without you, Lord

God, I am weak, angry, lonely, defeated and pitiful on my own - but with You, Lord, I am strong, joyous, comforted, victorious and worthwhile. 

I have been learning so much this summer with 1:8.  It is hard to see my own growth - but I can tell that it is happening.  I am starting to take each thing that I find difficult as a challenge to grow stronger in my faith.  

Everything this week has been surprisingly good. I was not very excited about doing construction work with KY changers - but I learned something through doing my best to have a good attitude.  I was doing MY best to have a good attitude and serve to the best of my ability - but I wasn't relying on God's strength and the Spirit to guide my actions and heart. 

KY changers work was exhausting and not much fun - but I was able to learn about some of the people on my team and bond with them, which was wonderful. 

Today the 1:8 team participated in "Kindness Explosion".  This meant that we had to fill our backpacks full of bottles of water and hit the sidewalks - prepared to give everyone we came into contact with a bottle of water, tell them about the block parties and tell them about Jesus.  This was a very conflicting thought for some of the people on the team - including myself.  We have been taught all summer (so far) to work on making relationships to be able to effectively speak grace and truth into people's lives.  It has helped me be able to strike up conversations - but it has not prepared me to meet people - hand out tracks - and tell them about Jesus in a few minutes (at least that is what it seemed we were supposed to do).   I learned that I am not that type of person & it is not something that I find easy to do.  After this summer I have learned how to talk to people and be genuine - but our mission for today seemed a little difficult for me.  But when we went out with our backpacks full of "Jesus water", we didn't see many people at the park in the part of town where we were. When we headed back to our site to meet, I saw a van that said "Living Hope Baptist Church Bowling Green, Ky".  I got very excited.  

One of the women at the church that was involved in the block party (we had been inviting people to) asked if we could help, I volunteered.  I got to make snow cones for precious children and overwhelmed parents.  I got to play with little kids and laugh with their parents about the most random things.  It was an absolutely beautiful day. 

Tomorrow we are going to the Sojourn Church. I can't wait.  I was told that I would really like this church by a lot of people, but I never really believed them until Sunday night when the people and the pastor spoke to my heart. The pastor said that we assume to much in our relationship with God and our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We should be astonished by what Christ did for us and not just assume that we deserve God's grace - when really we couldn't do anything to meet the standards - but still we assume we are good enough.  We should be astonished by His mercy, grace and love. 

This week we will be registering people for the Southern Baptist Convention.  We actually get breaks this week and I am very grateful at just the idea of that!

In one week I will be taking my break from Acts 1:8 to visit friends and see my parents - it will be a glorious thing.  And then a few days later I will be leaving for the Dominican Republic! What a wonderful thought!

If you could, please pray for our team... we are approaching the dreaded week 4.  This is the week we have been told all summer that we will start being real and I just hope that we remember to give grace to everyone around us.