We are beginning our final week San Salvador and at the point where we are looking forward to the next assignment. To be little transparent, I often start off strong when we go to a new place and by the end of the month I run out of steam. I think it was different this time because I started off strong, started to taper off in the middle and am now regaining my energy to finish strong. I’m learning the importance of setting certain goals in life because I’m not a person that does that because I feel that they will end up not meaning anything and also there is that feeling of failure if you do not reach them. As a start, I now know what goals to work for and now have a future picture of what I want to see in me. So I have been setting goals appropriately to make the change.
Some of the social pains I have experienced were on my end so I’m making goals to combat them. I’m taking up other people’s encouragement and they are having to uplift me and I’m not liking this picture. I do not need to be a person who continues to slip into the consumer side of Christianity and away from being a producer. I want to be a person who builds up and encourages others. There have been brief times in my life where I had this quality but I always sink below the surface eventually and have to have other people to speak into my life.
Being out in the field is not a huge sacrifice (to me) but it is not the most heavenly experience either and I know I’m not the first one to say this. I would not be here if I did not go through some of the places I’ve been in life to end up here. Back in college when people where glorifying summer missions I wanted to do it also but was rejected and had to work an unpleasant job and make that my mission’s field. Because of that, I lost focus on missions and just figured that I need to focus on whether my career was or get a well-paying job to be involved in my church. It took a period of 2 to 3 years to get my attention back on missions and I ended up here.
My team went out to work with a team from a church who were here for a week. We did some outreach with them and held an event. It reminded me of my week-long missions trip with my church back in the States when we went to Nicaragua and did similar things. It was like I was looking back in time to when I was just getting involved in foreign missions and where I used to be and comparing it to where I am now. I think God used this to show me the contrast between those two places in my life. Out of all this, I think I have reached a turning point or a watershed moment where I’m trying to get the right balance of letting God, through the World Race impact me, but also putting in the effort to allow it to happen.
