Family of 5

On May 31st, we were released into a large mall in Kuala Lumpur, with sealed envelopes and instructions to wander around the 4th and 5th floors alone for 15 minutes, at which point we were to open our envelopes, which would have the name of one of our new teammates on it.

We then had to find said teammate, who would have a different teammate’s name on their paper, and so on until the whole crew had been found.

 

Despite the massiveness of this mall and the fact that I had intentionally gone down a weird side hallway farther from most of the action, I found my person within just a couple of minutes, and together we set out to find everyone else.

 

Pretty soon we had our team leader, and then the three of us were found by the final two.

 

Our new little family of 5 spent the day hanging out, exploring the KL mega-mall, and talking about visions and ideas for the team.

Pretty high up on the agenda for the day was picking out a team name.

We had found a contemporary art gallery (it was actually someone else on the team who first spotted it and suggested we go there, which was an exciting moment for me), and after we had finished discussing our theories of potential meanings for some of the more cryptic paintings, we got to brainstorming our team name.

 

We talked about some of our personal values and hopes for this new season on the race, and after a few minutes a team name presented itself.

 

InDependence.

 

I love this team name and I’ll tell you why.

 

First of all, a little about my team:

We are the only team of 5; all the other teams have 6 people. One of my prayers for this team was to have at least one other person who appreciated me and my weird. Instead, I got an entire team of people who are just as weird as I am, if not more so (actually sometimes they get on my case for being normal XD). We are a team of beautifully unique souls, explorers and adventurers, artists, performers and comedians.

At face value, the name makes sense. We are all very independent people in the way that we do life. This is true of all five of us, which I think is really cool.

But there is a deeper meaning to our name and why we chose it. One of the reasons we really like this name is because it means a lot of things at once.

 

A common hope that many of us had voiced for this coming season is that of deeper reliance and intimacy with the Father. In other words, we are seeking and learning to be dependent on the Lord.

 

While we are a team of very independent people, we are a team of people who want to live in dependence on God.

 

Through the name “InDependence”, we are declaring that the Lord is all we need, that he is our provider and sustainer.

 

Not only that, but the more we rely on the Lord and the more we take our value from who he says we are instead of what the world says, the more we gain independence from the things of this world.

 

Listen, if the Creator of the Universe tells you you are worthy and valuable enough for him to die for (Romans 5:8),

if the Lord and King of all things tells you that he will provide your every need (Matthew 6:25-34), then I tell you WHAT –

you sure don’t need no man.

You don’t need to look to the people around you for provision or affirmation.

The opinions of others are not only “none of your business,” as I’m sure you’ve heard on countless occasions, but they are also completely insignificant compared to the opinions of God (1st Cor 3:19).

 

The more we walk in dependence on God, the more we accept the words that he speaks over us, the more freedom we have from our dependence on the people and things of this world.

 

It is only through full dependence on the Lord that we can gain true independence here on earth.

 

Oh, and one more thing-

The thing with team names is that they usually get abbreviated just for simplicity sake. InDependence can be abbreviated to “ID,” as in “may I please see your ID” . The final significance of our name is that of identity. As we seek to live in dependence on God we also find our identities in him.

 

Identity has been an important word for me this year. I think we are all seeking to discover who we are in some way or another, and while I could rant and apologize about how cliche that is, I’ll just keep it short and say that one of my prayers this year has been to step into a deeper knowledge and understanding of my identity both generally speaking and in a spiritually speaking.

The fact that one of the key facets of our team name is one of identity is yet another confirmation, another little wink from the Lord, that he hears every one of my prayers and that no detail is too small for him.

 

I am so excited for this new team and I look forward to giving you more updates from Indonesia! For now as always, keep us in your prayers (especially those on my squad who still need funding), and I will talk to you again soon!

 

Much Love and God Bless

-Hattie