WOW where to start....

   I went to this training camp for the Novas Project for 5 days in Gainsville, GA an hour outside Atlanta. It was AMAZING the leaders were.... different, but awesome. They liked to keep us guessing and constantly challenge us left and right. We would ask them, "Hey what are we going to do now?" and they say..... "I don't know". It was sort of their favorite phrase, just to keep us guessing and allow us to not worry about anything and put it all in God's hands.

   So from the moment I arrived at the airport to the moment I left the airport I was just thrilled with EVERYTHING that went on, from the down time (where I would sit and read the bible) to doing crazy stuff left and right to get us out of our comfort zone. When I got to the airport I had no idea what to "expect", but I found the group of kids that would soon become my best friends, my family, and my support group forever. One of the leaders (Tana) introduced herself then handed me an envelope. I hold the only thing that could maybe tell me anything about what is going on then she says, ¡°don¡¯t open it until everyone from your team gets here.¡± WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!? But I wait until more and more people start to show up and we head over to this church called The Eagles Nest, which is a church for homeless people. As all 33 or so people show up little by little our personalities start bursting out of us because we are all so excited we cant contain ourselves. Hours go by as we wait for everyone, then our leader of the Novas Project aka Tag Thompson brings us into a room where we sit and pray and have a time to lay down all our expectations, hopes, or anything else we ¡°feel¡± like this training will be and just ¡°surrender everything¡± to God. After much praying asking and crying on my part, we put all of our belongings in our bags grab a water bottle and hit the streets of Atlanta. Now I thought we were going to go talk to some people about Jesus because this felt all too familiar according to what my church does a lot, but we get to a park and they hand me another piece of paper that says you will be spending the night on the streets of Atlanta. Im thinking AWESOME HOMELESS FOR A NIGHT MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE!!!! So our small group and I set out to find our ¡°zone¡± we would be staying in.

            My group decided to just sit down and learn about each other some more, so we pray, we talk, ¡¦.and pray some more. Then our leader with us tells us that we have 4 assignments that we are to do throughout the night and we must completely finish one before we can get another one. I don¡¯t think I will tell you each assignment one because I don¡¯t remember all of them, but they were all assignments for us to get to know each other a lot better. As the night goes on we meet some awesome people on the street who ask us for money and it was so fulfilling to say we don¡¯t have any money, we actually have nothing, we are homeless for the night. It was awesome to see people¡¯s faces as we explained this, some didn¡¯t fully believe us others were more than happy to welcome us in.

            Overall the night on the streets was eye-opening, fulfilling, challenging, and life changing.

I think that¡¯s all for now

I pray blessings to anyone reading this blog

Love John