Serving in Unexpected Ways

This was our first full week of ministry! All the girls drove down to Fort Myers, Florida to partner with the AIM base and the missionaries currently working there! We met so many awesome people (a lot of world race alumni) and it was such a great start to our full time ministry for the year! Here’s what the week consisted of…

Ministry…
There were 8 girls teams here this week. Half from my Squad (W-Squad) and half from our other GAP year squad (X-Squad). 7 teams went out to work on house construction (drywall, putting in doors, painting, cabinet instillation, etc.) and 1 team for “base-op”. The first night we arrived the leaders had a meeting to choose which team would do base-op. They all decided on my team, which was very disappointing for some of us because myself (along with some of my team) was super excited to work on construction.
Our job for the week consisted of making lunches for everyone, dropping those off to each job site, helping with groceries, cleaning campus, helping with dinner, and distributing chores to each team. It was pretty repetitive each day for us, but the base was super grateful to have 1 team designated to help them once we all knew what we were doing.

How God worked…
– One huge thing this base prioritizes is “pace of peace”. They believe God already has made time for us to do everything we need to finish, so why stress. I think we all learned so much from that this week. Tension was low… if any, everyone was able to prioritize relationships over a to-do list, yet we easily got everything done with time to spare! I definitely will be taking this with me this year… It’s so much more peaceful and efficient!
– I learned, on a deeper level, to trust God wherever He places me and let Him have control over where/ what I am supposed to be doing for the big and little things! Once we give up that control everything just runs so much more smoothly and peacefully in my opinion. I learned I won’t miss out on what God has for me, rather what am I gaining by “missing out” on what the world has to offer. Overall, God’s way is better 100% of the time even when we don’t see it in the moment.  
– For our team, serving like Jesus and the fact God sees what we do was very emphasized. It was evident we were all there to serve for the Lord and seeing us all work as a team and keep high spirits was encouraging.

Highlights….
– The lunch runs were actually so fun. I went 4 out of the 5 days and each day we got so much faster. We would unload 2-3 coolers with sandwiches, a few boxes of snacks and hand those out at each job site.  We had about 5-10 stops each day!
– Tuesday night we had a local community dinner event! It was kind of a crazy day, but ended up being so fun to get to meet the community at night and hear some of their stories!
– Wednesday night Elise, Arwyn, and I babysat the head missionaries’s kids, in the trailer they live in. From day 1 they just loved helping and hanging out with us on base, so having a sweet little movie night with them before putting them to bed was so precious. The whole week we helped with taking care of them which was so sweet as well.
– Wednesday, Ella and I went out into the job sites where the other girls were working and got some action shots of the construction going on for the AIM base’s ministry pages. It was fun getting to see some of the houses, the girls working, the home owners, and what was going on outside of base.
– Thursday night was beach worship night! It was such an amazing sunset and we got to meet/pray for some people on the beach!
– The last day, my team got to paint a mural!! It was so fun to add 1 to the other 3 that were already there! We painted 8 houses (1 for each team) and “Love you neighbor”. ( I will add a picture below)

Mini story time…
In the morning, during quiet. Time, our first morning there,  I was looking at one of the murals in front of me that had about 10-12 verses written on it. 1st Corinthians 13:4 stuck out to me, which talks about the qualities of love. I wrote it out in my notebook to memorize it this week! 2 cool things came from this moment…. 1) A prayer lately has been God confirming His voice and how He speaks to me. The day after I wrote out the verse, my grandpa texted me that exact verse. Along with some other instances, God revealed He speaks to me through highlighting/ making things and people stand out to me. 2. The rest of the week, I truly was learning how to serve and love like Jesus. Having that verse in my mind all week helped with having an open heart while doing some of the things nobody else really wanted to do/ missing out on some of the “fun” work. 

Overall, I see how God worked through being base-ops this week over construction. I wouldn’t have had as much time pouring love into the kids there, been able to help paint the mural, visit/ take pics of the job sites and so much more. There definitely were some unexpected highlights and God worked in unique ways specifically with my team! We head to Guatemala in 1 week!!! I cannot wait to serve there!