Journey: Guangxi
This summer, I'm heading out Guangxi, China for a short terms missions trip and tonight we had our first training session, where each meeting revolves a specific theme, from expectations, to love, to unity, to the actually lessons we're teaching.
At the end, one of the veterans came up to share with us and he talked about the journey. Not just for this specific trip, but for missions trips in general. We're going for two weeks to teach english, but thats not the only thing. That's only one small portion of the entire journey. He challenged us to reflect and think about this process. It starts now actually, or even before. As he said, when you first start praying about it. Thats what I intend to do with this series, i'll try to update myself and y'all on my journey. From today, the first meeting, the ten weeks of training we'll go through, the two weeks of execution, the the debrief afterwards. Its a long process for a short term missions. He also challenged us with two questions. "So What?", "What's the next step?". These are things we need to answer after the trip (which i will eventually, as long as I remember). He said that many people usually get a spiritual high from these missions and once they return, it just drops back.
Going along with the theme of tonight, expectations. They really talked about preparing ourselves personally, for the change in environment, the change of lifestyle, from the living conditions, the food, and the people. And because we're going with a bunch of people, we focused on unity as well, and prayer.
There were so many new faces there although more than half of the people were from my church, RHCCC. It was interesting to get to know new people, and i could already feel myself being pushed out of my comfort zone. Im excited to interact with this new group of people, knowing that God brought us together for a reason. How i'll mesh with them? That's a whole other story. Im praying that I can be open to them, and just be able to have peace and unity with our whole group.
Personally, reflecting on everything so far, i can say that I'm not that excited for the trip. Im giving up so many things for this trip, my OJ missions, day camp, overnight camp, and i know I'm really going to miss them. I hope they don't forget me! But as i journey into this new realm, of new people, and new experiences, i pray that i'll keep my eyes and heart open to new ideas, new cultures, and new encounters. May I learn to be willing to take in what God wants to teach me. May all of it be for God's glory now and forevermore.
17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
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