I am now less than two months away from my departure date!
Provided that my support team is completed in full and my basic understanding of the language is in place I will be heading out October 1.
So what do my days look like until then?
Part of my days are spent continuing to meet with individuals as I work towards completing my monthly and one-time-gifts support teams. Another part of my day is spent language learning. All of the skills I acquired in learning my first second language (Spanish) are coming in quite useful. As I learn I think back to my high school Spanish professor Señor Householder telling my class "Everytime you hear a new vocabulary word write it down. Don't write an English word next to it, but instead draw a picture to remind you what the word means ..." All of my high school friends will laugh when they read this, but I must say that Sr. Householder was right!
The language learning process starts early for me. Most days my goal is to get up and spend an hour or so language learning before I do anything else. Somedays I am up studying before the sun is, but I can already see the benefit in setting this time apart.
After my laungague lesson I then aim to spend time with the Lord. I have been reading through the book of Acts and its pertinence to my current situation continues to challenge and stretch me. The common theme I see again and again is the theme of obedience. It seems that God's people experience the most courage when walking in obedience to the Lord. The apostles do things I don't think they would have ever imagined they'd be willing to do, but as they walk in obedience to Him their willingness shines through.
I have had a lot of conversations about what it means to be courageous recently. Courageous people are actually scared people. If courageous people weren't scared to do the things they did, then their going about doing it would not be very courageous. Instead it seems to me that courageous people have fear, but instead of letting fear stop them they embrace the fear with confidence found from outside of themselves. Jesus gives us courage to do what our fleshly nature would not naturally lead us to do. This is the beauty of the gospel, this is the beauty of our Savior and this is the beauty of His grace!
So between language time, God time and people time I am continually being challenged. This is a beautiful gift as I want to embrace this season of preparation in full. Yes I am excited to go, but at the moment I am also blown away by what the Lord continues to have for me in THIS season.
Coming from someone who contunially struggles to live in the moment, my prayer is that you would find beauty and joy in your current season as well!