Living in an environment surrounded by like-minded people is such a blessing. Daily, I reminded of how good God is more ways than I could imagine. I hear of his faithfulness, his love, his truth, and more about Him than I thought possible in one day. I hear more God stories in one day than some do in a lifetime.
I get to see his goodness. I see it in the healing that they offer a the office, in the fellowship between coworkers and friends, and in the small things AIM employees do every day for each other to love their community.
At CGA, we are surrounded by a group of people who know how to do community well. We’ve all learned what it’s like to hear, say, and live out the hard things. We all get to see Jesus every day in each and every one of the people we’re around all the time.
Adventures in Missions is a powerful organization that sends Christians out into the field all over the world, empowering and supporting missionaries to share and spread the word and love of God.
How cool is it that we get to be a part of that? How cool is it that we get to aid and encourage people everywhere to go out and live out the book of Acts?!
But I can’t help but notice something’s missing. Something that was my absolute favorite part of my World Race.
On my Race, I had 3 months of Unsung Heroes(UH). Teams on an ‘Unsung Month’ are not assigned formal ministry but given the task to go out and find a place to live, food to eat, and, most importantly, unsung heroes. Unsung heroes are people out in the world already doing God’s work but who don’t have help, who need more help, or might not have recognition of their amazing efforts in the kingdom of God. Teams are encouraged to go out in faith and find these unsung heroes in an effort to find future contacts for teams to partner with to help further their kingdom vision.
While UH is an amazing way to have feet on the ground to find new contacts, I found that it taught me more about living everyday life as a ministry than it ever did about discovering new opportunities for future teams. This was especially true in Estonia. There are very few Christians in Estonia which makes it difficult to find any chance of a church or ministry that can house and use a team. My team found that instead of finding new contacts, we had to find a way to make our time there effective. So we realized that our purpose that month wasn’t to find those who already were following the Lord, but to spread God’s word ourselves. So everyday, we went out and evangelized in the busy downtown of the capital city. We would pray to the Lord to show us the way to someone who was ready to hear more about Him, and we would go talk to them.
This was my favorite part. Creating relationships in which we pour the overflow of love we receive from the Father into those around us that had never felt it before. Spreading the love and word of God to those who needed it most: the ones who have never experienced it.
And that’s what I’m missing at AIM. Here, I am surrounded by Christians every single day.
But outside our backdoor, there are so many people who don’t know who Jesus is. Right down the street, there are people who may have heard His name and been to church every week for their entire lives, but they’ve never felt God’s love.
We are empowering a generation to go out and spread God’s love, but we’re sitting in offices for 8 hours a day and then going home to hang out with our fellow CGA apprentices or staff at AIM.
We may go out, but how often do we actually ask someone on the street if they know who Jesus is or what He did for us?
We hear of how the American church is caught up in working for the Lord’s love and we fight that with living out of knowing His love for us, not striving for it.
But we live in America and don’t move off of our own back porch to ask a simple question to a neighbor. We found it so easy around the world, but never think to do it in the Walmart down the street.
I love CGA so much and I’m so glad the Lord has put me in this place to learn more about Him and be poured into by the people at AIM. I am so excited for what the community has to give to me and to the other apprentices. AIM has such an amazing program to empower and equip those alongside me in CGA and I’m so blessed to be a part of it.
But I don’t want to get caught in an inward spiral. I want to do what I loved the most on the Race:
I want to spread the love of God in my own backyard.
In life before the Race and while at home after the race, I was surrounded by non-believers everywhere and I didn’t have far to go to find someone who I could talk to about Jesus. Here, I live with Christians, I work with Christians, and hang out with Christians. Which, again, is great! But, where does what I learned on the race come into play? The Lord gave me a heart to talk to people about His love but I’m in an easy place to only share it with those who already know it.
So this is my vow to myself and the community of Gainesville: I’m going to go out one day a week on a treasure hunt to talk to at least one person about Jesus and ask them if they the power of His love.
Friends, family, and supporters! I’m still fundraising!!! Thanks to some personal funds I wasn’t expecting to have, I was able to put another $1000 into my account! Once the donation goes through, I will be at $2,345 which means I still need to raise $1,605 away from being funded for my first semester at CGA!
Please consider partnering with my as I learn and discern the Lord’s calling on my life to spread His kingdom on earth.
