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When God Builds a Team

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When God builds a team

I sit with my husband in a coffee shop.  It’s mid morning and I feel like I’m playing hooky. This is just too fun. Partners in adventure . . . gathering a team.

We wait, expectant for God’s leading.

Married 17 years, we are co-leading a family mission trip to Tecate, Mexico, our third time–a trip that begins two weeks from today. We have been on four mission adventures so far–one to Ethiopia, six years ago, and the last three, with our children–to the Navajo Nation, in Chinle, Arizona, and to Tecate, Mexico.

My fingers fold around my cup. God continues to meld together this one heart, His one flesh.

On this morning, we  sit abreast, at the counter, excited to meet a single mom who will join the team. So many conversations over the late winter and spring about the team–hearts shared at busy outdoor barbeques or at bustling coffee shops, steaming java in hand. We squeeze moments between play dates and work. We seek His guidance and wait to see who He brings.

Adventure awaits His team.

Through the spring we trusted Him to put together a team–strangers turned family who will work alongside one another to build a children’s home for orphaned children in Baja. Through months, and now just weeks left, of preparation, we gather supplies and check lists and plan final meetings. But mostly, we wait.

Expectant.

Excited.

The best way to prepare for these trips is to be ready to see God. I am going to be stretched and uncomfortable. I am going to feel depleted and raw. I am going to get dirty and feel tired and want to take a break sometimes, when I can’t. The only way a trip like this can be measured a success is if we feel, the entire time, we don’t have what it takes, on our own, to do a thing. 

We have to be ready to let God in.

Connecting hearts to His is the only plan.

An adventure with God can be a trip to our neighbor’s house next door. Or it can be a trip across the earth. He wants to show us how, in fact, He’s made the world small. Big enough so that we feel lost in it when we try to do things on our own. Small enough for hearts to unite despite geographic boundaries, despite linguistic barriers. Through ever trip God builds His team, transforming strangers into family.

God has no barriers.

And so we will pack bags and cook food. We will worship and sleep and work alongside one another. Grandfathers and fathers and mothers and children.

We go, knowing His faithfulness, trusting His plans are good.  We go, expecting adventure, anticipating not knowing the answers and having to tackle the unknown. We go, believing our Father is the leader, the one sure thing, the heart that never sleeps. We go, leaning into Him, where He will pick us up if we fall.

I send out support letters to friends and family today, asking for prayer for the team in Tecate. We pray for further trust in our Leader, as He guides us and protects us and leads the way to loving with full, open hearts.

I would love to hear one of your stories of God asking you to trust Him–and where He has asked you to go. I am curious, have you ever returned from a trip a changed person, and with new, deeper relationships with the people with whom you traveled? I can’t wait to hear about it, friends.

Comments

  1. Praying for the trip, Jennifer. What an amazing opportunity! I love what you wrote here: Through every trip, God builds His team, transforming strangers into family.

    I have never been out of the country, but have been involved with going to and hosting a week-long Workcamp. About 300-400 teens and adults go to a community and work making hearts and homes new. It is long, tiring, and sometimes difficult work, but it is so incredibly rewarding!

    I wrote a post about it, and said this about the experience:
    You receive bear hug upon bear hug on closing night, as campers come to you with smiling and tear-stained faces, unprepared for the emotion of the week, overflowing with the surprise and immeasurable thankfulness of how much they have cared and have been cared for by so many others.

    I was absolutely changed in a wonderfully amazing way.

    • Kim, wow! I am so grateful for this image you’ve shared. This is going to stick with me, friend. Just beautiful. There is nothing like going through something like that with another. You are forever changed. Thank you.

  2. Ten years ago when I was a mom of two little ones, I spent 14 days in South America on a mission trip. Remote is an understatement…it was jungle and tarantulas and bathing in a river. And soooo much more. I was all the things you said: stretched, uncomfortable, never been so dirty, depleted, tired. It was fantastic!

