My freshman year of college, I took a leap and signed up for the annual Spring Break trip to Houston with Center for Student Missions. I remember sitting there on the bus at 6:30 a.m. thinking, “What am I doing? I don’t know any of these people. What made me think I could handle this? I could probably still change my mind and get off and go home…”
But I didn’t. I stayed on the bus. And it was one of the best decisions of my life.
Houston completely rocked my world. We spent a week loving on lonely kids, doing art projects with adults dying of AIDS, and serving homeless people and men addicted to drugs and alcohol. It broke my heart. At the end of the week, I didn’t want to come home.
Summer 2009 brought a trip to Kansas City for a friend’s birthday. We spent a Saturday morning at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The photography section had just opened a new exhibit by Fazal Sheikh, entitled Beloved Daughters. The photographs were simple portraits of women and children, and many were accompanied by stories of abuse and forced marriage, torture, trafficking, and lost hope. I made my way around the room slowly, crying, stopping to take in each photo, each story, each soul. I sat on a bench afterward, tears spilling down my cheeks, and called my mom. “Mama, I think God wants me to go to India.”
There are so many people around the world who don’t realize what they are worth. They don’t understand how beautiful they are. They don’t remember what it feels like to be free. They don’t know who they are in Christ. And that kills me.
So I’m doing something about it.
Will you join me?
