Why does God want me to go to La Paz?

Hey all!!

Wow, in less than a month and a half Delaney, Colby, Meg and I will be on the ranch! I can hardly believe it.  My feelings are a mixture of anxiety and excitement.  Honestly I am amazed that I’m able to go at all.  I can truly say that God still performs miracles because a year ago I never would have thought that I would serve Him like this.

            About two years ago I started to come to church at GEBC.  It took a while to get plugged in because I have had a bad experience with youth groups in the past.  But Meg brought me along and somehow I ended up going on the Mexico trip when I had only been to youth group once or twice.  I thought that I should go because I wanted an adventure and I thought that it was the right thing to do.  I was blown away by the people I met in La Paz (the interns, the Gattos, the local kids, and most of all my team).  They showed me that God really cared about me and it didn’t matter that I didn’t have all the Bible knowledge that I thought He expected from me.  I was terrified when Antho asked me to share my testimony with Fletch and Korey because I didn’t think that I had anything valuable to say.  I did not have that much faith in God at all, and I didn’t see why they wanted me to speak and not somebody who was a “better Christian”.  However, afterwards I saw that my very small faith in God was enough to make a difference.  I think that was the moment when God called me back to Mexico- and I hadn’t even left yet!!

            My sophomore year has been the hardest year of my life.  So much has changed and I feel burdened by so many things that I can’t escape from.  The whole time I’ve been under the pressure that if I don’t get better, I won’t be able to go to La Paz.  In January I was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to go because I was not making progress.  But right now I am happy to say that God has brought me through this year- there’s just no other way to explain it.  I’m guessing my friends think I’m crazy for thinking that God wants me to give up my summer to work on a ranch but I could not be any more excited to see what He’s gonna do next!

Thank you for your prayers and support!

Katie

Preparing Our Hearts

Thank you so much for your continued prayers! It means so much to us that you are supporting us as we prepare our hearts for La Paz. We have been counting down the days until we leave, gaining more and more excitement each day!

We all have our different little stories about how we were called to go back to Mexico this summer and I thought that I would share with you a little bit of how God has called me.

After we finished our absolutely amazing and life-changing week in Mexico last year, I quickly went home and packed up my bags to go to a Christian camp called HoneyRock for two weeks where I also had another life-changing experience and planned to return this coming summer. In the fall I was looking through some of the pictures from our week in La Paz and I suddenly felt that God was calling me back to Mexico. As I thought and prayed about it for a little while, God continued to work in me and showed me that He is in control of my life and it is important to follow His plan that is so much bigger and better than our own. A really cool verse that I found was Philippians 2:13 - "For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him." This verse really helped me to know that God was truly calling me to go back by putting all these desires into my heart.

Before we go to La Paz we have to go through orientation to help us become prepared for our month away. We have been learning about how to prepare our hearts for the trip, conflict resolution and how people react in different ways to conflict, and differences between cultures. We were given a book to read called Foreign to Familiar that is helping us to better understand cultural differences. The author breaks cultures down into two categories: hot- and cold-climate cultures. Since we live in a cold-climate culture area it is important for us to better understand the differences in cultures since in La Paz they live in a hot-climate culture. Some of the major differences between these two cultures are that hot-climate cultures are more relationship based. Even in a work setting it might take twice as long for a job to get done in order to tend to the needs of a relationship. In cold-climate cultures we are more task oriented, trying to complete the job and keep personal feelings away from objective issues. So it is really important for us to be able to understand such differences to be able to better interact with the people.

As we finish out our school year, we are looking forward to spending more time preparing our hearts for what God has planned for us and finishing up last minute details. We will continue to keep you posted. Thank you for all your prayers!

Delaney :)