Mission Trips

Yesterday, as I was packing and preparing for Panama; it was like it finally hit me. I hadn’t stopped to think much about this trip. When I first heard about the trip, the opportunity and who was going, I jumped at the chance. Then, to be honest, I set it in the back of my mind as something fun that was off in the distance.

As I sorted through clothes yesterday, deciding what would be essential, and what was just taking up space I was flooded with memories from previous mission trips. As a very active member of my church, I went on a week long mission trip every summer with the youth group. I was reminded of penny fights late at night, a precious little girl who ate carrots so that she wouldn’t have to wear glasses just as rabbits did not have to, singing “Meet in the Middle” as we worked towards the center from opposite ends of a yard, smelly sand dollars, endless hours in 15 passenger vans, a friend getting burned so badly that even her eyelids were red, painting each other almost as much as we painted the walls, getting so dirty that the skin above and below our sock lines were strikingly different, burping contests where a mother and son beat out all other contestants, and my last mission trip when I was suddenly the oldest and everyone else had secretly signed a shirt for me. Those trips created some of my favorite memories.

As I thought even deeper, and began to think forward, rather than just backwards, I thought about all of the people we had met and worked with on those trips. I thought about the kids that I’ll be meeting in just a couple of days. I hope that I’ll be able to touch their lives, and make an impact on them. But I realized that in reality, as in all of my previous adventures, I feel it is actually those people who make an incredible, lasting impression on my life. I felt awed by this realization, and almost embarrassed to even be going on a trip, a mission trip, where I would be touched more than those people whom I’m traveling thousands of miles to see. Perhaps the purpose of a mission trip, the objectives of the trip are so much more than the simple line of “teaching Bible School.”

Today at the airport, Zach led the devotion. He talked about how on all of his previous mission trips, he felt like God touched his own life often times more than the people he was ministering to. Then, he read the story of Mary and Martha, reminding us to this week, do the work we came to do, but also, make sure to take time and enjoy, to soak up, God.

God truly works, and speaks, in amazing ways! I’m thrilled to be going on this journey, with this amazing team. I’m eager to “soak up” all that I can!