Blessings

This past week I've had the privilege of working with a great group of students from Arizona. Seriously they are all so upbeat and encouraging. The first time I met them they had been up all night on a red eye flight and they were still all wide awake on the bus for a 2.5 hour bus ride to La Providencia singing basically the entire soundtrack to Pitch Perfect. I've had a chance to connect with them since then and I can see that they are seriously so on fire with God and are really looking to serve him while they're here in everything they do.

The worship team has added something really unique to our worship time during nightly team meetings. They have encouraged all of us to make a list of 100 blessings by the end of our trip. Every night we have 10 or so minutes to connect with God and just think of and list all the blessings that God has given us. I AM SO BLESSED. I'm just going to explain a few of the ways I've been blessed in the last two days. On the work site yesterday one of the girls just said "Kristen, how can I be praying for you?" which was seriously so cool because that isn't a question I get asked by students. I am so thankful that she connected with me and cared about me enough in the 5 days I've known her to ask how she can pray for me. I spend so much of my time trying to serve and invest in students and I feel really blessed to be served back in this way. Then last night we all went around our circle of 19 and shared one of the biggest ways God has blessed us and worked in our lives. Seriously one of the COOLEST moments I've had listening to high schoolers really share their hearts and the ways God has met them where they're at to bless and redeem them. In a lot of ways these students are way more mature in their faith than I was at their age and it is so encouraging to see how God is working in and through them. Stories of how free housing was provided, God brought nonbelievers into their lives to share their faith, family members being saved, broken families being redeemed, sicknesses being healed, and God breaking through in the lives of rebellious teenagers. Many of these things almost brought tears to my eyes/maybe they did. Then as if that wasn't amazing enough, after our team meeting all of us gradually came together for a night of spontaneously singing worship to God. We had a guitar and some of the most enthusiastic and heartfelt voices for worship I've heard in a long time. It was really cool to have a time that wasn't planned or forced but really real. God is blessing me in SO MANY ways on this trip - but these are just a few :)