new day, new outlook

I'm home safe from my trip, and I've got a lot of experiences and thoughts to process.  So, I figured, what better way than to do it on here!  Then, I can kill two birds with one stone by processing all of this via keyboard and tell those loyal few who read this about my experiences in Tennessee.  And since one of my big issues is not wanting to bore anyone who takes the time to read this, I'll blog about it by category.  That way you can read what you want to know about and skip other things.  Plus, that helps me to make sure I go through everything mentally and don't forget to record what I'm thinking about right now.  So, on I go! (By the way, if you don't have time to read this extremely long post in its entirety, read just the last part about my favorite part of the trip!)
What we actually did:
We spent two days driving down to Morristown, Tennessee (more about the van rides in another section).  On the way, we heard from our AIM leader that we would be staying at the youth pastor's house.  All of us.  33 people.  one man's house.  in his basement.  That obviously got us a little confused about how that would work out with members of both genders and where we would sleep.  We didn't really worry about it too much though, which was good because it ended up that not all of us were sleeping in his basement.  He had a really big townhouse with three levels, so they guys slept upstairs, the senior girls minus one slept on the middle level in the dining room, and the rest of us girls and lady chaperones slept on the lower level.  There was one bed that two chaperones shared and a couple couches that some gals slept on, but the rest of us slept on mattress pads on the floor.  I was fortunate enough to have brought an air mattress, so my friend, Kate, and I had a cushy night's sleep on that each night.  So, God worked all that out in the end, proving that we didn't ever need to worry about if He would provide for us or not.  Silly us for worrying!
I initially thought that we would be working with the Gateway church down there, but we soon found out that we would just spend out free time there.  We ate meals there, played soccer and volleyball in their parking lot, and had our devotional time with God getting fueled up for the day there.  Most of the work we did was through Of One Accord, a ministry down there.  They have a thrift store through which they raise money to help people get out of tough situations.  People apply for home repairs there, and they can get federal funding for some repairs, but the ones they don't get funding for they give to the Adventures in Missions groups.  So, we got to paint the interior of Miss Sylvia's house, leaving it looking tons and tons better than when started.  We painted the walls of all the rooms and the ceilings. In many places there were holes that needed patching and we had to deal with some pretty intense spider webs. but in the end it was worth it to be able to do something so tangible for her.  My group leader did some (not-so) subtle witnessing to her while we worked.  He would ask us about our testimonies while we painted.  At first, I didn't really know what he was doing, so the answers I was giving him weren't really what he was looking for.  He wanted to get the message across that all of us had been saved because Jesus changed our hearts by faith and we had repented from our sins.  Miss Sylvia left the room while he was questioning me and he said, "I'll ask you more questions when she gets back."  then I realized that he was trying to get her to hear about Jesus and his saving power.  So I said, "ohhh, so you don't really care about my life?"
his response, "not at all."  haha, he's a funny one, that Mr. T.  Don't get the wrong idea about him; he really cares about us, he just doesn't show it.  His heart for the unsaved is truly a work of God, and he acts on his passion for them by witnessing all the time.  (more on that later)
