Hey y'all! This morning we have been blessed with an entire hour set aside to write a blog post, so I thought I would take some time to share with you what God has been doing in my heart this past week! 

This actually started a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't become aware of it until Wednesday. The past couple of weeks I have had this little prompting in my heart to do things that make me uncomfortable. For example, we always have someone pray out loud before all of our meals. The first few weeks you would NOT have caught me doing that. There were too many people and I wasn't even sure what to say. However, I began feeling prompted to start being the person to volunteer to pray. Out loud. In front of my entire squad. The conversation in my mind would go something like this: 

Holy Spirit: You should pray this time. 

Me: Oh, no. Not doing that. 

Holy Spirit: You should pray this time.

Me: Absolutely not. 

HS: You should pray this time. 

Me: No, I'm not-- "I'll pray!" -- you have got to be kidding me. Not fair! 

So then, with my face red and my voice shaking, I would thank God for our food and for the opportunity to be together and to keep us all safe and healthy. Amen. 

This has happened several times now. I have also started to find myself being promoted to be the first to share in a group setting. I usually don't like to go first because I'm not always confident in my answer or my ability to be vulnerable, but again and again I have found myself volunteering to go first even when I really don't want to. 

Then on Tuesday I had the opportunity over dinner to give my team feedback from a discussion we'd had that morning. It was something I never imaged I would do and honestly it scared me half to death, but I knew it was something that the Lord put on my heart. 

This week we have had the privilege to learn about other cultures and religions and how to minister to people outside of the US. It has been exciting and so interesting but it has also made me a little nervous. We have discussed how the purpose of true missions is not doing manual labor or working in homeless shelters but simply spreading the gospel. All these other forms of missions are simply vessels to help us get to that point. For me personally I have a really hard time being brave enough to share the gospel with other people no matter WHERE they are. 

Then Wednesday during worship as I sang and thought about all we had been learning and how God had given me this new passion and burdened heart for Muslims and the Islamic faith, I realized that He was calling me into a season of boldness. 

Bold is NOT a word I would ever use to describe myself. Those who know me know that I tend to be really timid and shy. But now I feel like God is calling me out of that. It is so exciting but also kind of scary! 

The Lord has really been showing me where I have missed the mark in some of my previous mission trips. He has shown me how I have gone and finished churches, did home visits, and played with little kids... But when did I ever truly share the saving gospel of Jesus Christ? When did I go out of my way to reach out to people and tell them about Jesus? The honest answer is not very much. I have always been too scared. 

And so our loving God calls me to be bold and to learn what it means to truly share Him with those around me. It's almost like He's telling me: 

I want you to partner with Me in sharing the good news. But I need you to start being bold because you won't reach anyone if you keep letting the words get stuck in your throat. 

Talk about conviction! But He's right. I am so excited to be walking into this season and I can't wait to share more about it in the future. Thanks for hanging with me :)