Hi friends 🙂
For those of you who have never heard of Samaritan’s Purse (don’t worry, I hadn’t either) it is this amazing non profit organization that provides aid across the world to people who have experienced disaster. They go into every deployment under a christian lens and minister to those they are assisting. And my squad got to work alongside them for two weeks in New Orleans, Louisiana to help with hurricane Ida relief!!! There we not only learned practical skills but spiritual ones as well. Here is what I learned:
Intentionality with the Lord is VERY IMPORTANT! At Samaritan’s Purse, I found it so hard to fill up my own cup with the joy of the Lord and with the Holy Spirit. Which made acting out of love and humble service and joy so much harder for me, because I didn’t have an overflow. My intentional time with the Lord significantly improved after week one and through that I found myself having small visions of things the Lord was trying to teach me. Being in intimacy with the Lord allowed room for Him to teach, and for me to grow. Reaching out to God in the hard times became a necessity and during those times, recognizing the Lord’s voice and understanding His power was evident.
Fluidity over flexibility. What’s the difference? To be fluid is to be a substance that has no fixed shape and yields easily to external pressure. And on the other hand, flexibility is to bend or become bent; but the question is what happens when something bends too much… it breaks. Kathleen and Veronica, my two team leaders, taught me this. We have to be able to flow with the change, not take it on. If something happens we go with it and make a new plan, we dont let it take over our lives or what we are doing. We yield easily to the pressure. We take it in, assess the issue, and go again!
God gives us our strength! Early mornings, eight hour work days, sleeping on a floor, being thrown into community, and barely having any time to be with God takes a toll. Come the end of week two, burn out was REAL. We were at Tyronne’s house one day and I was both physically and mentally tired. His house was full of mold and termites and my heart was just breaking for him again and again. As I was taking this heavy flooring out of the home in a wheelbarrow, back and forth and back and forth, I just spoke to God and told Him I’m done. I can’t go anymore so it’s going to have to be You, Lord. I want to be the first one in and the last one out of this home. I don’t want to stop moving. I don’t want to be tired or exhausted. I want to do the hard things and lift the heavy things with ease. And God helped me with just that. After that prayer I began RUNNING with this wheelbarrow up and down the yard, carrying two times the amount of things out of that house. Suddenly I had so much energy and focus. I knew it was God, because how else could this have happened. It was inhuman strength and focus and energy that only comes from the Lord and His mighty hand!
All the love,
Caroline
