Third

So debrief has begun. My time in Rio de Janeiro has been amazing. I don't even know where to begin. I've like... backspaced and deleted things I already wrote so many times. Hm... The Lord radically blessed us with friendships and encounters. With the carnivale starting, we all were pumped to get into the city and just do work! It was amazing. I love doing ministry in these types of environments. At the same time, my heart broke. As I just saw brokenness taking on the mask of drunkenness, and partying. We even had a guy ask, "how could this be wrong? People are having fun and living. If this is wrong then I'm just going to live." Oh, if you ONLY knew! I was surprised to find that the carnivale was similar to New Year's celebrations in Sydney. Massive parades and people dancing. One day, I got to see the team, Brandon especially, step out and again break fear of man as he began to share the Lord's heart for the people of Rio de Janeiro on the main strip of Copacabana beach. It was amazing to see and be a part of that.

As we have begun debriefing, the Lord has specifically put my on heart to not only process what has happened in the past three months, but to prepare them on a more personal level to go home. Having been a DTS student myself, I found the change of settling back into home difficult. People will find the things I say offensive and would discourage the things that were laid on my heart. Being a people pleaser, I didn't want to offend anyone so I basically stopped thinking and expressing thoughts like this. I have no idea how I'm going to do that, but we'll see.

Today, we had a team meeting and started to speak out and write down the things the Lord did in us personally. It was amazing just to hear the work of the Lord in the past three months. It just pumped me up!  As I was sharing, I realised the GREATEST things I learned and the GREATEST thing I was taught was the love of God. As cliche and typical as that sounds that is literally the craziest thing I learnt. I definitely learnt many things like patience, selflessness, faith etc. But all of these things fall SO short in comparison to His love. And it's many times where I've heard that, "it's all about love." But NEVER has it actually sunk in that it really is all about that. For the first time I got to see how with the basis of love, everything else comes out of that. A relationship from love and not for love. For the first time in my life, the bible began to come alive and I just couldn't get enough of it. Every time I got to worship was a time where I could just meet and talk to Him and go deeper with Him. More and more and more hunger began to increase and increase as I apprehended His incomparable and endless love for me. No more is it about trying to make Him love me of trying to get up and have one hour of quiet time but I just want Him! It's crazy how people tend to think and be content with christianity. I love it how wrong I was. How the Lord completely blew away my mind and expounded the possibilities of His love into eternity! Everyday I'm in awe of JUST how vast He really is.

Anyway, I'll stop. I feel like you guys know where I'm at. Nothing matters anymore. I don't care. I just want to worship, and I just want Him. More and more. Everyday. FOREVER! Wow! He is worthy!