn’t expecting was how much this group of people would “get me” and how much peace and comfort there would be in that.   This entire group is going to take the Gospel cross-culturally all over the world so we were all in the same boat.  We had empathy for each other because we all got each other.   We all kind of chuckled as we tried to answer the question of where “home” is.  Many of the families had been traveling the US raising support and this time of training was the longest they had been in any one place in months.  We would ALL cheer and celebrate when someone announced that had just received a new supporter.   We all grieved when a major supporter fell through and meant a family could not go to the field when planned.   We got each other.  Early every morning I would pull a chair up to the fireplace with my Bible and spend some time with God before everyone else was up and about.   I cherished this time and place – it was so comfortable, so like what I used to do every day when I had my house.   One morning a friend sat in the chair opposite of me and with tears said “I know it’s a silly thing but I miss my fireplace, I miss my home”.   It wasn’t silly and I got it because a few days before, in the quiet of the morning, my prayers turned to tears missing what used to be.   I am so excited and ready to go but this season of transition is hard and painful.

I am sure you all want to ask “How was MTI?”   I am a slow processor so I will probably be able to answer that question better in a couple of weeks but what I know for sure is that it was one of the hardest things I have ever been through but it was also rich and rewarding and very sweet.  I would say it is a must for all pursuing serving cross-culturally.  All of our trainers had been on the field for significant amounts of time and they were passionate about preparing us, speaking truth into us, taking us to hard places and not sugar-coating the really hard stuff all while encouraging us with the joy of serving so that we might win some for the Gospel Of Jesus Christ – sweet, sweet victory!!

I will try to hit more highlights in the days to come.

Striving to live a life fully abandoned.