Sweet Tea with a side of Holy Spirit – tales of Georgia
It’s safe to say that an exciting adventure always starts in Atlanta. After approximately 20 hours of flights & netflix-filled layovers, my feet touched down in Atlanta, Georgia for the second time in my life. The last time I had landed there, I flew to Guatemala not too soon afterwards with a group of beautiful strangers who I was blessed to serve with for the most life-changing two weeks of my life. Knowing I would be equally blessed this trip, I hopped on the airport train with childlike enthusiasm. Not too long after grabbing my bag, I spotted a few girls equally weighed down by 3 months worth of bags & approached them with a strong sense they were also with AIM. Within minutes of entering the “land of the free”, I was already striking up conversation with passionate, faith filled women all heading to Africa. One van ride later, we had arrived at the AIM training site & I was meeting the beautiful women I would live in SE Asia with for the next three months of my life.
Through out the next 3 days I witnessed months worth of growth in the people I had just met. From 8:00 in the morning to 10:30 at night, we would sit in on sessions teaching us about everything from our identity in Christ to how to properly minister to hurting people in foreign countries. We grew to know each other through team building activities where it was essential to throw personal space out the window. If you’re going to live with 9 other girls in a room together for 3 months, you pretty much need to be comfortable enough to have someones armpit in your face while someone else is breathing down your neck.
We talked, prayed, & laughed together. All while toughing out freezing bucket showers & bracing ourselves for the inevitable squatty-potty experiences we would have in a matter of days.
The way the Lord moved every person at training camp in such a short time period is impossible to fully articulate. During worship I would find myself sent to my knees or moved to tears by the sheer power of the Holy Spirit in that room. We witnessed pulled hamstrings being healed & anxiety attacks being calmed. There were countless times when one person or another felt lost or alone until someone spoke words of peace & strength that felt so powerful it could only have been God speaking them. I think I can speak for every group being sent to the corners of the earth that those 3 days broke us & rebuilt us in a way that we are so overflowing with God’s love that it would feel selfish not to go share it with everyone from sex workers & orphans in Thailand to the crippled & exiled in India.
As I write this, I am on a plane that will fly to Shanghai & then Phnom Penn, Cambodia. I am about to step out blindly into a culture I do not know with people I have just met in the hopes to bring healing to the broken & love to the lost. These next 3 months will be ones of extreme lows that are counteracted by moments so high it feels as though you can touch the sky.
There is a love at work here so great & so selfless that it will send us into greatness we could only imagine.
So here begins the next chapter of my life. I am ready to love and I am ready to learn.
Here am I Lord. Send me.
