Embracing Fearless Pursuit

I, Valerie Cross, am going to Zambia in  45   days! This is Part 3 of how my life was interrupted (in a good way) by God and how I now find myself preparing to get on a flight to Africa in less than 2 months. I packed up my stuff and went to our Chi Alpha weekend retreat, praying and hoping for some clarity in regards to what decision I should make, but also not wanting it to consume my thoughts the whole weekend.  Neither really happened, which is good on the side of not being consumed by it but discouraging in not having clarity or answers from God. I felt like the whole weekend I was waiting for something to happen that would make it so clear to me, but it never did (at least that's what I thought). At the retreat, I attended a breakout session where the speaker talked about using our past, pain, passion, and spiritual gifts to serve God in our "sweet spot." She talked about Isaiah 43, specifically verses 18-19: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on t

I, Valerie Cross, am going to Zambia in 46 days! This is Part 2 of how my life was interrupted (in a good way) by God and how I now find myself preparing to get on a flight to Africa in less than 2 months. I didn't hear anything back for 2 weeks.  After 2 weeks, one morning I thought to myself, "Maybe I'll never hear back, maybe this was just a test from God to see if I would obey. Maybe nothing will come out of it and I won't go but God just wanted to see if I would follow where He led and I did it, I applied, I stepped out, I did what I could."  That same afternoon, I was contacted by the coordinator to set up a phone call to ask questions, get to know me better, etc. Of course, God stepped out right when I was about to give up on it.  We spoke on February 3rd, right before I needed to leave for a Chi Alpha retreat. And that phone call was just as equally encouraging as it was confusing.  Remember how I mentioned in the last post about how I had found s