Aaron
received an entire suitcase when the debriefers arrived. His family had packed
it full of boxes of goodies for him to share. It made my day when Aaron gave me
one of the few small bags of trail mix.
The following day I plopped myself
down in bed to work on my laptop and tore open the bag of goodness. Krystle was
sitting on the bed next to me and asked if she could have some. Out loud I
said, “Sure!” with only a slight hesitation. In my head, though, I was
groaning, “Suuuuuure. I guess that Jesus would share.” After a moment the verse
in Philippians popped into my mind: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain
conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.” Phil 2:3 I
realized that rather than just sharing with
her out of obligation, I should be delighted to share with her. In fact, I
shouldn’t even think of the trail mix as my own, but as hers. I’ll admit, it’s
was a seemingly ridiculous revelation…but my whole heart attitude changed. I
was glad to give her as much as she wanted. I started to think about that
concept on a grander scale. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read over that
verse without really applying it to
my life. Can you imagine if we put others before us…not even just at the same
level as ourselves, but really higher than that!
*Coincidentally, by a mistake of spelling (Trael instead of
Traci) from one of our contacts, I acquired the nickname “Trael Mix” a few weeks
ago.
**Just to keep you up to speed, we will be leaving the
Philippines Tuesday night, January 1st (U.S. time). We will be in a closed
country, without internet access for the next three weeks. Please pray for
us—this will bring on a whole new set of challenges. During this time we will
most likely have the opportunity to visit the Great Wall. It will cost roughly
$200 for each of us from our personal money. Pray that everyone will have the
funds to go, since the last team had four people that couldn’t afford it. I
would hate for anyone to be this close and miss the opportunity.
After that we ship off to Africa. I’ll talk to you all in
three weeks.