    If I wrote about it, that would be Book 1. Book 2 would be about the bond formed between myself and the other 5 ladies on the trip. God forged an indescribable something between us, entwined with laughter, prayer, TEARS, fear, sweat, pain, faith, more laughter…We went into the trip as casual friends and came home sisters for life.

    • Amy, *that* is a book I would love to read! Wow! That is just intense and beautiful! I would love to hear why you were there . . with those ladies/now sisters. I bet there are so many amazing stories to tell!

  3. For me, it was moving to a new location. It was four years ago this month, on the way home from visiting friends in Atlanta, that I felt God clearly direct me to move to Atlanta. I remember laughing out loud by myself in my car. “What?! How am I supposed to quit my job in this horrible economy and move to another state where I only know two people?” God said, trust me. And a couple of nights later, I had this dream that I was in an airport, about to board a flight, and the ticket handler asked me where I was going. I said, Atlanta. He said, yes, you should definitely go to Atlanta.

    I always describe this story like the scene in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” where he doesn’t see the pathway until he takes the leap of faith. That’s how I felt. I said to God, if this is where you want me to go (which was so strange to me because never in my life did I ever consider moving to Atlanta), then I will need your very direct, clear guidance all along the way.

    And boy did I get it.

    I quit my full-time with benefits job, sold everything but what could fit in my tiny Corolla, saved up $2K, and in November 2009, moved to Atlanta. In one of the cities with the worst unemployment rates in the country, I found first a part-time babysitting job (within three days of moving), then a part-time job with a grocery store a month later, and then the full-time job where I have now been for 3.5 years just 3 months after I moved to Georgia.

    My whole LIFE opened up when I moved here and my faith in God, which was pretty heavily wavering back in Alabama before I moved here, grew in leaps and bounds when I saw him lay brick after brick to get me to where I needed to be. I finally, at 30, have the life I started feeling like I’d never have back in Alabama. God has broken me from all of the hurt and anger I felt growing up back there and put me back together as a stronger, more loving, more forgiving person here. I am who I always wanted to be and it’s because I listened to God, trusted Him, and continue to trust Him.

    I am a whole new person now. And it’s thanks to family members and friends who prayed for me and loved me and supported me in my journey to go where God was leading me. I will never get tired of telling people how blessed I am and how thankful I am that I had the courage to trust God and take that leap of faith. 🙂

    I pray that everything goes well on your trip and for you to have the strength and peace of God to make it through those rough and exhausting days. You are going to be changing the hearts of so many people. 🙂

    • Amy, your words leave me breathless. Oh, wow, girl. I am in tears. This is beautiful and powerful and yes, testifies to this God of ours who goes before us, whispering in our ear His way to go. How this must make Him smile–how you trusted HIm! How you believed Him, even when, in all ways practical, it just didn’t seem to make sense. You remind me what is true–how, no matter the journey we are on, He has a journey for us that is good, that may be full of twists and turns but is for the perfect future ahead. Amy, thank you for your sharing here. I am grateful, from the bottom of my heart. xo

      • You’re welcome.

        I remember when I called my dad to tell him I got the job where I am now, and he said, “See what happens when trust God and take a leap of faith? You moved out of Montgomery and out of a job you hate on a total leap of faith and then took a job that pays considerably less than you made at your previous job, which showed your willingness to do whatever it takes to make it there, and now you’re going to have a job that pays more than you’ve ever made and you’ll finally be able to buy a place of your own in a city you want to make a life of your own in. Congratulations!”

        I will never forget those words and how they made me feel. Even on my worst days here, I am still infinitely happier than I’d be had I not answered God’s call and trusted Him.

  4. I feel like you are taking us along on this adventure for God with you and your husband. And, unable to travel at this stage of life, for an extended period of time like that – I’m living just a tad vicariously through those of you who can.

    • I just love this, Missy . . .this reminder for each of us to keep sharing our stories. We need to see Him in each other! I love seeing Him in you! Thank you!

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