Hey Everyone!
Since it’s now post-Spring Break and I’m totally 100% caught up on my homework (HAHAHA), I decided to sit down and start reading the book that my squad is required to read in preparation for training camp while I consume my weight in saltines (early flight + too much caffeine = a really weird day of nausea and headache). The book we’re reading is Kingdom Journeys by Seth Barnes, the founder of Adventures in Missions. In this first chapter, a few things stuck out to me that made me remember the first time I left the country (for the record, Alaskans don’t normally count Canada. I don’t know why-we just don’t).
So, excluding Canada, I left for the first time almost exactly 4 years ago with my Lazy Mountain Bible Church high school youth group for a short-term mission trip to Guatemala, lasting 7ish days. I was 17, almost 18, a senior in high school with a pretty vague notion of what it meant to be a missionary, but I was stoked. I couldn’t wait to find out what God would show me there. I didn’t really know how God “showed up” in everyday life, you know? I’d felt His tugs here and there, I liked reading my Bible, loved learning more about Him, and really loved teaching others as a youth group leader for the middle school youth group. I know I loved God, but I also loved keeping Him in Brittni-sized boxes, teaching myself to say when and where I thought God would work. That’s probably pretty normal; that’s probably pretty safe.
But Guatemala wasn’t safe.
We prayed before every van ride or any team movement, really, for safety. Our vanbulance broke down-we prayed. Our teammate got sick-we prayed. It was so different for me, feeling like I somehow needed God more outside of my daily routine and life in Alaska. And when I prayed, and looked–Boom. There God was, in a way I wouldn’t have looked for if I was home.
I remember our first day helping out with the medical clinic the ministry was putting on-there was a man who had been recently widowed there with his children. Someone-my youth leader, maybe? one of the minstry leaders? – asked me and a couple of my teammates to pray for him. I remember thinking, “Whoa, wait. I don’t know this man, I don’t know anything about what this family needs.” But we prayed, as awkward as I had thought it would be, and that was the last time that thought crossed my mind that week.
Praying in boldness amidst uncertainty, removed from distractions in my everyday life, I saw a different reality, the reality that Seth Barnes described that resonated with me:”Somewhere in the midst of our journeying, we begin to wake up to spiritual reality” (Barnes 8).
I hadn’t been aware of this spiritual reality until I entered into it on behalf of someone else. I hadn’t felt the awesome, out-of-my-box-power of prayer until we prayed and worshipped for 5 hours on our last day of ministry there, praying over and dedicating each of the 5 houses we’d built. None of that was about me and my expectations, but about the Kingdom and the God of the universe pursuing His beloved children. And I was honored to be there, and am honored to get the chance to go again.
My mission trip to Guatemala was so short, yet so impactful; and I’m definitely not talking about what I did for others. I don’t do much on my own. I work with Christ, and God surely worked through our team, but He did so much more in our hearts than we could hope to do for others. Leaving my routines and expectations for just that week showed me where Jesus was. I didn’t know I’d see him in the children I played with, in the tears of joy for new brothers and sisters in Christ, in the tears of sadness for hard hearts. My Brittni-sized boxes were wonderfully, graciously wrecked, and I began to love the way the Bible refers to God as the Great I Am,because that’s who He became real to me as after that week.
I know I don’t have to leave the country to see God work. I know I don’t have to leave the country to learn about His call on my life. I don’t even need to leave to find people who need Jesus. But I believe I am (we all are!) called to go, to go out in boldness, having been so well rooted and grown here in Juneau. I do believe that leaving fosters a dependence on God and that because of this, we can be more teachable and see more. And I really like what Seth has to say about leaving as a spiritual discipline: about waking up to the spiritual reality, one of abandonment:
“A journey is an act of leaving – process of physical abandon that teaches us how to do
the same spiritually…We go on a journey because he told us to go – to leave. In physically leaving, we discover spiritual possibilities. Jesus spent three years leaving places, leaving people before finally leaving life itself. To know Jesus, you have to learn how to leave. In the end, the leaving is the finding. You abandon your earthly treasure; you receive a treasure in heaven. You abandon your father and your mother; you get the family of God. You abandon your life, and like a seed that dies and grows a hundred times its size, you find new abundant life” (Barnes 8-9).
There are so many reasons to stay. God has blessed me so greatly in Juneau: I have an encouraging, challenging church family and friends, a wonderful, Jesus-pursuing boyfriend, a supportive family, opportunity to continue my education in a Master of Arts in Teaching program…THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS TO STAY.
But I believe there are infinitely more reasons to leave. I loved that Seth wrote “To know Jesus, you have to learn how to leave.” To leave myself and my boxes. To pick up that cross of self-abandonment and self-death, and leave so that I may find. To leave myself, so that I will find myself in Him. To follow Jesus where my routines and knowledge won’t be enough, where they will fail and I will have to depend only on Him for things like physical safety, which I take for granted every day. To continually discover that spiritual reality for myself, a reality of abandonment.
I think I’m just starting to understand what abandonment means in being a disciple; the 12 left their jobs, possessions, and desires, and that is quickly going to be my life. In 136 days, I’ll be leaving my job, possessions, and desires, to “where my trust is without borders,” to be led “deeper than my feet could ever wander, and my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior.” (don’t make me quote that song. SO MAINSTREAM IT HURTS). But for reals. From the very first time I heard that song, I felt that someone, somehow, had annotated this cry in my heart, my desire to be led away, but I’m seeing this desire in a new light now, and the fulcrum of this desire for dependence on God is a demand for leaving everything of myself.
4 years ago I was in Guatemala, and I’m preparing to leave again. Praise God!
(This book is starting out rad, and I’m stoked!)
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Squad Update!
AHHHH. We finally found out our “letter,” everyone! My squad from now on is no longer “August 2016 Route 3” but K-Squad! Yay!
In addition, we will be reppin’ the color GREEN at Training Camp! Which is excellent because I’ve somehow slowly turned much of my wardrobe green since moving to Juneau. The green heart emoji is all over our group chat now, hehe. I love them all so much!
Quick Fundraising Update!
With my own personal money, I was able to buy all my big-ticket items this week! I’ve got my tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and backpack (AKA my house, bed, and closet) for next year. Praise God!
Adopt-a-Box is still going, and an amazing sister in Christ and fellow college student took that big, scary $100 box. Look at God! Praise Jesus for her heart. With this fundraiser, you can be a part of this mission starting with the lowest box still available, the $5 box. Yay!
IT’S MY BIRTHDAY ON FRIDAY. Please consider taking part in my birthday fundraiser, or partnering with any amount for my birthday; truly, the only gift I could want is continued support. I’ve felt so much love!And please pray for these fundraisers!
