Knowing fully I am doing what I was made for

And I just feel more loved than I ever have

I don’t know how or why, I have seeked Him more in the past 

I just feel that He loves me SO MUCH

 

 *italisized = excerpts from my daily journaling

 

Togetherness

Something about after Sunset. It’s the lasting overflow and glow of the glory you just experienced. It’s all still, and you remain in the beauty while knowing your rest is coming

In the moment of divine conversation in the union of international friendship walking a mountainous path at night, I see a single twinkle. A single flashing light

“oh my gosh! Is that a firefly??”

It takes me back to the first time I saw fireflies, in Nicaragua during worship when the power went out, and now here God?!

He’s that good to bring me yet another moment that brings themes of my almost 22 years of life together in harmony. It’s like tinkerbell a fairy showing me in Wonder, God is not done with us yet (like Kenia always prays)

That morning in my new lectio divina practice I read:

In darkness, you do not know where you are going. Believe in the light while you have the light (Jesus) so that you may become children of the light. (John 12). And it was later that day that the church we went to talked about the light of the world

It was in great darkness that we continued to walk on this Indonesian mountain with scattered city lights in the distance, and motorbikes continuously asking us if we need a ride

We look up from Indonesia at the moon. I sing that “I see the Moon” song my grateful Gram used to sing

 

This is an example of how God continuously intertwined diverse people of various stories of various faiths of various ages of various countries in moments of eternal togetherness.

This month I got to spend basically every day hanging out with locals, mostly Indonesians around my age navigating college and their careers.

It blows my mind the amount of coffee dates, dinners, adventures, and fascinating (spiritual – political – human) conversations had in authentic relationship and friendship.

I didn’t think I’d get to have some of the best social life I’ve ever had on the Race. With these unique personalities and souls, I was loved. I loved. And I was truly myself.

 

 

The similarities between us are endless

 

 

Whether its jamming to Miranda Lambert or Sunday’s Best in the car, enjoying the outdoors, hanging at coffee shops, or working hard at college to work hard for a future

 

 

I introduced them to my favs: Egyptian rat slap and hacky sack

 

 

Sports day playing volleyball, basketball, and soccer with individuals of many nations in freedom. I returned to my athletic roots and found redemption from my personal defeat from when I quit playing sports early high school.

 

 

The sort of closeness with others that every human needs, yet few have (especially in this modern world and in America I feel)

 

 

These locals have loved me and heard me and seen me so well.

There’s a certain grit, humility, and value in what’s important and in time spent together in these Indonesians. I can’t help but think it’s because they have been through a bit more pain and are guided more by tradition and a common moral code.

For example, the guys have to respect women in public, while women and their friends are much more lovey and touchy in public; it’s very endearing.

Some parts of their culture are harder to grapple with like the lack of mental health awareness or the emphasis put on marriage.

 

 

They laugh; they are deep

I cannot go on without giving much of the credit to my hosts who formed and maintain this community.

I couldn’t tell you how many individuals have found a love and inclusion in the community of this English program and from the volunteers that come.

 

My worldly, wise, and godly professor told me my last days of college “you will help the people you meet by learning from them” 

True

 

 

All I know is that I love this fricken month’s placement

 

 

Are you kidding me?

I’m literally doing this for a year, traveling from place to place going on adventures like this but even more so seeing how I can steward it for Christ for His Name light into darkness, to tell stories, to intercede

 

 

They look out hair blowing so that their faces face the air, the ocean air, looking onto the horizon of endless seas is the infinity for which we were made and the humanity that is uniquely every one of ours

And you can see it on her, the reality of Christ realized in her, it makes life okay and abundant 

 

 

The last island I go to: the dock and the sand strip with the three of them during golden hour, especially the 19 year old, we take pictures together

The joy in the two older ones I wanted to see came, and I believe I showed them love and the peace and joy that Christ is in me. With barely any words, the 19 year old and I mesh. We say thank you to God. She teaches me “beautiful” in Indonesian

  

 

Sitting around a campfire, staying up late, with Indonesian guys around my age discussing my singleness and how I’d rather grow in God than settle

They ask me what my dream is, and I say well…loving people and this is eternal life to know Jesus Christ (John 17)

One says “your living your dream”

The Islamic Mystic who took a spiritual journey to Turkey “being present is key”

 

Belonging

 

 

One of the locals I connected with the most helped me close my time at the English program in the best way: a mural (see @hanjanmit on insta)

Those last days were so beautiful and so full of moments of connection and vulnerability. 