The other house we got to work on was more exterior.  Actually, entirely exterior.  It was Helen's house, and she was waaaaay back in the holler.  (by the way, if you're not familiar with "holler"  it is like pretty much a very foresty area away from town kind of in the foothills)  She had some enormous weeds pretty much surrounding her house and a lot of garbage and pieces of wood and aluminum leftover from some kind of construction in her yard. We cleaned up for her with a bush eater to get rid of the weeds and picked up uncountable cans that once contained cat food but were now ground into the dirt (very hard to excavate!).  We found like 50 plastic eating utensils under a bush in her front yard accompanied by some very large and scary bugs as well.  A couple of the girls had to go to the bathroom really badly... only to find out that there was no bathroom.  There was an outhouse. with no door on it.  You could literally see people working from it.  So, they just went really quickly!  I only got to spend a little bit of time there one day, but other groups got to work on her house more later in the week.  We actually took an hour and  a half trying to find it because our AIM leader, Corey kept getting lost.  He wasn't the most prepared leader, but that just gave us plenty of opportunities to rely on God for something to do!  That car ride really tried our patience a lot.  Mr. T, my leader, got so tired of being in the car that when the other leader who was driving made funny comments he began laughing so hard he literally cried.  And that other leader isn't really THAT funny.  :)  
Basically our days went something like this:
6:30 - wake up
7:00 - leave the house for the church to eat breakfast
7:20 ish - breakfast
7:45 - start devo time
8:15 - meet together for a little worship and a debrief time
9:00- 9:30 - leave for our various morning ministry
12:00 - either eat lunch at our work site or meet back at the church to eat lunch
1:00 - depart for afternoon ministry (sometimes sports camp, sometimes painting, sometimes witnessing and more!)
4:30-5:30 - groups would finish during this time and if they finished closer to 4:30 they would go hang out at the youth pastor's house for a little bit before dinner, sometimes get in a quick shower.
6:30 - dinner
8:00 - worship and debrief about the day and the day to follow
10:00 - arrive back at the youth pastors house where 25 girls would scramble to get to one of two showers first.  We ended up showering with two to a shower a lot in our swimsuits. 
11:30 - supposedly lights out
VAN RIDES:
These were some of the most fun (and long) trips of my life.  No kidding.  We would blast music to the maximum volume nearly the whole time and spend hours straight seat-dancing and singing at the top of our lungs.  It's surprising that not more people lost their voices.  Even on the 5-minute car trip back to the youth pastor's house, we would jam to our favorite tunes super loudly only to have to be nearly silent once we got into the house.  We didn't want to wake the family. On the way down, we had two days of driving on which most people didn't (or weren't allowed to because of the loud music) sleep.  After the first day we arrived at our hotel in Indianapolis, which was hot and humid, like the rest of our trip would be, and ate dinner at Cici's pizza.  Then, 27 students excited for a swim went back to the hotel to discover that they had filled it in with concrete after advertising it on their website.  WHO DOES THAT???  for one thing, why fill it in?  So, instead of swimming, we played soccer, volleyball, and signs on its filled in self.  Anyways, we spent the night there then embarked on another long day in the car early the next morning, but this one as well was full of much music and craziness... no sleep.  I was with one of my favorite teacher people that day, so it was one of my favorite days.  It kind of set the tone for the week, socially.  Then, on the way back, not much changed about the rides.  We took three days to get back this time and stopped at the Creation Museum for an incredible experience viewing all the proof for a created universe.  It truly left us in awe of God and his marvelous deeds.  That night we spent the night in  a hotel and got to pick from Cracker Barrel, Perkins, or Pizza Hut for dinner.  I picked pizza hut and split a dinner for two with my friends, Kelly, where we pigged out and later regretted it...  :)  oh well!!!  The next day, we had a fairly short van ride (approximately 6 hours long) and stopped in Chicago to visit and take a tour of the Pacific Garden Mission.  This is truly an amazing ministry.  They have been blessed to be completely funded by donations.  God is with this ministry in big ways - their new 29 million dollar building that was built in 2007 is already 3/4 of the way paid for!  I don't know how else you can explain that.  They have 3 services a day for the people staying there and those in their rehabilitation programs to attend before meals.  It was so spirited!  They are so grateful for Jesus for what he has done for them.  It's inspiring to see so much passion for the Savior.  It makes me realize that should be my response at well.  no, God didn't deliver me from drugs, but he saved me from myself and my sin, in ways I never could.  After our tour, we watched a taping of the radio program "Unshackled!", which is a dramatization of people's testimonies.  It was really neat, but I was EXHAUSTED!  My eyes were closing, so I kind of... maybe.. just took a short nap on my friend's shoulder...  I know it wasn't the best time to do it, but I had to.  Then my foot twitched and I ind of jerked back to consciousness.  But... I liked what I saw of the taping :)  
