I’m awake early. My mind is in complete process mode still sorting out all of the information it has taken in so far this week. It has been an incredibly overwhelming, exhausting, joy-filled, tearful, heart-swollen, God orchestrated type of week. I have been taking notes, and was prepared and planning to write this week about our time here in Honduras….what I didn’t plan for was the fact that it will take some time for me to collect myself enough to write and the fact that by the time we get home at night to the hotel and have dinner, I would fall, completely used up, into bed.

I’m sitting here in the early morning as sounds of Tegucigalpa fill our room. It’s a cool morning, and the open window feels amazing on my sticky, humid skin. I have laid here for about an hour now, listening to the sounds of the city. Motorcycles, dogs barking, beautiful birds chirping, gun shots, cars honking, music school warming up their instruments across the street, roosters calling, trash trucks…..a big difference from the quiet and silence of a morning at home.

Our team leader has decided that we would read through a book of the Bible while here, and each morning as we gather for breakfast and devotional time, we could talk about what God has brought to our attention in this certain book. The book, James! Which, struck me immediately when he said it. I just finished a Life Group that worked through the exact same book. Coincidence? Absolutely not! God doesn’t work in coincidences. I see that God was preparing me for this trip right down to the day we got here, and showed me that this was exactly where I was supposed to be.

It’s a huge leap of faith to do a mission. One of the other leaders here said she constantly has people say they want to go with a team….and out of the hundreds that say they “want” to go…only a few actually do. It takes a lot of faith to step out of your comfort zone. But I know when God has whispered a mission into your heart, you better go. And that’s how it was for us. It wasn’t out of curiosity, it was out of obedience.

So I will collect the thoughts, images, sounds, smells, and prayers in my heart and mind, and soon they will spill out on to these pages. I will tell you this, I am so thankful for my faith, I am thankful that we stepped on to the ledge, I am thankful for my team’s obedience, I am thankful for the opportunity that we had to serve. I am grateful that God said, “Paula, go and be a blessing and a servant of mine to the people of Honduras” I am grateful that I listened. I am thankful for the support we have back home. I know I will never be the same. I know my life is forever changed in ways, that I’m not quite even sure is explainable. And I know that even though I planned on coming to Honduras to work hard and be an instrument of God’s love and blessing to these people, the blessings that we have received far surpasses anything I could ever imagine.