-Miracles. So distinct and emphatic when you see one. It may cause your heart to feel a certain way or trigger your mind to believe that maybe there is more to life than just human nature.

-I have been reading a book I picked up just over a week ago from a small shop in downtown Gainesville, Georgia. It’s called “Life by the Way” and it is written by Michelle Dowdy, so all the credit to her and our Lord. There are lots of questions and verses that I have never encountered or understood until I read this book. Miracles being one of them.

-Since I left for training camp on August 28th, I have heard various terms and churchy words that seem above my biblical understanding, so to speak. One of these, not words, but experiences that I have never encountered was that of a miracle in its truest form. I had a conversation with one of our female squad leaders, alongside my male squad leader (Shoutout Big Nate and Carlee) about miracles and how they happen and when they occur. Carlee said she has experienced a miracle like one in the Bible. I believe she said that she saw or experienced sickness leaving someone’s body after prayer and worship. Don’t quote me on that, but she has seen a miracle like one from the Bible. She asked Nate if he had seen or experienced something along the lines of that and he pondered for a second, but nothing came to mind.

-I have never personally witnessed a biblical level miracle happen with my own two eyes or ears. But as I had been thinking about why some miracles happen and why some don’t, I came across a chapter in this book mentioned above. It says, “I like the way C.S Lewis explains miracles in his essay by the same name. He says, (paraphrasing) that the operations of the world and the laws of nature are indeed miracles, but because that is our “normal” we do not see the rising and setting of the sun, the growing of the plants and of humans, and other processes that happen daily, as miraculous. When crops come in year after year, he says, and result in bread being made, we don’t regard it in the same way as Jesus multiplying the loaves, although it is just as much of a miracle.”

-This got me thinking really hard about my own want to get to experience or see a miracle. To feel like the Lord did something miraculous through me. My pride got the best of me. The Lord has blessed me with so much, honestly more than I probably need, yet I still sought after more and hungered for something that I was not ready for.

-I wanted to start the blog post today with this and just to take a second to thank God for the miracles that happen in my life, that I take for granted each and every day.

-The breath in my lungs

-The ability to walk

-The sun rising everyday

-The perfect functioning and repairing of my body's systems

-The ability to see

-There are millions more.

-I have taken these things for granted to this day and will probably continue to struggle with fear and grumbling in uncomfortable, hard situations, but I know that I truly have seen miracles, daily.

-Alright now. Time for what has been going on since the last post, then I will end on some more wisdom or things the Lord has taught me this week.

-Local stateside ministry in Adrian, Georgia. I fear I am going to say, in every post that I make, the experiences I have are equal to, or more, life changing than the last experience that I came from, but it is the truth. This week was hard. Point blank. But I thrive and grow in the times when it is hard because faith produces perseverance. I can endure, by the grace of God, so why not take courage and lean into it in the day-to-day festivities.

-It took us around 4 hours to get to this smaller town on Sunday, and we settled into a camp called Camp Adrian. Sunday night we debriefed and had a talk about what the week would look like with ministry and how much it means to them that we are coming here to serve. There is nothing sweeter than Georgia hospitality.

-Food here has been immaculate. The first night our squad was astonished to the amount of food we could eat and the quality of it. They don’t mess around in the South. I remember we had peach cobbler as our dessert on the first night and it was hilarious to see some of the reactions of the people on my squad who have never experienced such a delicacy. Don’t get me started on the sweet tea.

-Going from training camp to here has felt like luxury, in terms of showers, air conditioning, and food. So, God bless. But work has been brutal at times.

-Our ministry for the week is more hands on service than spirit lead evangelism. I love that in the next 8 months I will have the balance between physically demanding work, spiritually fatiguing work, emotionally draining work, and mentally exhausting work, sometimes all at once, but other times more focused on one or two.

-Our service project this week was sort of a restoration and transformation of the campus and buildings around. Lots of teams pressure washed, painted, wood worked, encouraged and hung out with the children, and last but not least, my group had the privilege of landscaping. Boy was this awesome.

-They let us rip chainsaws and just do lots of brute force yardwork, typical of a caveman or barbarian. So, I loved that I could shut off my brain and serve.

-This post will be insanely long if I go into detail on exactly what the days looked like, but it involved lots of trees being cut down, logs being thrown in a pile, lots of rides on the side-by-side, incomprehensible amounts of sweat, and countless jokes. I learned so much about myself from these tasks and learned more on how to balance results and relationships.

-Our squad of ten guys this week has gotten so close. Whether that has been from the individual conversations or the group time that we have had. We pushed each other this week. Most people don’t understand how hard it is to have a new group of people, who you do everything with, in which you did not know much about coming in. We all knew that we love and fear the Lord, but that was about it.

-This week was not short on annoyances and anger and sadness and pride and guilt, but the Lord has turned those experiences into goodness for his kingdom. Lots of our guys have gone out of their way to have hard conversations with each other. It is so honoring to each other and our group. By the end of the trip, I am going to be closer to some of these guys than others, and that’s just a fact. I am going to mesh well into some conversations, and others, not so much. But our group of ten guys loves each other to the moon and back and I know that come Jamaica, the Lord will be known in our community and every community we go to.

-I struggled with countless things this week, but after talking them out to squad mates, friends, leaders, and the Lord, it has been dimmed and the light I know that lives inside of me, has been shown.

-The book I mentioned above says, “Always seek to speak the truth, especially to yourself.” I think it is so easy to call others out, but to never be open to receiving. To point out the speck in their eye but ignore the plank in our own eye. I have been working on humbling myself in situations when my ego and pride are inflated, and I have been leaning on the Lord to help pick me up in situations that I am too hard on myself. It is still a process for me. If I could see myself as the Lord sees me. Dude I’d probably be pretty stoked.

-Also shoutout to all the people who taught line dancing with me (Kristina, Teagan, and Hailey) over the last few days because that made my evenings. I got way too sweaty before bed but it was worth it everytime.

-A question that the book posed to me, I now want to pose to y’all. “What would the world look like if people started to imitate you?” Please answer this to yourself or to others truthfully, and with discernment from the Lord.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14)

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and be so pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:9-11)

-I leave for Jamaica this thursday the 17th, and the 8 month journey of our mission continues.

-His name above all others. Amen.