Macedonia Days 2 and 3

Hey there Young Life friends! This is Lauren Bevan coming at ya live from a teeny tiny hostel in Skopje, Macedonia. I'm one of the six blessed leaders from Fayetteville who hopped on a plane (or 5) to travel across the world and serve in whatever way Jesus sees fit.  Since our last blog update about this trip, we have been increasingly blown away by this place and the sweet people that inhabit it. Here's our "T5" from the last two days :)  1. Meeting Martin, a potential volunteer Young Life leader from Skopje.  2. Spontaneous hangout with 30ish med students from Skopje University. 3. Being apart of TWO bilingual worship services- both at a Youth Center last night, and church this morning. 4. Picnic and hike at the BREATHTAKING Matka Canyon this afternoon, with all potential volunteer leaders and our hosts.  5. Baklava. Enough Said.  While spending some alone time in the word today, I read this from Psalm 40:5-  "Many, O Lord My God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you, were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare."  This TRULY has been my heart's cry since we arrived here. God has surpassed any and all of my expectations I had going into the trip. And trust me when I say, I had very high expectations. I have been desperately praying for God to send me overseas for the past 3+ years. Also trust me when I say, if I could have imagined what my first international mission trip were to look like- this would NOT have been it.  Because this trip was, in many ways, such a mystery to all of us before we got here- I have to admit, the fear of the unknown threatened my excitement. While we were obviously aware of what our general purpose was in coming here, the specifics of our itinerary weren't clear until the night before this adventure began. But in this moment, I have a crazy amount of thankfulness for this. There was so much beauty in the unknown, just as there has been so much beauty in every second spent here. We have all joked over and over about how much we have already done in such a short amount of time. Our mission work has not been your typical restructuring of homes or feeding impoverished populations- but by serving God through developing relationships to create the framework of Young Life in eastern Europe. We truly are apart of something groundbreaking in this faraway country that the typical American wouldn't even be able to point to on a map.  I'll close with this: the world is so small in comparison to the bigness of our God's heart.  PS. Tomorrow we're headed to our second Macedonian destination: Struga! Check back with us for more posts :)