A super nice surprise

HEY HEY HEY ! ! !

It’s been about a week since I touched base with you last & man, while it’s only been a week it also feels like so much has happened still!

We are settled in a cute town of Turkey-where we will be staying in an apartment complex hosted by a local church in the area. For this, I am so grateful. It is the first time in about 9 months that I have a room to my own-my squad mates are so kind to let me have the single! This truly is a perfect space to rejuvinate in solitude at the end of the day or early mornings. It’s wild how much appreciation we can grow in with the simple things, haha!

Tonight we joined in on a weekly house church that takes place in this apartment & my gosh, what a beautiful thing it was to meet several new believers. Basically, this church family is using this apartment complex as a “house church” to teach people about who Jesus is as well as disciple new believers week to week. Tonight we worshiped together, prayed together, and laughed a lot together too. Things are going great over here & I am thrilled to invest more time in this place.

On top of the awesome location we are in, I wanted to share with you something very special and dear to my heart. This is about a gift I recently received. One of my dear friends & squad mates Nicole, felt led to give me her guitar to finish off the next 3 months with. Friend, this is wild that this happened. Right before I left the states last January, I decided last minute to keep my guitar in storage rather than bringing it on the race. Since then, it was my “one regret” of wishing I had actually lugged it along the journey. Here I am now in Turkey, with a beautiful guitar in my hands, ready and available to play.

A bit more background on why this gift is so significant: For many months on this journey I craved to play & worship, yet there was no guitar in sight most the time. I also had a secret desire to step out and help lead worship here and there, yet I was lacking in the confidence area of actually playing in front of people, haha! Not having a guitar handy with me, actually gave me an excuse of why I “couldn’t” play or help lead worship. Even if there was a guitar available time to time, I would think to myself, nahhh I can’t do that, I would need more practice.

But look at the Lord. Despite my “regret” of not bringing a guitar on the race, despite my lack of confidence, God placed on someones heart to actually GIVE me their very own guitar. Not only did this totally boost my confidence, not only did it inspire me to practice more, not only did it speak to my heart, I now get to play it any time I feel led & also get to humbly work this “worship” muscle in sometimes helping to lead morning worship with my 5 other teammates. Woah. Thank you God & thank you Nicole for this gift. It means so much.

In effort to celebrate this wonderful gift, we decided to create a little “Vlog”. 

I do hope you enjoy.

Until “next week”,
Your friend, Kailey