a place to stay.
This past week, Adventures staff sent out all the CGA returners on what they call an Adventure Week. There is no plan or agenda or goal to complete other than asking the Lord where he wants us to go and what he wants us to do, and then going and doing it. It’s a time of seeking and depending completely on the Lord.
As a team, we prayed about where to go and we all settled on Atlanta. One of my squad mates is from there and her parents were gracious enough to open up their home to us. We had an amazing week, so many good stories to share. But today I want to share with you about a day that has now become one of my very favorite days ever.
Here is a play by play of what our day looked like:
8:00 shower
8:20 journaled and processed the day before. We did homeless ministry and it wrecked my heart a little bit. Be on the lookout for another blog to come about that!
9:30 worship with the team.
10:00 time in prayer, asking the lord what he wanted us to do that day.
10:30 we all got this feeling that we weren’t supposed to stay the night where we had been staying. We had plans to go to Ruby Tuesday that evening to see our friend Kurt again before we left, but after that we decided we’d cut our trip short and go back home after dinner. In the meantime, we’d go to Starbucks and share our testimonies with each other and see what happened until it was time for dinner.
10:45 packed up our stuff. (A HUGE thank you to the Eddy’s for letting us stay at your house and for making us feel so at home, as you always do!)
11:00 we were Starbucks bound, which turned into us going to Panera instead. I don’t even remember how that happened, but it did. Jesus knew.
11:15 arrive at Panera. Ashley had thought to grab the “free prayer” and “free encouragement” signs we had made on Monday. We found a table, put up the signs, ordered a latte, and settled in for what is one of my favorite things – sharing testimonies. I love hearing people’s stories!
11:30 two very sweet ladies came and sat down at the table next to us. They noticed our sign and said that they could use some prayer and shared with us what they were going through. We were so excited, they were the first people to respond to our signs! So we prayed for them and talked with them briefly about why we had a “free prayer” sign up.
12:00 earlier we had contacted the office, asking if there was anyway Ashley and I could get into the house we are temporarily staying at in Gainesville. Well, they kindly said no, that we needed to do ATL (ask the lord) and that CGA housing would be open the following day at noon. (Thank you SO MUCH for saying no and not letting us come back! Seriously!)
Okay, so change of plans. “Jesus! We need a place to stay tonight!”
1:00 the two same ladies who we had prayed for earlier, as they were getting ready to leave, asked us if they could pray for us for anything. “well actually….we don’t have a place to sleep tonight, so if you could pray for that, that’d be great.” Immediately, sweet Bernadette offered her home to us. She left us with her phone number and told us to call her up if we needed a place to crash.
JESUS!!!
2:00 another lady comes to sit down at the table next to us. She made a comment about our sign and said that she would like to talk to us more, but she was getting ready to have a meeting.
3:00 her meeting ends and she gets up to walk out, but leaves behind her notes (not on purpose). Joe quickly grabs them and catches up to her with the notes, which reminds her that she wanted to talk with us. So she came back and sat down and asked us what we were doing. We got to share with her about how we all went on the Race, and CGA, and what we are going to be doing in Guatemala. Turns out, Michelle has a lot of experience with working in the travel industry such as hotels, where she sees a lot of trafficking happening. So her mission field and passion is fighting to prevent sex trafficking by training employees at hotels on how to identify if someone is being trafficked and actions to take when it is happening. She was SO encouraging to us. We got to pray for her and she prayed for us, it was so good.
4:00 arrive at Ruby Tuesday’s to have dinner and hang out with our friend Kurt, who’s name is really Brandon. We also decided we wanted to stay with Bernadette if the offer still stood so we called her and it did. Perfect! We ate so much food and talked with Kurt. We got to give him some prayers and words of encouragement that we had written down for him earlier that day. And then we said our goodbye’s and left for Bernadette’s!
6:30 arrive at Bernadette’s. Her husband and her welcomed us into their home like we were family coming to visit. I kind of forgot that we had only met briefly in passing just a few hours before. We hadn’t even told Bernadette our names, yet she was opening up her home to us. We spent the remainder of the night sitting around the kitchen table sharing stories, laughing, and being spoiled with tea and crazy good nachos.
These two.
Frank is from New Mexico, Bernadette is from South Africa. They love Jesus a lot, and they really love each other. I think it’s because they love Jesus so much that they are able to love each other so well. It’s beautiful! They radiate joy, they are passionate about serving the Lord in whatever way that may look like, whether it’s through loving their neighbors, helping people go through the process of publishing a book, or inviting four complete strangers into their house.
I could go on for days about these two, and I only spent half a day with them. Thank you Bernadette and Frank for making your home our home. It really was better than a 5 star hotel! 🙂 We were debating who was blessed more by the unexpected stay, but I’m still convinced it was us!
I simply cannot convey through this blog the love I received so richly from these two or the Lord’s faithfulness in providing us with places to stay this week. I can’t tell you what my heart felt as I heard my friend Tim, who is homeless, tell us his story of how he ended up on the streets. You could hear the hurt and brokenness in his voice and see it in his eyes. Or our friend Kurt at Ruby Tuesday who said we made his day better, but he has no idea the blessing he was to us.
What a week! My heart is so full.
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Thank you from the bottom of my heart who continually make it possible to do this. We leave for Guatemala on Monday, January 25th! We are so excited and can’t wait to see what the Lord has for us in these upcoming months! Prayers are welcomed and appreciated!
Much love,
Kaci
