Motivational Gifts and the Body of Christ P2

Toward the end of the last post I said that God always has stuff planned out perfectly. Well, I’m going to go into a bit more detail. Earlier that day (Saturday) I was on my way back to my room from the library, and the hospital chapel happens to be right next to the residential wing of the hospital. For some reason, I decided to just stop by, and up to this point I can only attribute that to the leading of the Holy Spirit, because I really didn’t have a reason. But when I walked up to the door, there was a little paper posted that had a listing of churches in the area. (There’s a sidenote needed here: One of the nicknames of Adelaide is the City of Churches because it used to have so many but apparently many have been closed and turned into other things unfortunately, but there are still quite a few. However, anytime I look at a listing of churches, there’s only like 5-7 listed, and different lists have different churches…the more famous ones like St. Peter’s which is this humongous Catholic church is on most of the lists, but the smaller ones seem to be scattered) Anyhow, on this particular list…which by far was the most helpful of them all because it listed the church, phone number, location and service times, had the words Assemblies of God: Edge church 9am and 11am And so I decide I’ll go to one of those services tomorrow. I looked the street up on the map of the city and it seemed to be not so bad of a walk, so that was good. Now we go back to my dinner drama, fast forward a few hours. After 2 unsuccessful dinner invites, one saying no and the other having no answer, I decided to just go to dinner alone…which I don’t mind so much…I just hate sitting in my room alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to. So I go off to look at the city some. Since I was by myself, I decided, “hey, why don’t I go look for that church just to make sure that I can find it, and I can see relatively how long it will take.” So I did just that, and am so fortunate that I did, because when I went there, I discovered that in the summer, they condense to one service at 10 am. If I had not known that, I might’ve missed what happened the next day. And the other bonus was, I found 4$ pizza in a place where everything seems to be quite expensive. Yay :)
But on to the motivational gifts that I keep seeming to talk about in the title but nowhere else. I suppose since it is the title, I should at least mention it. First, I suppose I will start by saying that I’m an exhorter/prophet, or encourager/perceiver. What this means specifically for me is that I’m quite good at encouraging people who I’m comfortable around and I’ve grown in being welcoming to the outsider in the group, but for me, many things are very black and white, and I’m ok with being a loner, for a while. I’m kind of an introverted extravert because I can be very shy, but being around people, once I get to know them, energizes me. And for most people, it can take up to a year or longer for me to warm up to them. Anyhow, I got to the church on that Sunday around 9:30 because I grossly overestimated the amount of time it would take to get there, but for me, that’s for the best cause I can be bad about time. There weren’t many people there yet, but a woman who was doing the parking validation offered me some tea or coffee and chatted with me for a bit, and told me that she would introduce me to a woman named Zahara. The first impression I got of her was wow she’s rockin’ those heels… I’m pretty sure they were at least 6 inches, lol. She was an absolutely lovely woman and definitely an exhorter …she reminded me a lot of my friend DWoods, because she was everyone’s friend and it took us like 15 minutes to make it up to the second level of the church where the sanctuary was (it used to be a movie a theatre so that was pretty cool) because she kept stopping to talk to people. She was a very cool person. She’s one of the people that helped me get out of that “I made a terrible mistake by coming here alone” mindset because she encouraged me and she didn’t even know that I needed encouragement. She affirmed me and told me how brave I was by coming to a country on the other side of the world, to a city where I didn’t know anyone at all, and then I just walked right into a church to meet people because I had seen it on a list of churches. It’s funny how we are our own worst critics, and I suppose it does take some guts to leave the comforts of home to go to an unknown land. The service was great, and it’s a church whose main goal is to reach the community with the message of Hope, Truth, and Love. Afterward, they had a time of fellowship where they serve snacks and coffee or hot chocolate. The snacks were sushi and these little brownie type cakes…I just thought that was interesting. During this time is when I met Denise and Robert Pride. They’re an older couple, and they were also very nice. I would guess them to be more the giver type. I first met Denise, and she told me about her family, (some of which live in CA) her husband and then they’re goats and alpaca. It’s a good thing I love goats, because she talked about them for a while, and alpacas are just entertaining animals. I think I’d have only been more amused if she’d told me they owned an emu, because those are just hilarious. Anyhow, after talking with them both for a while, they offered to take me around a show me the city which was very kind of them. I will post the pictures on fb, and as soon as I figure out how to post pictures to blogspot, I’ll add a few (if anyone knows, feel free to post a comment and tell me). I told them that I would be living away from the city, and they even offered me a place at their home over the weekends if I still wanted to attend their church. I think I’ve gained a new appreciation for the body of Christ. I realize now that no matter where I go, home to Jersey, Purdue, and even Australia, if the body of Christ is there, I’ll always have family, because with the body of Christ is love. Also, with the Holy Spirit, I’m never alone. If it weren’t for him afterall, leading me to that chapel, I probably would not have found that church. One final note: “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.” (Romans 12:6a) Jesus said “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with very much…” (Luke 16:10a) I’ve realized that I haven’t been using the gifts God has given me to maximum potential, so one of my new prayers is that I will be trustworthy with the little He’s given me, and by His grace that I would use that to the max. I sincerely hope that if you’ve not experienced the love of Christ that you will seek it out, because not much compares.
I’ll be continuing to live this adventure, and hopefully I’ll keep growing. A look into the future of this blog, I’ve learned some interesting things about the history and culture, and probably before that, I’ll be writing about the next phase of this journey…moving to Roseworthy.
May you always live to your full potential!

Until next time,
Shalomses