Hey hey friends and family!
Welcome back to the blog, it’s been a minute! Since my last post from Swaziland, our team served in South Africa, our squad returned to the United States for debriefing, and I’ve spent the summer enjoying my family and raising my new puppy, Lucy. Life is sweet these days, and I wanted to write a blog to share about reentry and what God is doing in my life in this season.
Reentry has been such an interesting process to navigate. I never really reentered after my original race because I had just two quick weeks at home before heading back to leader training. But this time, I returned home from the race, lived with my family, worked as a raft guide, started a house church, caught up with old friends, and made it my aim to live a fully leveraged life. This summer I’ve leaned on the Lord in deep ways as I’ve walked through many different emotions. At times I felt overwhelmed by the daunting and unknown future, and that’s taught me to pray in more desperate ways than ever before. Other times I felt lonely around my coworkers and longed to be around my close friends from the race or old friends from college, and God would provide someone to connect with. We even started a house church in the Charlotte area to gather and seek the Lord on Tuesday nights. Some days I experienced a clash between Kingdom culture in my heart and worldly culture around me. It’s been fun and stretching to leverage my rafting job as a platform for the gospel, and I’ve gotten to share many testimonies and truths about God with coworkers and guests. In every feeling God met me with truth and grace. This summer I have also been so blessed by living with my family. It has been just what I needed. It seemed that every day we would get to do something fun together, whether a coffee run, a puzzle, or taking our puppies on a new adventure. Many times, I felt so seen by my family through their offer to play a favorite game of mine or tag along for house church. It’s been so good to have time in person together again.
At the beginning of the summer, it seemed as if I was at ground zero in most categories of life. But I began to pray and believe that God would provide a church, community, a job, etc. in his perfect timing. He’s a father who knows how to give good gifts. One Saturday, after a few weeks of trying churches in the area, a pastor and his wife were on my raft at Whitewater! They invited me to church the next day, and now I consistently attend New Life Fellowship in Concord. It has been such a blessing to me. Let me know if you want to hear more about that testimony! God’s provision of that local church has encouraged me to press on in petitioning for the things I still need, and it has built my faith to believe He will provide when He knows its best.
Kevin DeYoung wrote a book called “Just Do Something”. In many ways, this has influenced the way I live my life and make decisions. It’s like the principle that it is “harder to turn a parked car than a moving one”. Similarly, it is easier to redirect us when we are actively doing something rather than sitting or waiting. I trust that the Holy Spirit will redirect my steps, just as he did for Paul in Acts 16, if he desires that I do something different or go somewhere else. I desire to leverage my life for the Kingdom in every way that I can. Recently, I was asked to be the Squad Mentor for the Swaziland/South Africa semesters trip that is launching with AIM this fall. I’ve decided to accept the role! I will live in Gainesville during the two week training camp, will have a weekly call with the leaders while they’re on the field, and will be with them for their final debrief in Georgia. I believe that the ROI of my time and energy will be great in the Kingdom! It is an opportunity to fully leverage my life by spending time training and mobilizing the leaders and the squad while I have the margin in my life for it, and don’t yet have obligations to a full time job. I’m excited about it and leave in one week! Please pray for me as I prepare to go to the AIM base in Georgia, and for wisdom as I lead in a new capacity. Please pray that in the meantime, God would provide opportunities for a full time job that I could return to after those weeks. Please pray that I would continue to find ways to fully leverage my life for the Kingdom of God.
Thanks for reading my update!! Please let me know if there’s any ways I can be praying for you. If we haven’t connected since my return to the States, I’d love to! Just reach out & let’s grab a coffee! You matter to God, so you matter to me.
With love,
Kara Grace Perrault
P.S. here’s a picture of me & Lucy <3
