Thoughts from month one:
When I first signed up for the World Race, it was an 11 month mission trip. I had never participated in a mission trip, so I didn’t think I had expectations of what I would be doing but I was wrong.
I thought I would be constantly busy working with a ministry. I thought it would be easy to connect and form relationships. I thought any ministry we would be given would be organized and nicely laid out, I thought if we didn’t have enough ministry it would be easy to go out, get out of my own comfort zone and create our own ministry. I framed the work and time as if it was a short break from home rather than my new normal. In the back of my mind I know it’s my life for the next 11 months but I still needed to adjust.
I’m approaching the next 10ish months not knowing a lot of information so when I heard we would be working with a Youth Centre I made assumptions based on a Canadian female perspective rather than a Colombian youth living in a low income neighbourhood. The Youth Center is a single room where they hold English class in the evenings and bible study on Sundays. The center is really the people behind the organization, Alex and Mercy and their family. They go out to the people rather than have the kids come to them.
They go out and play soccer or baseball with the kids. Activities that I got to participate in while there. It was actually the majority of our ministry. Another expectation, I knew we would be doing kids ministry but I didn’t account for kids being in school and therefore having most of the day free. I didn’t account for the language being an issue in my ability to connect.
One of my first exposures to the Kids of the neighbourhood was playing soccer in the street while the rest of my team threw a football or baseball. The kids are amazing at soccer but I think they spend more time with the ball in the air than on the ground. When we had the opportunity to introduce ourselves a teen mom brought her son over to me, and just handed him to me. If you know me, you know I was super happy, I love babies. Later I found out she had been one of the centers kids.
It was a month of putting aside what we thought and being available to the people around us. It was hard to realize I had expectations that were not being met. Whenever we interacted with people I made a focused effort to serve. So for me that was digging a hole, tying rebar, and playing sports.
