Arizona blog

Wow! What a crazy day to get here to AZ!

To start off with, I had to move out of my apartment by 5am on Tuesday morning to be ready to get on the shuttle going to Atlanta (which left at 5:30am from Hackman parking lot.) By mid afternoon Monday I had NO idea how I was going to get done. All of my friends I tried to call were either busy or didn’t answer their phone. My main problem was a 100 pound box I had to carry up that steep flight of stairs outside my apartment. After trying to call about 15 different people, I had to (inch by inch!) carry it up the stairs myself. And that was not the only heavy box I had to carry up those stairs! I had a total over 10 boxes (all of them over 30 pounds) to carry up those stairs. In the evening, Mayri came over to my apartment (THANK YOU Mayri! You are an angel!) I would have never lived if she hadn’t come and helped me! I got the last box out of the house and the last suitcase up the stairs at 4:55am on Tuesday—five minutes before I was to leave for Hackman parking lot!!!! I did a lot of praying that night—around 3 am I really didn’t think I was going to get moved out on time!

But that wasn’t even the beginning of my interesting trip! We got to Atlanta to find out that our flight was cancelled. So the 6 of us had to wait almost 12 hours in the Atlanta airport before we finally left at 7:30pm!! An airplane NEVER looked SO good! We got here to Phoenix only to find out that we needed to rent rental cars (we were told we would have church members transporting us to where we needed to go) and not only that, but that we weren’t going to the Mariott Hotel, but Thunderbird Academy! Well, driving in Phoenix when I hadn’t had any sleep for almost 3 days was quite the adventure, and it was quite the adventure when we got here to the Academy only to find out that they didn’t know that all 8 of us were coming (we joined the other 2 team members here in phoenix) when we arrived at the Academy at 11pm! (Or 2am EST… which is what our bodies that the time was!) Hmmm, more adjusting! I wonder what will happen next!

Arizona Day 3

So I have been here a total of 2 days now. WOWO!!! What a 2 days! SOOO many unexpected things going on! I think the devil is so mad that he would do anything to shut us up or harm us—anything to keep us from preaching. I found out that half of the churches didn’t even know we were coming. My pastor only speaks Spanish, so I couldn’t understand him, (but I finally met my translator, a cute 17 yr old girl, and that made my life a lot easier!), and my church is almost 75 min drive away from here!

Not only that, we are having a lot of moral problems here in the team. We had one team member run off with one of the rented cars and threaten to leave, and another team member refuse to talk for a morning (cuz he was made at another team member) and all sorts of craziness. Our team leader has never lead a team before and got super stressed out and yelled at another team member today, and last I saw, 2 team members were headed into downtown Phoenix tonight because they wanted to get away from here and all the conflict that is going on.

I have been learning how important adaptability is, and calmness. When everything is falling apart around me, and everyone is so stressed out and running around blaming everyone else for stuff, I have found that it is SO important for me to double my time with the Word and my prayer time. My one desire is that others (including my fellow team members) not see me, but Jesus in me. I am nothing, but Jesus is EVERYTHING. How I pray that I may be one with Him, and that I abide continually in Him—and never separate myself from the True Source of love, and peace and joy. I pray that I may be filled with His holiness that I have something to give to others. I need to be continually filled with His love, so that I can share it with others.

Ok it is 3am, gotta hit the bed! Had to stay up late to try to combine two hour long sermons into one 35 minute sermon!