Love your soul – BIG CHANGES!

I love Adventures in Missions.

I love that my job is to help people get to know Jesus.

I love working with my best friends.

I love my pup, my house, my community, all the things that have become “home” to me.

But lately that hasn’t been enough. My heart is discipleship; however, my current job is a lot of admin. Ever since coming here I’ve managed to weasel my way into opportunities that allow me to meet that need in my heart through teaching classes at our discipleship school, entering into discipleship relationships, coaching volleyball, emceeing our Monday Morning worship–you get the idea.

A couple months ago I started talking to my bosses about how I was feeling and we starting talking about what we could do to shift things around. I looked into other opportunities, I started looking at buying a house, at applying to grad school, at shifting positions and I started a massive pros/cons list (because let’s be real, my thinker brain loves a good pro/cons list!).

Back up about a month ago I got a phone call on a Tuesday afternoon at 4:30pm from one of the other people on staff. Long story short, he asked me if i would squad lead in August. After listening to his shpeal I said a quick, “My initial answer is no, but I’ll pray about it.” (famous last words). Enter the pro/cons list. 

After a short time there were two options that I had to decide between. One: stay in my current job or two: squad lead. The purely logical choice was to say. I have a dog. A community. A home. But there was one con that stood out to me.

Death to my soul.

If you know me, you’d know how much I love Molly (I mean look at her!)

You’d know how much I truly value community, my friends, my volleyball club, steadiness. 

But when I held those things next to small statement, “death to my soul” I knew that I’d made my decision. 

The last three weeks have looked like a hurricane of activity. I’m currently in the busiest season of my current job (casually launching 64 trips all around the US and Caribbean). I just got done with 10 days of training camp (8am-10pm everyday, folks!). In three days I start another week of training camp for the three week high school trip I’m leading to Albania. I get back from Albania and have 14 days before I start squad leader training (ps. I’ll be in the midwest for a week!) and on August 3rd I’ll meet back up with my squad and we’ll be launching to El Salvador. 

But here’s the thing, my soul feels alive and that’s a beautiful thing. 

There’s still plenty of details to work out. I still get weepy thinking about leaving Molly for five months. I still have a month left to launch all my trips for the summer. I still need to pack up all my things. I still, I still…

But here’s the biggest thing; knowing and following Jesus is the most fulfilling and satisfying thing that I’ve ever experienced in my life. Yes I’m sad about leaving all the things I care a TON about behind but the bible puts it quite spectacularly in the amplified with,

“But more than that, I count everything as loss compared to the priceless privilege and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord [and of growing more deeply and thoroughly acquainted with Him—a joy unequaled]. For His sake I have lost everything, and I consider it all garbage, so that I may gain Christ.”

This isn’t just a convenient quote to make the hard things not matter or stop being hard–because they still are. This is my reality and who I know the Lord to be and MAN, am I excited to walk with 27 other fantastic human beings as we all journey to know this better and to walk with others we’ll meet along the way in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana!