Please pray

It's beginning to hit and hard.  Said goodbye to my team this morning and it was surreal as they left me standing on the platform.  Played paintball with a few of the campers this afternoon (my first time paintballing... yea, AWESOME) and then went to a meeting about the next camp with the Majak church.  All day, just an ache in my heart, and then I nearly lost it during the meeting.  We are going back to the same hotel as the last camp, and I cry every time I think of going back there without the rest of the Americans, without the Czech team, and without the students I love so much.  What I wouldn't give to go back, to be arriving in Prague once again looking for friendly faces.  It just went too fast.

But in the midst of dealing with this hurt and dreading the next five to twenty days, I'm clinging fast to God's steadfast love and have felt so loved by the Majak body here this afternoon.  Been exciting getting to know the body here in addition to all the camp stuff through our dinner outreaches the past 3 nights. 
I am excited about the 2nd camp with younger kids, although it will be challenging in a whole new way, being able to communicate very little and having to be very creative and proactive to build those relationships.  
Also, the new soccer fields that Majak just got and have been renovating are being used this week for a sports camp!  This will be used to get contacts and drum up interest for a league this fall.  The English Camp next week is also to build contacts to start a youth group.  I'm sensing a theme in my life over the past 2 years, and am just not quite sure what to make of it at this point :)

So, yes, there are exciting, amazing works of God happening here, and I don't want to miss that because I'm sad.  Yes, it hurts, but I've done it before and I know God works everything for good, as much as it's killing me right now.  I ask for a supernatural level of trust and contentment and joy and humility in what God has called me to do here.  The strangeness of the Barnabus role as I work out what it means later on...but for now, one day at a time.
I am so ridiculously thankful for brothers and sisters here that are pretty much family at this point.  It's painful at this point, and I feel like massive pieces of me are missing, but there's the hope of "One Day Soon".