Busy bee

Busy bee is what is engraved on my journal I’ve used for the past year as my devo journal. I finally ran out of pages and filled the 

 

We’re in our final week of the race! But I didn’t get to recap Romania because we were so busy. I deeply loved our time in Romania, so much so I’m fundraising to go back and serve there a little longer term. 

 

We served with Hope Church Romania and I got to serve as pastor Raul’s assistant. The days were very full, always something to do. We helped with the Ukrainian refugees, both in Craiova and in transit, as well as prepping convoys that went into Ukraine. 

 

Everyday was wildly busy. It reminded me of when I was on staff at the church, it was incredible. There were also just a lot of personal things happening in my life. Because of this, leadership was a little concerned about me having enough time to process things and really have the time to heal.

 

I like busy. In my states life I routinely go from the moment I wake up until my head hits pillow. Protein bars as meal replacements are the usual (I’m working on this when I get home cause I think that might be a little too busy!!) and Romania reminded me of that pace. 

 

In all the busyness, I wondered how Raul and the staff did it. How did they manage to keep their relationship with God at the forefront? They arrived before me, worked during the time we had for lunch break, and left later than I did. How did they have any time for personal issues? 

 

One q&a with Raul, a squadmate asked him a question similar to the one above. His answer taught me a lot. Here are some wise words from the man from various conversations on this topic.

• He said that he keeps his routine, and no matter what, his routine is going to stay. His routine is to arrive early to the church to spend time with Jesus, and then call a colleague and pray together. This man is helping refugees from a war happening right next door to his country. Things often are urgent and have the ability to derail your life. He keeps his routine though, and his routine is what allows him to pour out and deal with the urgent cries for help that he’s responding to. 
• He praises with Jesus about all the work that they’re doing! Everything he does he does WITH the Lord not just for Him. He takes time to acknowledge and celebrate what it is that is going well, and praise Jesus for all the growth. 
• He takes the risk of delegating. He’s very easy to hand something off and once it’s handed off, he doesn’t need to be involved in it. It can completely leave his mind and be someone else’s problem to fix. 
• He talked about how some people are workaholics, but some people are sabbathaholics. Me and my friend Madison were talking about this and we realized that if you’re so guarded about making sure you do nothing on your sabbath, you’re doing the same thing Jesus routinely called out the Pharisees for. Jesus healed on the sabbath. He ate grain on the sabbath. Yes, He withdrew with God and it’s good to do that. But if the sabbath is truly dedicated to God and not to personal preference then God can direct it how He wants it.

There’s a lot more that I learned from this month. Like how emotional healing can happen as you go and experience things with God and not only when you sit and receive from Him. I also learned so much about leadership and how the whole staff at Hope Church operated in it. The word leader is only mentioned a few times in the Bible whereas servant is mentioned over 800 times. This and a million other leadership lessons were demonstrated so well. I hope if you’re in a busy season this helps you as much as it did me!