First off I would like to give thanks to God for this massive privilege of being able to be part of this journey and have the opportunity to serve Him!
It is purely out of His grace that I am here and through His grace that I have the opportunity see and experience a small part of the world and what it has to offer.
Nothing can prepare you though for what you are about to undertake when you sign up.
You get to Jeffrey's in January full of expectation and excitement about what the year has installed for you. You think about all the countries you are going to visit, all the different cultures that you will experience and how you can help to expand the Kingdom of God. It is almost to good to be true, thinking that for the next 8 months you will travel the world and have the opportunity to learn more about God's character. At first you don't really think about the challenges that you are heading into, or I didn't anyway, I only briefly thought about the spiritual and physical challenges. It turned out that physically it is not really that tough, mind over matter most of the time. Spiritually God is amazingly merciful and generous in supplying us with all the strength and wisdom we need to do His will.
Global Challenge is without a doubt different for every individual and everyone face their own unique challenges. These challenges are mainly categorized in physical, emotional and spiritual challenges.
For me, it is coping with the emotional strains that accompany a year like this. Because what you don't know beforehand is that a One Year GCEX is actually an arranged marriage where you are married to 10 people that you neither knew nor chose. For a period of 8 months you are all joined together like a big mormon family (maybe not the best of examples...), with the opportunity of getting to know each other much more intimately than initially planned.
At first this may drive you crazy, the lack of personal space, time and the fact that you are constently surrounded by the same number of 'brothers and sisters'. Times may come (they usually do) where you feel you can literally die of irritation and frustration. Not always due to family members though, just a combination of all the different challenges pooling together.
For me, these emotional tribulations led me to experience the toughest emotional year of my life. For most of the time I felt like a 10 year old girl, experiencing a range of emotions fit for a year in only 1 day...
But even if this was 10 times worse I will never trade this experience for anything else in the world!
It is only through times like this that you truly get to know yourself, your limitations and the areas in your life that you need to work on. God is quick to reveal what you need to work on and He gives you the strength, patience and love to make those changes permanent in your life. But only if you are willing to accept these shortcommings and that you need His help in changing into the person He wants you to be.
I am just amazed at what God already did in my life during the first half of the year, the lessons I learned and the amount of grace He showed me. I can just pray that He will help me show the same grace and love that He showed me, to others.
For the last 4 months of my married life (this year...) I aim to take as much as I can from this union, being open to what God still want to do in my life. I know now that His grace is enough to help us through anything that comes our way!
What a privilege it is to be in the hands of our living God!
What a privilege it is to be a Global Challenge participant!
TF