Day 21: 21 Days.

Well, that's week 3. So 30% of our journey has passed already.

Today was Friday, so it was our day off. Katie got a negative COVID test and then she and Izzy went to a "make-crepes-and-watch-movies" day with the women of H@ngout. Sadly, fewer came than was hoped for, but it sounded like they got to make really good connection with those who were there and made some amazing crepes. 

I woke up and went back to sleep and woke up and went back to sleep. I had a dream about church planting. I don't remember much, but I remember I was there with Kyle and Christina Kroeger (my original HG leaders) and we were making plans with the team about how best to reach our campus and city. There was a team, and I think I knew some of them, but I don't remember any of the other people. I so rarely remember dreams. Apparently, my heart is still mourning the "loss" of the UTRGV team (in the sense of us not going) and still dreams of church planting. 

Eventually, I managed to convince myself to get up. I am powered by purpose, friends. Any day that I don't have a good reason to get out of bed; it's really hard to do. Even when I'm not sleepy, sleep is better than being awake and not having purpose. 

Matthew was worshiping in the living room, which was really nice. I think I scared him by still being in the house. I think he thought I had gone for a run or something. 

So, I went for a run. I was in no hurry, and I realized that I've put into my plan a plan to run 4 miles tomorrow, so I wanted to try to stretch my 3 out a little to build my confidence that it was possible and to stretch my mental endurance. I'm in bad shape, don't get me wrong, but I think that my primary difficulty is mental. Anyway, I took a slightly different course and ended up running 3.5, with only a few breaks in there. So, blue box today! My only red box so far has been a day that I just didn't run enough, so I'm curious to see what my boxes look like at the end of the summer. True red boxes are scary because if I skip a day I've scheduled, it'll be easy to skip more I think. 

Anyway, went for a run. Came home, chatted with Matthew a bit. Walked to the AM/PM to get some cash. My phone is psycho. I put too much money on it, now all of the money isn't showing. It might be a conflict with my bank for the multiple identical charges in a row that weren't supposed to happen. Banks often don't like that. But it's handy to have a phone that works....so, RIP me I guess. I will ask Lagos to help me fix it Monday. 

Came home, took a shower. I caught up and got ahead on some Reliant, job-related things, including trainings. We have yearly trainings for how to detect and engage and report abuse. They are not fun trainings, because they basically focus on how terrible people can be to each other. 

I also worked more on my teaching for next Friday. It's better than it was, but I have some more things to change. It is a short teaching. I timed myself today. And I wasn't even nervous-speed-talking.

Izzy and Katie came home, and brought us some crepe. That was very kind of them. I would not have brought me crepes. They were quite tasty.

I caught a 17-minute nap and we went to church. Our Uber turned into our cul-de-sac, then backed up, left, and canceled on us. Lol, unknown what that was about. So we got a different one. Church went really well. Worship was mostly songs I didn't know, which is cool. Matthew shared tonight on the importance of commitment/buy-in to your church. 

Idk if y'all read this, John and Serene. If you do: you should be crazy proud of Matthew. He did so well tonight. 

Matthew basically just preached scripture. He started with some of the harder teachings of our responsibility to be involved, sharing the parable of the talents and the King's displeasure and punishment of those who squandered his gifts. Intense. He didn't water it down or pull punches, just taught honest scripture. So impressive. Then he made a turn and talked about the Joy and Love that are the better motivation for serving God than duty or responsibility. He ended by having us listen to the Lord. And it was all in Spanish. It was awesome. 

After church, we headed home and ordered wings and ate dinner. We were all pretty wiped out, so the homies went to bed and I went for a walk. I still feel the vast amount of friend foods inside of me. 

I got to send Alexis some voice messages about our different and related insecurities. It was really good for me to think about my often-ignored insecurities and get to share some of them. Most of them come down to not being worthy of love. I think that's pretty central to all humans. 

Now I am listening to one of Alexis' Spotify playlists and about to do the Wordle. Ooh, it's past midnight! Hang on a second, citizens.

Wordle 350 6/6

⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜

⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜

⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜

⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩

⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

That was rough. I was so sad by guess number 4 that I guessed it twice in a row. That's right. I guessed the same word twice. It wasn't right either time.

Tomorrow is going to start very early, but be pretty short, I hope. 

PRAYER

-you know it: walk in step with the Spirit homies
-good team dynamics
-good connection to God, students, kids, team, church
-for Katie to get fully unsick and no one else to get it
- G O S P E L  opportunities and readiness
-for my heart to be healthy in what and how and why I do things
-for my teachingggg next week, especially the Spanishness of it
-for opportunities to mobilize
-for our church's Balkans team! they leave in like 10 days

Mathew Schmid, ladies and gentlemen. My camera is rough, he was a lot less blurry live.