That night, we spent the night in a really nice La Quinta that had a pool (a real one, not filled in with concrete!) so my friend and I went down to just put our feet in.  We were wearing our regular clothes.  Then, some VERY funny boys decided to do simultaneous cannon balls and get us soaked.  So, on a whim, we just jumped in.  Once we got in there, we realized how idiotic it was and got out.  so, we just got ourselves completely soaked for no reason and had to tramp up to our rooms dripping water everywhere and find dry clothes.  Then, we ate junk food and watched CSI until it was time for our de-briefing.  I'll share about the debriefing later since part of it pertains to a story that belongs in another section.  Then, my room (which was a reunion of the roommates I had last year in Costa Rica on a mission trip) stayed up until 2:45 talking about predestination and the trip and all our issues.  :) Then we got up at 6:30 the next morning to finish the trip out!  I was in Mr. T's van, so we listened to music and danced a lot.  We found out that he knows Backstreet Boys songs by heart and some other songs that we didn't expect him to know.  It was great.  Plus I had a video of him dancing that he definitely does not know I have. :)  that's going on facebook asap.  The van in front of us had a kid named Phil in it who thought it was pretty funny to  make signs to try to talk to us on the back windows of his van.  Messages like "Want to go on a date?"  "Want some candy?" "Hot like Mexico" "Dani" and "Want to Dani" "Want to hot like Mexico" "Want to date candy?" when they got sick of normal messages.  Mr. T told us to ignore them and pretend we were reading Gospel tracts.  So I happened to open up to a part that talks about something that kind of pertained to predestination that Mr. T didn't agree with which lead to an hour and a half long conversation about it that took us all the way back to school!  As soon as the parking lot was in sight he said, "Hurry, somebody quick put on Party in the U.S.A.!"  so we jammed all the way into the parking lot with the windows down and even when we got all parked we stayed in the van until the song was done.
The Social
The social aspects of the trip were some pretty hilarious events.  The first began at the start of the trip when one of my teammates named Adam decided to creep on me.  All week.  We're good friends, so it wasn't that weird, but he'd come up to me at random times and put his arm around me despite my protests.  Sometimes I wish I was more muscular.  Around the middle of the week, he decided that we were married and he drew a sharpie ring on the knuckle of my fourth finger of my left hand and wrote I <3 u on my arm.  It was really funny, but then I had to tell him it was over eventually.  He took it "hard".  :)  Then, later on at the last debrief on Saturday night, we were doing our tradition called "Frog Kisses"  which is basically just an opportunity for the team to encourage each other one by one.  So one person would stand in the middle of the circle and three people would say nice things bout them.  On my turn, Adam raised his hand so that made me a little apprehensive.  He began by saying he enjoyed creeping on my this week and that I'd done a good job, but then he goes "I just have one question" gets down on one knee and says, "will you marry me again?"  The whole room erupted in laughter.  It was one of the funniest things I'd ever experienced.  So, now we're married on facebook, much to the confusion of all of my friends who weren't on the trip.  Truth is, we're just good friends and he's creepy in a nice way :)  
I mentioned earlier that we had short breaks sometimes.  These were the times for card games.  there were speed tournaments and we played a lot of Egyptian ratslap, but the highlight for me was Slap Uno.  This is like the most extreme version of Uno.  Such an awesome game.  On another break, Kelly and I ran through a Splash Pad (mini water park thingy at the park by the church) after dinner and got soaked.  I was freezing, so my "ex-husband" let me wear his tennis jacket.  That was so sweet :)  haha, here's a picture 

