Over fall break of this year I went on a mission trip to St. Mary’s Jamaica. I went with my youth group from River Valley Christian Church. This group is filled with some of the greatest people that I have had the privilege of getting to know and I have had great joy in watching them grow over the past few years. They are all absolutely hilarious and they love Jesus with all of their hearts.
Before we went on the trip we had to get prepared to go down to Jamaica and we did this by watching videos made by the organization, ACE, that we went down there and stayed with. {for more info on the awesomeness that is ACE check out acexperience.org you won’t regret it!} So inside of these glorious little videos we were given things to say when we felt like complaining, here are a few of them so that you can get an idea 🙂
- You can’t make it hard enough for me to complain
- That’s just the way I like it!
- Flexibility is the key to success
- Don’t sweat the the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things {my friend Mallory’s personal fave and this may or may not be an actual phrase we were given ;)}
- I came to serve, not to be served
- I left all my expectations at home
As you can probably guess from a group of sarcastic teenagers, we said these phrases ALL the time. When we were hot, tired, grumpy, or even happy we shouted these meaningful words to our teammates. It became the norm for the week and really got a lot of us into the right mindset even if we didn’t feel like being positive.
One phrases that really stood out to me was “I left all my expectations at home.” I constantly find myself expecting so much in this world and getting disappointed at the outcome instead of thanking God for everything that He puts in my path. But while in Jamaica God really taught me to truly leave my expectations at home and just be ready to do whatever comes my way.
When I got accepted to the world race, I quickly learned that I had to write a blog post about my expectations for the trip. And of course my first reaction was “I THOUGHT I WAS SUPPOSED TO LEAVE THOSE AT HOME!” But here I am writing a about my expectations for the trip.
But to be completely honest with you, I don’t have any expectations for this trip. After saying that cheesy phrase over and over again in the hot Jamaican sun it really began to really stick in my mind. I am confident in the fact that God will show up and reveal Himself to me in a whole new way and that He will use me as long as I am willing and put my trust in Him alone. I don’t want to expect anything specific because I don’t want to limit the things that God will do on the world race. I know that our God is so glorious and He is going to do things that I can’t even imagine and I am beyond thrilled that He has called me to get to experience what He is doing overseas! Every thing that I am going to do will be for the glory of our sweet king Jesus and that is all that I need. The one thing that I absolutely need is the one thing I can never lose, His presence with me <3.
{May the story of Jesus be the ink that fills your pen to write your story upon the world around you.}
