Some Days You Just Get Inspired

Some days Inspiration comes from sources that surprise you. As a Travel Advisor one of my specialties is the Continent of Africa. It’s one of my favorite places that I arrange  awesome tours and adventures to.

Elizabeth went to Ghana recently with the organization Anidaso.

I wanted to share with you her letter of gratitude that she sent to her sponsors. Read on and be inspired.

She shares her experience and how the trip changed her. This Part 2 of her adventure.

Have you ever experienced a turning point in your life? Have you ever been in a place where things looked beyond repair, yet there was still a ray of hope pulling you forward? This was my reality earlier this year. As I looked at my life, things looked chaotic. Many times, I wondered what was the point. During this time, I really struggled to understand what I had to offer other than my existence. It felt like I was existing rather than living life, and I needed a change desperately. That is exactly what I received when I went to Ghana, West Africa this summer.

Thanks to you and numerous supporters, I was able to experience the most eye opening time of my life. There are so many lessons I learned from this trip. I can’t share all of them, but I would love to share the three biggest experiences I took away from the trip.

The first thing I learned is how to be still in God. Before I left for Ghana, a verse I encountered continuously was Exodus 14:14. It said” The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still.” If you know me, you can only imagine how hard the last part of that verse was for me. I loved to be involved and to fix things. So, to just “be still” was a foreign concept to me. However, while in Ghana, I realized this verse was much deeper than how I allowed it to be interpreted. It was not necessarily saying not to do anything. It was saying to place it in God’s hands. The problem is when you place it in God’s hands; you have to place it in God’s hands. In my case, that meant allowing God to take me through a process of refinement. This process lasted well after I returned from Ghana. It was probably the most intense few months of my life. However, in this time, I can truly say I learned so much. I learned how to approach life. I learned how to process my past and live in the now. I learned to speak life into me and those around me. Most importantly, I learned how to surrender to the love God has for me.

Another experience I learned was to walk in the confidence of my identity. This term has become a big thing in our society. There is this sense of owning who you are. I’ll be the first to admit. I struggled hard with my identity. More so because I allowed my identity to be connected to other people. My identity wasn’t unique. It wasn’t true to me, but rather other’s ideas of me. Being in Ghana awoke a desire in me to be rare. It taught me to walk in the confidence of my identity in Christ and my identity as a black woman. Contrary to popular opinion, those are not separate things.

One of the last big things I learned was the importance of community. It’s very easy to isolate yourself when you go through challenges. You want to appear like you have it all together. That is the biggest setup. It’s in our weakness that God makes us strong. It’s in our community that we experience that strength. God calls us to walk together, and to lift each other up. If we isolate ourselves, we draw ourselves away from those that can speak life into us and our situations. Two weeks before I went to Ghana, I was packed and ready to go. Then, I was hit with a family situation that I convinced myself I had to go through alone. I was going to back out of the trip, and stay home. If I had stayed, I would have never experienced the type of freedom I did. The community I experienced in Ghana during this situation broke me down (in a good way). It allowed me to be vulnerable and real. I probably cried more than I ever had in my life, but those tears were necessary. It gave me the chance to exhale from this situation for the first time. I would have never gained that breakthrough if I hadn’t been surrounded by that community.

There are so many other amazing things that occurred on this trip. I could spend a lifetime telling you how much this trip impacted me, but I truly just want to say thank you. Thank you for sowing into my life, and giving me this experience. You have truly changed my life for the better, and I am forever grateful!!!!

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Mitchell