Georgia was such a sweet time. It was hard, don’t get me wrong. A lot of growth took place. Personally. As a team. It was hard. But Georgia was so sweet.
After team WWW’s trek of sorts, we came together and came up with goals, personal and team goals. One of our goals was to share the gospel collectively as team, each person contributing to the conversation. We recognized that each of us have different strengths and knowledge and we wanted to use that to share the gospel. Another goal we had was to have at least 2 meals with people that we meet. We wanted to invite them into community with us.
After we came up with our goals, we moved into a hostel where we stayed for the rest of our time in Georgia (before debrief anyway). Immediately, we met a family. They were refugees, the mom was Ukrainian, the dad was Russian, neither were fully safe or welcome wherever they went. That family was in the hostel with us for about a week, but in that week we were able to pray with them, worship, talk about our beliefs, go on family walks, and share meals with them. We went out to dinner, we would cook together, we would go get ice cream together. And through that, we formed a really beautiful friendship with them. It was sweet to interact and get to know them, even if it was mainly through Google translate. God right off the bat gave us an opportunity to meet one of our goals: eat meals with others.
Right after the family left, another guy moved into the hostel. We all briefly met him in the kitchen one night. But then the next morning, I was out on the balcony and had just finished my quiet time. I was writing a card for a friend when he walked back up. We got to talking and asking simple questions and built a foundation for a friendship. Later that night, as two of my teammates were cooking dinner, another teammate and I were hanging out once again on the balcony and he was also up here. We continued to talk and get to know each other. Talking about life, what we’d done, where we’d traveled. It was simple, but led into a really sweet discussion later in the night. My whole team was up there eating dinner, he was eating his own dinner he has prepared and we got into the topic of religion. It turns out he is an atheist, but is educating himself on lots of different religions. He had a lot of questions about Christianity and what we believe and in each of those questions, at least one of us answered them and answered them according to what we knew and what we felt led to share in. Towards the end of that conversation, we were able to pray for him. He wished he could believe what we believe, and so we prayed that God would reveal Himself to our new friend. God provided us with yet another opportunity to meet one of our goals: all contribute to sharing the gospel. Everyone on team WWW can agree this was one of our sweetest ministry moments as a team.
Georgia was so sweet. My team WWW was so sweet. But now I sit here in Armenia with a new team: Circle-Makers! So much to share there, but know that it’s a fun team and I’m excited to introduce them all!
Ways to pray:
- Pray for our refugee family. They had to split up due to countries not letting the dad in because he’s Russian. Pray that they can be reunited!
- Pray for our friend who’s really searching. He’s currently reading the Bible, so pray that the Holy Spirit would open his eyes to the truths that are in the Bible!
- Pray for me and my new team. We are so excited to see what the Lord has in store for us, but we are also in the midst of some unknown. Pray for guidance, wisdom, and clarity
