My reminder to myself today, from Jesus.
As we spend the last few days here in Romania, we’re physically and emotionally wrapping up our time in Europe. We had our last day of ministry, where we finished digging the trenches and had all the teens from the village come over for games, hot chocolate, a christmas movie, and (my favorite part), making snowflakes and christmas cards for the kids in Africa. (Followed by watching The Lion King, of course.)
Today is our day off, and we spent the morning at some local hot springs, and us girls are now going to spend the afternoon getting “dressed up” (world race style), because our wonderful guys are throwing us a “formal dinner.” They’re cooking for us and just want to honor us and our hard work this month. They’re amazing!
Tomorrow we head out on an overnight train to Bucharest, where we will fly out to Qatar in the Middle East. Like Kosovo, Qatar was never on my list of most-desired-to-visit countries, but we’re excited just the same. Because our layover is so long, the airline has a special visa where we can stay in a hotel there, so that’s exciting. It’s very rare to be able to sleep on a World Race travel day!
That tiny little box is the location of Qatar…
From there we will fly to Johannesburg, South Africa. Our squad will be spread out all over the country, from Cape Town to Durban to JoBurg. Team Cherished Flame will be out on our own for the first time! We will be living and working at TLC Orphanage outside of JoBurg. I’m going to be honest, at first I was (am?) a little sad, because I’ve been to both South Africa and JoBurg, and I wanted to experience something new. I am learning that that’s pretty selfish though, and I won’t see Cape Town and that’s okay! It’s going to be amazing to have this time to ourselves, and know that we are living exactly in the will of God. We’ll definitely miss the other teams, specifically Team Lionheart, because we’ve lived with them for two months, and by the time we land in South Africa, will have traveled to 12 countries in 10 weeks with them!
The orphanage looks awesome. They really seem to care for the kids and treat them with dignity and Christ-like love. Pray for us, as this is obviously a pretty big transition. Not only are we leaving our squadmates, but changing cultures, continents, orphanages, living situations, languages, etc. But that’s why we signed up for this thing 🙂
So in the spirit of The Lion King, I’ll quote Rafiki and say, “Ahh, CHANGE IS GOOD!” Simba, “Yeah, but it sure isn’t easy.”
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.
Psalm 143:8
