I was already tithing 10%, so my goal after that trip was to increase my giving by 2% every year over the next five years. That way, in future years, I would be giving 10% to the church and 10% to missions overseas.

I said We need to raise up a Christian militia. I need to get my good old boys to go with me halfway around the world to help little brown people kill other little brown people.

God, your plan is not my plan. You’re not on board with me. At that point, the spirit said, “Finally, you’re getting it.” So I said, “God, change my heart to be like your heart.”

I thought we didn’t need to send military personnel; we needed to send missionaries. And that’s when God said, “Now your hearts like my heart.”

Multicultural teams will spend more time in storming than monocultural teams. But once the multicultural team makes it into norming, they will outperform the monocultural team.

Remain teachable and have emotional intelligence. Be willing to talk about the hard things in a soft way.

Leaders should always start with compassion, grace, and mercy. How can I see where they’re hurting or where they’re upset?

We had to deconstruct his insecurities about pleasing man and not God. Some of that you can do intellectually, but some of that you have to do on a heart level.

People don’t realize that Living on the field takes more energy out of you, and then you feel like, ‘Why am I so tired? Why is this so hard?”

I’ve tried to help the people I’ve led reduce their expectations.

I think people underestimate that when their coping mechanisms stop working, their identity issues start coming up. Who am I? Am I worthy?

Letting go of the false identities that you’ve taken on yourself or that the world has given you, releasing that, and being able to hear what God has to say about you. And then once you know those choosing to live them out.

I talked to my supervisor, and I said I think I’m struggling with depression.

There are a lot of similarities between depression and grief, but you treat grief very differently than you treat depression.

You have to start with asking yourself. What is the purpose of the team?

What’s a team gets to eight or nine team members, the team leader can get pretty bogged down with dealing with team leading issues.

Almost half the people who go to the field to serve long-term, don’t make it to five years.

Being willing to have hard conversations earlier rather than later. If somethings bothering you be gentle and diplomatic, and how you bring it up, but don’t let it build and build and build. Don’t let us splinter into your finger and then turn into this huge infection and then it gets so bad. You have to cut your finger off.

You can create more conflict by trying to resolve it if you don’t have cultural intelligence.

When we think about failure, we have to ask the question what does God think of what you did? Is it a failure or is it the enemy trying to make you believe a lie?