 

 

They made us dinner; they gathered to say bye and take pictures with us. We will stay in touch. Our togetherness will last.

 

We get to step into pockets of sunshine wherever we go

On the bus to nowhere, I travel. Bracelets from Indonesians I adore on my left hand, transporting to another country, I finally know I am on the Race

One of my favorite parts: the in between. Where there’s nothing required of me, but to take the world in

Oh and no Wifi

 
Also,

The first church we visited welcomed us boldly, encouraged us, honored us in every way. We even went up to the front to introduce ourselves and later prayed over them.

 

And then I went to a local life group… 

I am humbled to sit in this circle with 10 people closing their eyes connecting the way they were. I’ve never really experienced anything like it

Each person All In

Yet I feel I got to step into the feeling of what it’s like to be a Christian in a country like this. It is sadness but also faith as small as a mustard seed that can move mountains

I see now more than ever the power of the body of Christ and how we work together and how many people and moments and prayers it takes to transform any soul. Every part we play, even a moment of kindness matters

And they convicted me tonight. I am humbled to even get to worship with locals like this in Indonesia; this is about doing the Will of the Father. Remaining and dying to myself to produce fruit

There’s a bunch of opportunities on my heart, but in reality I just need to go to God. Do nothing, until He shows me what to

  

This is my team and I at our friend’s church.

The church was full of people and full of the Spirit; it reminded me of my Red Rocks Church back home in Colorado.

My team Culturevate is a reflection of a sort of Kingdom togetherness that I see in the body of Christ internationally.

I need to remember that everything is better and more effective when we are cultivating together, encouraging each other, empowered to play our individual roles.

We are experiencing our own healing out here through vulnerability through being stripped of our previous lives. We are seeking the living God. We are sharing our stories.

I tell them imperfectly the story of my life, and yet they still love me. No matter what I do, God will still love me. I could mess up so bad, and he would still not turn me away 

 

The Chosen 

 Why does the most full life I’ve ever lived hurt so bad?

 

In my first blog on the Race, God told me to show those without parents His love. Immediately I met someone like that my age with a powerful testimony and spirit. 

I also spent time volunteering at an orphanage…

I think those babies changed my life forever

The newborns I cannot handle, and I don’t understand. I look into the eyes of every toddler and the need to be loved

I see a maybe 3 year old outside so sad, nothing I do or he does can lighten her eyes. At the end her light came out only for a moment

I put a girl with beautiful eyes on my lap, she is gentile, kind, does not know my name but she rest with me and my heart melts into her body. I feel like she’s mine, because she needs a mother

Every eye I looked into I tried to pray Christ’s blessing. As I played with them, they attached so fast, and did not want me to go. It doesn’t make sense 

 

Another day…

The orphans reach for your hug

Two of them next to each other yearn for my love, which one will I choose. How can you be attentive to the one but not the other?

They need to be chosen

How can their eyes see so clearly who I am and what the world is?

Without words, we bond 

From different nations in moments of glorious laughter and touch we forget it all

They don’t have a father and mother, but they have a God who has enough to choose them. Not just for an hour, but to look them in the eyes individually and never leave

 

 

The theme of being chosen came up again when I encountered a young girl at the hostel we are currently staying at…

I knew I wanted her notice, I received it. A gentle tap on my side for help

A girl half-Swedish that stays at this Malaysian hostel chooses me for a minute and I choose her. To be interruptible as my squad has been saying 

I love you Lord. Things that used to make me shake my security now don’t and all I need is you. Still

And the Spirit tells me. Imagination. We enter into a different world, I go along completely. Because imagination is reality

 

 

Okay, now I am going to share about the darkest most saddening situations and faces I have ever encountered. We spent time loving on current victims of sex trafficking. Two different contexts, the same sadness. 

