anahbellegregg - South Asia 🌏

Hello Everyone

This country was the last 2 months of my race

Life Update

We are all squad for this country but we still have teams. When we switched teams for the last official time at the beginning, my team picked the name "The Most" for us and we prayed that it was a profectic name. It was profectic in a way that none of us realized. We thought it would mean we would be used by God to do healings, miracles, sharing the gospel and seeing people decide to follow Christ. Basically that He would use us to do the most for others. We were wrong. We instead have been going through the most work with what God is doing in us, for us, than ever before, and no one saw it coming. The Lord has helped me to grow, overcome lies, see truth, fight unhealthy patterns, and feel safe to hope for the first time I can remember and I can't thank Him enough. This country in outreach had been hard because no one is really open to talking about Jesus and that is not my favorite situation to find, but in spite of this, we have still had the opportunity to work with a handful of ministries, while we were here, and that was nice. I am very excited to go home, as this place is not my favorite overall, and I am looking forward to the final debrief in Georgia. Until then, I am trying to enjoy my last few months with everyone, before we all part ways.

Whats it like in South Asia?

People: The people here were from a very different culture than the USA and I found it the most jarring of all the countries up to this point. It was normal to stare, and get in your personal space for pictures without asking, and ask for pictures a from strangers, for people to take videos and pics of me and my squadmates whenever the felt like it, for people to video call significant others and show them ✨️us✨️ from very close up with no permission, for bathrooms to sometimes have an attendant to give you toilet paper, and for men to pee on the side of the road whenever and wherever (I saw probably 100 men peeing in my time there).

Transport: We took tuk tuks everywhere for pretty cheap. Cars would honk to signal anything, so the road was never quiet. I almost never saw a car without scrapes of some kind and crossing the road followed no markings or lights, you quite literally put a hand out and walk into a space in traffic and people generally stop.

Clothing: Peoples clothes were generally Kuras for women and normal western jeans and shirt for men

Weather: It was sooooo hot. It was a high of 126°F while we were there, but I am pretty sure 115°F was the normal during the day.

Other: Street dogs there were thin and not to be touched but pets were fat and with asking, you could touch them

What's God doing in South Asia?

He is doing a lot here, but it is slow moving and full of persecution. The Lord blessed our team with being able to encourage our host after the school he helped build was burned and taken over. We have been able to encourage him and he us! He was very kind and worked out what ministry and how to get to them.

The ministries we worked with/visited a Blind school, Bible college, multiple Rehab Centers, and a school in the mountains

Day 1

Day 2

We did a foot wash, on a worship night, with my new team

Ice cream run with some of my squad

Bug 🥰

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We went with our host to get Sarees and Kurtis so we would have clothes to do ministry in, then also used them when we welcomed the parents to India. Everyone was so excited!

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We visited the local Bible college, did a tour and worshiped the Lord together with them.

We witnessed a Hindu festival, on the Ganges, to their god of destruction, Shiva, and it was so stressful.

My nicest Kurti

Adventure day to the zoo and a waterfall with some of the swad

My hair tie for the last 10 months prior, that I finally let die

Making Alfredo for the squad

The moon

The hosts dog, Boozoh

My art of how India went

Team time at the ice cream shop

A giant fruit bat

Camel on the side of the road

Meeting Mc Donald

A Tuk Tuk we rode to Church

We went to see the Golden Temple

We went to see the Border preformance

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Treats!

Sir Fungus Toadstool

The T shirts 🤣 read them

Meeeeee being cute

The rolls

Our movie day with the interesting bathroom sign

Art for a teammate

Roadside dog

Mountain ministry location

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Our last week

Fundraising Update

I applied for a Leadership training course with AIM in January and I will need to raise about $6500 for the training school. I also want to raise about $1000 to help me pay for food on the side. I would be working part time with them, but I have no savings to fall back on, for the start. I won't start raising anything until they accept me and I commit to going. I just wanted to put it on everyone's radar in the meantime.

Spiritual Update

Soooo much has happened.

We stared with debriefing Nepal and that went over alright, but I knew I was all stirred up inside and once PVT (The parent vision trip) ended I came to the end of myself as well. In a worship time I asked God to give me a picture to draw, for me, and He gave me this:

Family, future plans, and past events all pointed to something. I climbed to the roof of the housing and I talked to the Lord. I looked at the world and my life and asked where the good and the redemption was. I asked where was the end to the struggle. I told God how I believe that He is good and does redeem and has rest for me but I was at a loss to see it. I rationalized my way through it and decided I was the problem. I met up with a coach, to talk about family and stressors, and she directed me to go to the "Tree of Life" and surrender to God and to take authority over the demons that plague my family. The drawing I made was me, in my emotions, swiming to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and I could not save myself there. In the backround the Lord told me to draw a tree close to my heart, and that was the tree of life. I had been deciding I was the judge of everything in my life (good and evil) and that was the tree of the knowledgeof good and evil. I decided that I wanted to do what was said to me "go to the tree of life" but didnt know how. And I was given some notes on both of the trees in the garden and their symbolism:

I had no idea how to go to the Tree of Life. Then a little while later, during a listening prayer, God walked me through a vision:

I walked through a curtain that was sheer with cyan blue and magenta purple embroidered on the edges. The embroidery was moving and glowing on the edges and in the fibers. It was a circle and I passed through both sides where it was parted. (Think a circle area netted in with sheer fabric with an opening on both sides as you walk through). And I saw it from the other side, but now I was standing in a feild of soft, dull, blue green grass with the dull, white, fluffy tops in front of a stream that was trailing off in both directions. All movment was slight. The air was cool as if it would rain, and it smelled like fresh rain on the waterfront. It was dim and darker out, like late evening, so everything was washed in that dark pallate. There was a giant storm cloud in front of me lined with constant, electric, moving, cyan blue and a magenta like purple. I felt peace as I just stood and looked around. I asked God where He was and he said He was in everything. I asked what he had for me and I just stood and waited for Him to answer. In in little bit I saw a giant stream of water dump and flow from the sky in front of me, just across the stream. I had it, in my mind, all the ways I thought walking through it would go, but they all felt wrong, so I surrendered to God and let Him show me what walking into the water would be. He had me step in. I had my face pointed up to where the water poured from. It felt different in a way I would have never known. At first I was thinking it should be uncomfortable, and I wanted to focus on whether I could breathe or not, but that was not the focus. My mind let go of what I wanted to know, and I just stood there. It was thicker and softer than water, it was not water as I knew it. It curled around behind me to embrace me. It felt like it wrapped around me and held me, and I felt safe and loved, and I stayed there.

Then, all of a sudden, the view zoomed out and I saw the trunk of water going up into the cloud and it looked like a giant beautiful tree. And it hit me, so much so that I opened my eyes. It was the tree of life.

This was a Canva art I made of the vision. It was so coo