How did I end up here? -- Part 4

If you missed Part 3 --click HERE.

We decided to take a couple of weeks to fast and pray about what we were to do.  Really, just to hear from God about what in the world he was doing with us.  You see, throughout the entire process we were praying, seeking counsel, and walking in community so that we wouldn't miss God.  So that we wouldn't be alone in this journey and so that we would have accountability.  And, you know what I know for fact?  We didn't miss God.  God is God and His ways are not our ways.  More on that later.

During our time of fasting and praying, Luke and I took the first few days to simply take in what the Lord was saying and we didn't consult with each other until a few days into it.  At that point, what I was hearing was crazy and I just HAD to know what Luke was hearing!  During that time, God helped me release Russia.  He helped me realize that I was holding on to it way too tight and that I needed to keep my hands open. I realized that with the way things were looking, I didn't WANT to go to Russia.  We were looking at more of the same.  More transition.  You see, we would arrive there, be there for three months then have to leave the country to reapply for our visa (this could take up to a month to happen), then we could go back for three months.  If we filled out the proper paperwork for a residency visa and handed it in the day we arrived, we would then "hopefully" have an answer before our six month visa ended.  If not, out we would go again but this time we wouldn't be able to reenter until the following year. There were just a lot of "hopefully-s" involved and a lot of it was just impossible for us to do.

It took me three days to reach that conclusion.  It is amazing how God knows us so much better than we know ourselves.  During this time I felt God kept asking me the questions:  What do you want to do?  Where do you want to go?  Well, I just wanted him to tell me!  I finally gave it some thought and He led me back to the original dream in our hearts.  We wanted to be apart of a team that traveled and encouraged missionaries.  A team made up of power-packed, on-fire-for-God people that would bring life to weary souls!  That made our hearts excited and we thought that someday we would get to do that but that we probably needed to get a few years of missionary service before that happened. 

God is good and has good plans for you.  God's ways are not are ways.  One of our organization's ministries came to mind, The Haven.  This ministry does just what we wanted to do.  We knew about this ministry but not until now had God opened our eyes to the possibility of us joining that team. 

I asked God if this was it.  Was this where he was leading us via such an unusual path?  The answer: YES!  

After those first few days Luke and I got together to talk about what we had heard.  God had led us to the exact same conclusion.  Seriously.  I was surprised to hear that God had asked him the same question, What do you want to do?  Led him to the same conclusion of joining The Haven team.  Wild.  Wild, wild, wild.

Well, needless to say, we were in a bit of shock but decided to go for it as we felt very strongly about God's leading.

Continued in Part 5.