On the long car ride to Helen's house where we got lost, we passed a bunch of little businesses called "Shiver Shack"s that some of the girls realllllly wanted to stop at.  Mr. T referred to them as "Sliver Shack, where every 5th cup has a sliver in it!"  Eventually we did stop at one on a break on Tuesday.

Witnessing:

On this mission trip there was more of a focus on sharing the gospel than any other trip I've ever been on.  Which is sort of ironic because the whole purpose of missions is to further the gospel.  The way we do that is usually by doing something for somebody and sharing the gospel with them in the process, but I feel like many times we get so sucked into whatever we're doing for people rather than our true purpose, giving them the saving message of Jesus Christ.  This time though, we went witnessing on many occasions.  What that basically looked like was having a pocketful of tracts and a buddy and either going door-to-door, walking around downtown Morristown, going to a mall, or being on the streets finding people to talk to about the gospel.  Now, I mentioned tracts (booklets that summarize the message of Jesus Christ and tell how to be saved).  Before this I had a strong aversion to using tracts in witnessing.  And I still do have an aversion to using them incorrectly, but I have learned the proper way to use them.  We would walk up to somebody and say "Hey, can I give you one of these?" then when they gave you a startled look and replied that yes you could, I'd say "Do you have a second to talk about eh Gospel?"  This usually startled them too.  When we asked one guy that, he said, "you mean like gospel music?"  that opened the door for a long conversation about man's sin and the need for salvation and how he could get that by having faith in Jesus and repenting of his sins.

Our first time going witnessing was first thing Monday morning.  We had just arrived the night before and we just getting ourselves oriented with Morristown.  Mr. T gave us instructions to stay in the park and walk up to people and ask them if they had a minute to talk about the gospel.  And he and Phil immediately started chasing down a man who was walking at a very fast pace on the trails.  Kate, Brian, and I began to look for people to talk to and after getting flat our rejected by a woman in a pavilion, we saw Mr. T and Phil walking at full speed with the man they'd chased down (we later found out his name was Dale) and heard Mr. T witnessing to this guy.  They seriously went all the way around the park probably three times with that guy.  WE met a few true Christians that day, one who had a church and one who didn't.  It is really amazing how God opens doors for encouragement.  which we needed, because the next two people didn't seem to know what they believed.  We got to put int eh plug for Jesus and repentance through sharing how Christ has changed our lives.  It was one of the most challenging and nerve-wracking things I've ever done.  Just walking up to someone with the burden of presenting the gospel accurately and in away that shows what it truly is.  Even though we make many blunders in what we say, I know that God will make those people think about what we said to them.  The next day, we witnessed to people as well while we went to door-to-door handing out flyers for the baseball camp we were going to have.  My favorite part of the day was when Waverly asked a guy who said he "guessed" he was a Christian if he had any witnessing tips for us.  He said he didn't really which really opened the door for us to share with him about what defines a Christian and how God makes him one. On our last day, we had a choice between sports camp (it was raining) and witnessing on the streets of downtown and the mall. God made it clear to me that I needed to go witnessing again.  So I did  I walked around with Mr. T, Ann, and Kim.  The first kid we talked to was riding his bike shirtless and started to get really uncomfortable when we shared with him about the fact that all of us are sinners and deserve Hell, but God has made a way for us to go to Heaven through repentance and faith.  he would back up a little bit on his bike and wouldn't look directly at us.  After that, Mr. T said he wasn't going to say anything so that we would take the initiative to witness to them.  We met a couple Southern Baptist ladies a guy who believed it was only sin if it did "bodily harm" to someone else, and a Jehovah's Witness who spent 45 minutes trying to convince us that even though he doesn't' believe that Jesus was fully God and fully man and we do that it was the same person.  It was truly rewarding to talk to these people and know that God could and would use the words He gave us to work in their lives and possibly bring them to salvation. 

