The Crosses I Gave
Way back in July 2018, as I was preparing to leave for a year and saying my goodbyes to everyone, my high school small group leader, Christy, handed off a bag full of special hand knit crosses to me. They are called “cross in my pocket.” As I left her house that day, I had a million of other things on my mind to prepare and didn’t think twice about the crosses. I threw them in my big pack and forgot about them.
Fast forward a month to August when I was in my first country, Ukraine. I made good friends with a girl named Karina at the church we were working with. As I was about to leave Ukraine to my next country, I wanted to leave Karina with something special…and I remembered my crosses. And this was the beginning of the cross tradition.
In each country, I decided to connect with one person and make a friend. My goal was to get to a deeper level of friendship and trust than one would expect from spending just a month in each place. With a trip that is set up to be so fast paced, I wanted to slow it down with recognizing and focusing on one person in each place. I wanted to gain trust and share love naturally. So sometime throughout each month, I would recognize one person who was just special to me, and by the end of the month I would deliver them the cross and a little note.
I wanted to share this little tradition to you all because I think it is truly one of the biggest forms of impact throughout the year. I’ve gotten the question now and then of “so what impact did you make?” Meeting these people around the world, gaining their friendship and trust, and just loving them for who they are was a simple tactic to share Christ’s powerful love.
Meet my friends!
Ukraine- Karina
Romania- Christy
Albania- Lena
Vietnam- My
Cambodia- little girl from the village
Thailand- Celia
Myanmar- Nora
Colombia- Christian
Ecuador- Lena
Peru- Karina
Bolivia- Andrea
