This last week we’ve had a few adventure days of getting out and learning some Albanian history and seeing some cool castles. But I don’t want to talk about that on this blog.

On the way home on the bus one of the days I dropped my phone and somehow accidentally pushed it into the little crack between the floor and wall that leads to the storage area under the bus. So basically, I had about an hour sitting there with just my thoughts.

So I was thinking about how when I go home everybody is going to ask the same few questions. How was it? Did you like Albania? What’d you learn? What did God show you? How did God work? And for Albania I can talk about the church and the joy of the kids and the delicious sufllaqe sandwiches and what it was like in town and the language difference and what it’s like to share bathrooms with about 20 other teenage guys and girls. And what about God and how He was present here? And did you have any cool God moments? Well one guy on my team met a guy from America and got to pray for him. And some other people had some really cool personal God moments during worship. And some guys had a Muslim pray for them. And a few other people on my team had some prophesy spoken over their lives. Some people prayed for a homeless lady too. But those are all other people what about me? Part of me wishes I had cool stories of praying over people or peoples lives turning around or me being able to speak into someones life or God showing me something. But I was sitting there on this bus racking my brain for a God moment I could tell people about when they asked. And I was getting discouraged that there was nothing big I could think of.

But then I started focusing on the small ways. Through other people I learned how to use my testimony as my story and use it for the glory of God. I learned how to show the love of Jesus through my actions to kids who haven’t experienced that before. I had time to focus on what God says about me and start getting rid of some mindsets that I have had about myself for my whole life. And learning patience when asking God for change and not getting it. Learning too within my team, how to create deep, faith filled friendships and how to learn from others. I’ve figured out more of what I want with my future. And what I would be good at and wouldn’t be good at. 

All these things that still have God at the center. They aren’t huge and aren’t as mind blowing. But God can work in small mundane ways just as much as He can work in big ways. It doesn’t have to have a cool story with it. I have the mindset that people will want to hear something big and something powerful and maybe that is accurate, but I have stories of God working in the small ways of my life. Hopefully the small ways of others lives too. 

I still have multiple weeks until I go home so there’s more time for God to teach me even more. And I still have Italy to go to. But sitting there thinking about what I’m going to tell people when they ask all the questions was when I realized that even if there’s nothing crazy there is still a lot that God did in my life. As cool as it is to have a jaw dropping story to share back home, there’s an equal amount of power in the big things and the small things through God.

Update also:

In a week and 2 days, on November 2nd we're moving to Isernia, Italy. We're staying in several different host homes and going to schools in the mornings to share our testimonies and stories with the kids there. Then doing classes at a church in the afternoons. We have two weeks of that and then we're going to Sorrento, Italy for our last week as a debrief week. I assume it's going to go by fast, but pray that we can make an impact in the little time that we have to share Jesus with these kids!