Hello everyone from team Croatia!!
We have our flights booked and we are eagerly awaiting the day we get to catch air and put our hearts fully into action! We are so looking forward to going on this great adventure and sharing it with all of you! Thank you all so much for the contributions you have been making! With all the money we have been blessed with, we are fully prepared and stable to venture into this journey.
We are doing more team bonding and learning much more about Croatia and the people we will be in contact with. Something we want to accomplish is simple phrases in Croatian to be able to connect on a more personal level.
We found out that we will be living not out of a suitcase, but a backpack for one month. This was hard for some of us to grapple with, but this just shows us that we are going to be relying on God more than ever. Living with so little will hopefully open our eyes to see that material things shouldn’t matter when doing God’s work.
If you were to ask us three how we were doing emotionally in regards to preparing for this trip, of course, there would be differences, but as a whole, I think we have been doing fairly well. We have been looking forward to this trip so much, and as we prepare, we are also learning how best to encourage each other as we talk through any nerves that we may have. Communication began as a struggle for us, but as we’ve spent more time with each other, prayed together, and listened to each other’s struggles we’ve been able to be more honest and vulnerable with one another. Our desire to work together and truly be there for each other is evident in all three of us, I believe, and we are so excited for the challenges that this new country and a new culture will offer us!
As our team works through the busy schedule of CLBI life and extra activities going on outside of CLBI, we have come to realize the lack of intentional bonding we have been a part of. Specifically, in our spiritual diligence with one another, we at times have not remembered to count God as the fourth member of our team. Nevertheless, on the few accounts that our team has come together with one another, we have come to introduce ways in which God can be a bigger focus. First planning’s consisted of team goals and personal goals in which we incorporated ways of how we desire to be pushed and encouraged in our faith walk during the IMPACT trip.
We can sense Gods mighty hand as we draw closer to the trip. He has blessed us in many ways with the people that we meet, and the generosity of those around us. We have been able to have the great opportunity to talk about God to others even before we depart, thanks to the IMPACT trip.
As we heard in class this week, prayer is one of the most powerful actions we can take. So as we go forward, we appreciate all the prayers that are coming our way.
-Nicole
Photo from left to right:
Emma, Nicole, Leanne
