Truly Loved + Wholly Surrendered

Just a note of warning as you've probably gathered from the title of this post: This post is about Auschwitz and Birkenau, the horrors of the Holocaust, and has detail of what I saw and heard while there. Read at your own discretion.  Three weeks ago today, when I was in Poland, our teams had time to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was such a sobering and somber day, but overall, I'm thankful for the opportunity.  To walk the gravel roads the Jewish people walked and suffered on was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and seeing the camps and hearing and learning more about the Holocaust in general was important because it's getting lost in history. But, we are to remember. We are to stand for and love the Jewish nation, God's chosen ones. Seeing how they lived and hearing the horror and brutality of Auschwitz was a stark reminder of the value of life and how inhumane the entire thing was. Yet, God is faithful to His people!  What Satan tried to destroy through the hands o

This entire mission trip was covered in abundance of prayer, for which I'm very grateful. I sit here at home after a somewhat chaotic trip, and I'm just blown away by the way God has worked in our time in Poland.  There were many refugees that were already believers, yet there were also many that have not yet received the Messiah as their personal Lord and Savior. The last three days were packed with camp activities and we had many opportunities to talk to the refugees and meet them where they are. For me, personally, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to allow God to work and to trust Him for the words to say. Because many were open to conversation and hearing about the Gospel, I was able to jump right into spiritual things with some of them. While it was also important to know where they came from or what they believe, the Lord showed me how I can simply ask someone if they know the Lord or what they think of the Lord. I'm grateful for these two weeks because it