Prayer walks on the red light district…

We carry the Worship and Kingdom of the everlasting Father in us and His Kindness leaves our eyes as we introduce ourselves “Namasaya Hannah,” and I shake their hands

Never have I looked into the eyes of souls more lost than they. Beaten down, no longer even searching, just waiting in pain for another night to be treated as an object

A 22 year old, my age, in this environment as her everyday existence. I mean what? $7 is the cost at this lower class place to buy a woman to have sex outside in the dark rainy forest, $14 for the younger women

We pray over them, even the woman pimp is open to our prayers. Each of them still carries a little bit of kindness as we speak to them. But one of them reminds me of this orphan I met the other day, hiding with no smile to reciprocate

THEY NEED OUT. WHAT KIND OF LIFE IS THIS? 

Support organizations ending trafficking

 

 

God spoke this over me for them:

You are as delicate and beautiful to God as a flower, every part of you like a petal. He wants to carefully handle you in the strength of his hands

 

 

We also got to do the very thing that led me to do the Race in first place. It was a blog about a Racer showing Christ’s love to a prosititute in a bar that impacted me the most. 

We bought a girl’s time at an upper class karaoke bar. 

The realization praying for the other girls behind the glass window, that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, who shall He send? Me, Lord, me

Read about this on my teammates‘ blogs 

 

These women need to know they are individually chosen and seen by God, just like those orphans, just like that woman holding an infant on the street asking for change, and just like me. 

In the same manner that the fatherless and motherless children and infants reach out for my attention, yearning for me to choose them above anyone else, the locals sought after my attention, to listen to them with the unjudgmental eyes of Christ

To love them without requirement or a show to give

I no longer am searching to be acknowledged; I already know I am infinitely by God. From that place, I get to show people that God chooses them too regardless of what they do or don’t do

The weight of these stories I cannot bear. In a week, I can’t meet all these beautiful but hungry and hurting souls where they need to be met. Only God can do that 

Why is it that humans love partially? Many getting a smaller portion?

I want that to be different. I want you to be seen, heard, valued, encouraged, known and uniquely chosen because that is what you are 

I see people, all the same, coping and covering, searching and sensing. Only Jesus is your hope, the healing of your heart, the wiping of your tears, the bread and water that sustains and fulfills you

  

I wrote a couple weeks into my month in Indonesia… 

Instead of doing the Race and my belief in the necessity of Jesus being challenged, it is being deepened and affirmed

Never more have I seen that the need is universal and that Jesus Christ is the Only answer.

 

I’ve seen it in the testimonies of my teammates

Unexplainable redemption and intimacy with Abba over unexplainable pain

What happens if you have a story of unexplainable pain but do not have that unexplainable perfect One outside of yourself to make you whole and free again?

That enables you to forgive those who so badly wronged you as you cry in the Presence of complete acceptance, to reconcile with those who don’t deserve it but are still relentlessly loved and pursued by God

 

I have heard it in the sort of testimonies from locals that would go viral on Youtube

Muslims having supernatural dreams of Jesus, prostitutes escaping with nowhere to go until they randomly an encounter a Christian that leads them to church, struggling single moms given a place in the family of God

  

Can I see now why the Good News has to be shared? (Matthew 18)

Yes I can

 

Can I picture the actual eyes of an orphan becoming a part of God’s family, becoming a co-heir with the King of Kings? (Romans 8)

Yes I can

 

Can I picture the actual face of a prostitute considered unclean committing the highest level of sins to her religion being given a crown of unconditional love with no shame nor condemnation? (Romans 8)

Yes I can

 

We boat back with these floating islands of trees as the sky gets darker and darker a little red sun peaking through the grey. Those remote singular lights reminding of times past in Utah and the reflections on the water of France

I feel happy, like nothing in the world is holding me back from being present

I feel called to both Indonesia and home; this land I love. So grateful to God for bringing me to Asia where I never thought I wanted to go, now I don’t want to leave

Ultimately I get to let God love me this year though wondering at culture and nature, because He is a Good Father who wants my joy, but what matters is the type of person I become through it all, the light and love of Christ I show, the prayers I pray, Kingdom coming, the wisdom and inspiration I bring back to the states, and the causes now tangibly on my heart to transform the way I conduct my life

 

 

Moving On
 

Hang tight, I have a lot more to share about what God did in me personally, what he taught me about the world, and the stories and fruit I encountered

I am currently having a refreshing time with my whole squad for debrief

Next up, a month in Malaysia…

 

I just ask that you would continue Lord