I'm back. I'm in Canada. You can only imagine how weird this feels! When Kara, Sarah and I landed in Pearson airport, Toronto, we started to ask each other the usual questions and then laughed because we didn't have to ask them anymore...
How much money should we pull out at the airport?
Are you sure Emma confirmed who would pick us up at the airport?
... and then the horrible moment where we remembered that we did not fill out a visa application for this country yet... followed by the hysterical moment where we realize that we are entering Canada and don't need a visa!
None of us were quite sure we were ready to be back in our old world, to the extent that we were relieved to fly Turkish Airlines from Istanbul to Toronto instead of Canada Air!
But now, here I am.
At first I wasn't sure how to approach this new season in my life after my return. But I am choosing to look at it as a new country and a new adventure. I felt a moment of fear when I first thought of returning to Canada, to the same places as before, to the same challenges and struggles and temptations. I thought about how much I had learned and grown in the past 9 months and felt another twinge of fear that I would return back to the same spiritual and emotional levels of before.
And then I remembered that I serve a God who continually does new things. I may be in the same physical locations as last year, but I have changed and so have the people here. Life is not stagnant. I also remembered some words that a wise woman at Jubilee Health Center told me: God has given me a backpack over the course of GlobeTREK. He has been placing in it different tools and equipment that I will be able to pull out and use in the future. These past 9 months have not been a dream, but have affected and shaped me in many wonderful and real ways which won't disappear when I return to Canada. And as I move forward in life, I will continue to learn and grow, utilizing and adding to the stash in my backpack.
So I face forward into the future, trusting the God who never leaves me nor forsakes me and who does infinitely beyond all I can think or imagine. As I look forward to a summer at home, and then my final year at Prairie, I am excited to see what God will do in and through and around me. I wonder how He will use the skills and truths He has placed in my life or the past while. Every day the world is new with hope and potential!
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." II Timothy 1:7
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