“What you’re doing is so amazing!”
“I could never do that!”
“No bed for a year?! No thanks”
“Are you going a year without a phone?!”
“What your doing can’t possibly be helping out others, your making it worse for them.”
“Why don’t you just send them money instead of yourself?”
“I’m impressed, that’s a brave thing for you to do.”
“Don’t be stupid!”
“Try not to act American while you’re gone.”
These are all things that have been said to me or asked more than once. You see, no comment makes me feel better about myself, and no comment makes me feel worse about what I’ll be doing this next year. Why? Not because I’m strong or inconsiderate of peoples opinions, and not because I block out the haters or think of myself highly. The Lord has been working progressively in my life now for the past five years and He keeps blowing my mind from one thing to the next in the way He does things and what He’s doing. All of this is HIS doing, it’s His glorious design. I know my Lord has been aggressively attacked as well as praised abundantly. So when I get attacked in any way, I get a fraction of a sense of what He suffered. When I get praised I just reflect it back onto Him because without Him, none of this is even FATHOMABLE.
At the very end of my senior year in High School, God had planted a desirous seed to GO and do mission work as far out of my comfort zone as possible. In college I was able to act on this new desire and GO not only once but twice. Each trip changed me dramatically for the better and in that realization, God either planted this giant seed of me going away for a longer time or He just keeps watering and growing His original one.
Mission work isn’t just about a mission away, it’s not just about helping those in need, it’s not just about teaching someone how to speak a little English, it’s not just about planting farms alongside those who don’t know how to yet, it’s not just about sacrificing time to help those with no resources build a new school, it’s not just about teaching someone a new skill for a job or a sport, it’s not JUST about any of these. It’s about the WHOLE experience. On trips like this one I’m about to embark on in just 27 days, we tend to learn more than we can even fathom to give. One I’ve learned thus far is the lesson of how to love others despite our differences or cleanliness or social quo, those lessons aren’t really taught here in America. They’re told and preached lessons, but they’re not evident in day to day activities, they’re not examples you see often. With my experiences, I’ve learned how a motherless child can love a stranger without hesitation despite her hurt and abandonment. I’ve learned that a Muslim will sit in prayer with me despite our different beliefs and ON TOP OF THAT will also pray for my struggles and safety. I’ve learned that my heart can fall in love with someone I’ve never been able to speak with due to disabilities and/or language barriers.
This trip isn’t just for the people of the world. This trip is for God’s Kingdom. It’s for advancing my knowledge and experience serving in It.
The Answers/Responses ~
No, I’m not amazing because I know that I’ll get just as much out of this trip as anyone that I’ll be helping or assisting. You could totally do this too if you saw it through the same eyes of Jesus’ work. Anything is possible with God Phil 4:13. Yea, I’ll be sleeping on a floor or a mat or something along those lines, but sadly some people sleep on even less every day. Sacrificing a bed and my pillows for a year really isn’t that much of a saint thing to do, is it? I won’t be texting ya’ll for a year and I’m planning on deleting snapchat — we all need more of that “I’m HERE now, not there” attitude no matter where we are. This trip just gets to be my excuse to actually go through with it. I see where people say that mission trips sometimes harm the people in need rather than help them. I believe that at the end of the day, if you believe in what you’re doing – you’re probably doing the right thing. I strongly believe my squad and I are strong believers in right from wrong and we will be going out of our way to HELP not HARM because trust us, we’ve done some reading. We’re not just sending money to people who need it without helping because that could do even MORE harm. What happens when you give an uneducated child a $5 bill? They come back with whatever the concession stand could give them for that much. What I’m doing isn’t the norm so I could see how people say it’s a brave thing to do; but when following what the Lord distinctly sets out for you to do, there’s nothing else you can really do about it. It becomes the only logical thing to do next and the whole concept of bravery is taken out because you’re not DOING anything, God is doing all the work within you. Hahaha, I love when peoples reaction to this trip is to say “Don’t be stupid”, or “Don’t act American” because in all reality they’re meaning is sadly very similar. We will be informed of cultural norms and differences before arriving and won’t be the only Americans everywhere we go. We will be smart, we will use buddy systems, we will be taking care of ourselves just as our parents have taught us rightfully.
t minus 26 days until I leave for NY :0
