Hey hey hey!

The entire squad of 28 people & I just recently reached the beautiful land of Azerbaijian.

It took us a bit to get there, given the 70+ hour bus ride & then a longer freighter ride than expected. What we initially thought would be a 21 hour freighter ride, turned into a 4 day stay on the freighter. 

The funny part is, we could "sea"(pun totally intended) the land of Azerbaijan for 3 of those 4 days, we were just anchored right outside of the port, haha!

We still don't know exactly why we were anchored for 3 days, we heard a lot of rumors from various workers about the port closing, or the port being backed up, or even the wind, still I thought it was a wonderful time, truly. We also had the opportunity to share the gospel with several of the workers, & join in together for a worship night. It was really cool! 

I also wanted to share with you that as I was doing a few logistical things for the squad in preparation to get on the freighter, God totally set up a divine appointment with someone, now a new friend! This person and I had an incredible & deep conversation about Faith, Christianity, Islam, & life in general. This friend seems to be on the search for truth & it was just really cool to engage in conversation about that. At the end I simply told this new friend something along the lines of, "Don't just take my word for it, God is big enough to hear your questions & if you are genuinely seeking for the truth, it will be revealed to you!" Praise the Lord for this person & may they experience the unconditional love of the Heavenly Father as they continue their spiritual search for the truth:)

Coming up... we are heading into a time of Debrief for the squad. This means a period of 6 days of teaching, equipping, one on one catch ups with our coaches and mentor, lots of prayer & worship, & hopefully some good sleep for everyone. We are gearing up for the last leg of the journey, how crazy is that?

Oh, & today as a friend & I were praying about our time in Azerbaijan, I asked God to please make it obvious who He may have in mind for me to invest time with as I make new friends. Due to the busier schedule with logistical duties, I wanted to be more intentional about God really highlighting those people to me. & guess what. God totally highlighted someone super obvious to me. As my co-logistics buddy & I were walking out from a cafe this morning, the waitress we had was such a cutie! In that moment I needed to get somewhere so I could not chat long, but I did want to come back and talk to that waitress more. So in my head I said, "God, is she someone I should invest more time into?" & as we walked about two minutes out from the cafe, all the sudden we heard a gal running up to us & exclaiming "excuse me excuse me I want to talk to you more!" So, long story short, we are going to get together and chat some more. She is working on English & interested in learning more. I am looking forward to doing that as well as sharing the good news of Jesus Christ to her :)

Almost immediately after Debrief, we will head to the country of Georgia, where I will then get to visit my parents for the week. I can hardly wait to see them, it's been about 8 months. We will have quite a few stories to share, I am sure!

That's a wrap for now, thanks for tuning in!

With love,
Kailey