Hi friends!!

We have been with our new ministry “One Village” for 2 weeks now. This month has been a pretty drastic change in pace. We went from children’s ministry to manual labor ministry. In the mornings we are typically at the garden doing whatever is needed for that morning. Typically it is a lot of pulling weeds, and turning mulch. In the afternoon we get to help Global Leadership Academy with some work around the school. We have been doing a lot of scrubbing classroom floors and getting them ready to be varnished.

The beauty of this work is that there is a lot of time to reflect on what I’ve learned since being in South Africa and what God is doing in my heart. One of the words that God has given me is “surrender”. When I first thought of the word surrender I thought that it was like a one time thing, that whatever I was struggling with I could just surrender it to God one time and then it’ll all be good, right?! I have learned that it doesn’t quite work that way. You have to surrender your struggles to the Lord multiple times. It might even be every day. Knowing Jesus means that you don’t have to go through anything alone. Knowing Jesus should radically change your life.

I think that before this trip I knew about God but I didn’t really know God. I have really gotten much deeper in my relationship with God and have started to focus more on truly knowing God He really is after our hearts. I am often mesmerized by the fact that the God of creation delights in us. Out of all of the beautiful places in the world, He delights in us. He is so intentional in the way that He works. He can work in the smallest moments. And He uses us where we are.

During one of our “team times“ last week we did a listening prayer activity. We all passed our papers around the circle and asked God to give us a Word or verse for the person that we were writing for. At the end each person had a paper with something written on it from each person on my team. One of the things written on my paper was Isaiah 46:4 “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” I really love this verse because I feel like it really encourages us to take comfort in the Lord. A lot of the other things written on my paper went along with the theme of comfort. It left me feeling very encouraged and excitement for the coming weeks of ministry.

I am so excited to carry the things I have learned into everyday life when I get home. God is really working in my heart and I am so happy that He brought me to JBay. Thanks for reading :)

~Lex