About two years ago I went on a missions trip to Nicaragua with a group from The Navigators. I had been on trips like this before, usually to much closer places, but still, I had done the missions thing, right? These trips were always fun, a chance to be somewhere different than you were use to, an opportunity to make new friends, do new things, etc. I always felt great being a part of helping those in need, and inevitably God would show me things and touch my heart in different ways, but I wasn't really letting it sink deeper, down to the core, where it should have been.
Then I got to Nicaragua.
The week was full of new challenges, some seemingly insignificant now, and some that I look back on and still wonder about. By the middle of the week I already had that feeling of not wanting to go home. One of the last things we did was drive to the city dump in Managua to see where the kids who had come to the camp we had held were coming from. They lived there you see. In the dump. In the literal mountains of trash that stretched beyond what you could see because of all the smoke from the trash being burnt. The air was full of the smell of rotten food and burning plastic. It didn't take long before my throat started to feel funny, and I tried to keep my mouth closed. Air like this isn't meant to be breathed in for long periods of time. And yet this is where these children and their families live. It's their home. I had the whole trip back to think about what I had just seen, and I decided then and there that I wouldn't just let it become a lost journal entry or just a page in a scrapbook. I had trouble acclimating back to "normal life" after that, so I decided to go back to Nicaragua. Within two months I was on my way back, this time I was to stay for almost a month. It was very different this time, it seemed like there was a lot more work being done on me by God then I was being asked to do around the camp. I had brought a devotional book with me that someone had given me years ago that I had never gotten around to reading. I didn't even remember what it focused on, that's how long it had been since I'd looked at this book. Turns out it was a year-long, daily devotional book emphasizing missionaries in other countries. Their struggles, their joys and triumphs, how God had worked in their lives, and personal testimonies about those who are hurting and hungry for God. I finished the book in less than two weeks. Certain stories kept hitting me particularly hard, and that's when I first started to hear God whisper, "Go there", or "I want you do that". I was very opposed to the idea right off. I had never thought about myself as a "missionary". The thought seemed crazy to me. Missionaries are super spiritual people who have it all together and don't ever look back or worry or have doubts or concerns about anything…right? But the question of, "Are you willing to go?" kept coming back. "Are you willing to surrender what you know and all your fears, and just trust me?" It is not an overnight process, and it took a lot of other steps and breakthroughs for me just to get to where I am now. A big one for me was to pray that God would break my heart for what breaks His…and really mean it. It's amazing how God can use each of us even with all our unique differences, from our personalities and gifts, to our past tragedies and experiences. Sometimes it just starts with saying, "Yes."
