What comes after the excitement is gone?

So i have officially been here for 46 days. This is the longest that I have ever been out of the country. It seems as though the newness of this adventure has worn away. I remember being in Virginia and thinking about all the places that the people around me were going and how incredibly exciting it was. I wondered though what would happen when all the excitement wears away and people now longer introduce you as the American, what are you left with? Well i will tell you, you are left with the day to day task of continuing to follow the Lord in obedience. I am learning more and more about how to actually live out this Christian life, in a place that I sometimes feel so alone it physically hurts, but the Lord has been gracious to me showing the He is what will sustain me.

Being stripped of everything that is familiar has an interesting effect on a person. In America I was a very independent and most of the time busy person, but here I can not really go anywhere by myself and I have a lot of hours to simply do nothing. This has afforded me the benefit at really taking a hard look at the things that I have been taught.

I listened to a David Platt sermon the other day and something he said struck me as genius: "Our contentment was never designed to be fulfilled in external circumstances, but by the internal working of Christ in your life." I have often wondered what it actually looks like to be content. Does it happen when you finally receive all the desires of your heart or can it be more than that...I would say that it has to be what David said, because our circumstances change with every waking hour and I think it is our choice to either focus on those or look into the eyes of our Maker and trust His heart.

I never thought I would have to continuously remind myself that this is what I wanted, I can remember last summer always giving my introduction to campers and saying i will be living in Brazil for the next two years, it always sounded so cool. Now that I am actually doing it and I fell the strain of being away from the people I love the most, and attempting to learn this language that I do not understand. The coolness is now gone, and I am simply left with the task ahead.

Even though I have never ran a marathon i look at this journey like that, at times the run is easy and fluid and then there are those moments where i am telling myself to just continue to put one foot in front of the other....that is where i am at, trying to continue to walk the straight and narrow.

I go to skype with some of the SWO people yesterday while at their Staff Orientation Weekend, it was such a blessing to my heart, because I know that when these people say " I am praying for you" they actually mean it, they are genuinely concerned about how the state of my heart is. Even though it is hard for me sometimes to admit my struggles, I have seen how the body of Christ will uphold you during those times, and it is oh so glorious...