Dear God

Well it’s the end of Debrief, so allow me to update you on EVERYTHING.

The first night of Debrief started with worshiping together as a squad and ended in some drastic changes happening. None of us were prepared. There were a lot of tears and frustrated looks. We took a minute to mourn before we mentally opened our hands and let it go.

We were told there would be a week of time in Ecuador when our parents would have the opportunity to fly out and join us in ministry for a week. We were told this back at the beginning of November. It was cancelled due to the new restrictions in South America.

We also found out we would not be going to South America at all but we were being rerouted to …Albania! Flights had already been booked to Columbia (our first South American stop) and we were leaving in less than a week.

That’s a lot of big changes. No parent trip, and instead of going somewhere warm we are going someplace where we may have a white Christmas! Do you know how many of us have cold weather clothes? None.  

Night 2 we find out that our new flight plan has us on a layover in Miami for 7 hours! Everyone calls home to see if loved ones can come and meet us there, myself included. I may have also had a list of things for mom to bring to me and things I am sending home so I have space for the new things!

That evening we had dinner with our roles (everyone that had the same job i.e. health coordinators) We spent the time talking about things we could have been trained better in and funny stories from our teams as well as some gross stories of people being sick.

Night 3 we had dinner with our teams for the last time. Team 217 spent the time playing games and laughing together one last time. Right before we found out our new teams we prayed together and hugged goodbye. Those people are my family and with how well our team worked together my new team has a lot to live up to.

We found our new teams by having the SQLs pass out slips of paper with part of a verse on it and the new TLs (team leaders) had the slip with the verse reference. The new TLs stood up and spread out around the room and then the rest of us were set free to go up to them and see what verse they had then look it up and see if our phrase matched. Jack was closest to me so I walked up to him and looked up the verse he had. What I found was something similar to my phrase but not exact. Then I realized I had my bible app on CVB instead of NIV. I switched it and wouldn’t you know it matched up! I read off the verse for others as they came over to save them from having to find it and our team was quickly assembled. Each verse was picked specifically for our teams. So my teams verse is Psalms 63:3-4 “Because your love is better than life (newsboys song) my lips will glorify you, I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.” I’m planning on sharing that song with them in case they haven’t heard it.

That same night we also found out that our flights would be changing and our layover in Miami may change. It looked like we wouldn’t all be on the same flights. We scrambled to get ahold of family to let them know that they should hold off on buying plane tickets to meet us because we didn’t know if we would have time even to see or visit with them.

Night 4 we had our squad Christmas party. I’ve been hearing about this game since August and finally got to see it rather than just imagine it. It was a bit more chaotic than I thought it would be but that tends to happen when you get a large group of young adults together anyway. A “snowball” fight, a spaghetti with chocolate and m&ms eating competition, a dance off that ended with people jumping into the pool, and a white elephant gift exchange with some very weird and creative gifts (considering we don’t have space for much of anything). It’s been a while since I laughed that hard.

Night 5 We have no updates to give family and they are getting antsy because there are only a couple of days left. …flight schedule came through late that night. It’s a bit complicated but no one has less than 5hours in Miami. Families updated and flights booked. Everyone is relieved to have a chance to see family especially with the parent trip being cancelled. I will get to Tirana, Albania at 2pm  on the 16^th local time along with half of my team. The other half won’t arrive until midnight that night. We aren’t entirely sure what to do about that yet.

Night 6 we are now in Managua to be closer to the sole Covid testing site in the country. We spend the evening saying goodbye to Hannah who is heading home for 2 weeks before going into training for another trip. We also found out where we will be going in Albania. From what we can tell, our team will be in Progredec. Don’t ask me where that is or how to pronounce it because I have no clue.

 

Okay now for the news you all knew was coming and have been eagerly waiting for: my new team!

I didn’t know it was possible to come to agreement on a team name so quickly but we did. I was the one that took convincing actually, but I was bribed and the bribe was very much worth it to me. And so “Dear God” was created.

You already know my new team leader so I’ll start with him.

Jack

A fun loving, prayer warrior

 

Samantha

A straight laced, call em as she sees em, truth seeker

 

Joey

A funny, outgoing, warrior

 

Jose

A teasing, no nonsense, truth warrior

 

Caitlyn

A sassy, wise, caring, boss

 

Colton

A joking, wise, gentleman

 

And finally, we will also have one of the new SQLs with our team this month:

Jacob

A caring, seeing, movie quoting, pastor

 

That should cover all of the updates and changes in the past few days. We are all going into this with open hands. Pray that we can quickly become comfortable in our new team and feel safe to be vulnerable with each other, because in that we will be able to help push each other to grow towards Christ.

 

 

Excuse the times you get these emails. We are 6hours ahead here in Albania!