Last But Certainly Not Least, My Favorite Part of the Week:

All of this was a great experience for me, and I truly enjoyed all of it... even the creepiness from Adam, but the best part of the week for me was on Thursday morning.  Our group had an ATL (Ask The Lord) where we went off by ourselves and asked God to clear our minds of our own thoughts and the devil's attacks and speak to us. I think that Corey, our slightly disorganized AIM leader, meant it to be a time when God told us how He wanted us to minister, but God used it to edify us.  He spoke to us in such personal ways about how he loved, how he wanted to spend time with us, and who He was in different people's hearts.  I wasn't exactly sure that God would speak to me when I went to the back of the sanctuary to listen to him, but I asked him to clear my mind and told the devil that I was busy and he couldn't talk to me.  (not that I ever want him to)  And I closed my eyes and waited for God to speak to me.  I was sleepy from a lack of sleep that whole week that was piling up, but I was focusing with all my might, trying to discern God's words from my thoughts.  Then, as I did that, I picture came into my head of a leaf.  It was a compound leaf, the kind that has a vein and leaves on either side coming off of it. Like this one and the one of the background of my blog:

(and the funny thing is, when I google imaged this, I found out this is an Ash tree leaf... what are the odds???)

  Then I saw a hand (might've been mine) stripping the vein of all the leaves on either side, so that all that was left was the vein.  Obviously, this made absolutely no sense to me.  I thought maybe it was my exhausted brain making something up.  It wasn't.  But more on that later.  Then, I was like, okay, really God, don't you have something to say to me and I got this picture of Phil running out a door into bring sunlight with a really happy look on his face, pure joy, not the mischievous look he usually has on there.  And that really surprised me.  I almost didn't share is when we got back in our group and everyone went around saying what they had seen, heard, or felt.  Nobody else had something about another person on the team.  So I felt weird that Phil had popped up in my head, and I was almost sure it wasn't from God.  Other people felt like God was telling them about His love for them, or showing them a table and they felt like it meant that he was sitting there waiting for them to spend more time with him there alone.  It was powerful, but I didn't know how my leaf and Phil fit in.  So, then came my turn and I shared that.  People kind of laughed when they heard that Phil was in there.  Phil's picture had been of a man wandering in the desert.  He didn't get what it meant.  Then, when I finished, Donny, our AIM leader who was sooo in-touch with God and totally in-tune with what he was telling him (one night he had us picture ourselves crawling up into God's lap and feel God's love pour over us.  It was such a powerful experience.  God truly gave him great words to speak to encourage us) said that God gave him a word for me.  Stripped.  That all my "leaves" had been stripped from the vein of my life.  That all that was left was the source of my life.  God.   

And that is totally true.  Once he said that I realized that so many things that I depended on for life have been stripped away from me: my Granddaddy passing away in November, my best friend goes to a different school and we barely see each other, my sister is at college most of the year, my other best friend is about to leave for college, and I've also been through a lot of relational pain recently.  And I felt God telling me that HE is m source of life, joy, breath, comfort, peace.  It just washed over me.  And I realized that I had been depending on things, people, circumstances other than God to bring me life.  And He is the only one who can truly bring me life.  It was the most powerful thing.  And I have a new view of God now.  Total reliance.

Then, Donny and Corey told us to ask God about the things in our ATL's that didn't make sense, so we all went back to God and asked.  I was just like, "God, why did Phil come into my head?  I don't get why you are telling me that.  Did it even mean anything?" And He reminded me of the look of Phil's face.  It had looked free, purely joyful, unburdened.  So then we went around saying if God had clarified anything for us.  Then, Phil said that he thought God was telling him that the man in the desert was himself and it all clicked for me.  He is wandering now, but God is going to set him free.  He will have the joy that I saw on his face. It was so neat to be God's instrument in encouraging people and it reminded me that I need to be obedient when God tells me that I should do something even though it seems weird!

Oh boy.  I didn't even scratch the surface of a lot of these experiences, if you can believe that, but it's long enough as it is!  I'd be happy to talk more bout it if anyone wants to hear more, but I'll leave you with this for now.

And I'll likely post more about it in the days to come as I process it more.

Honestly, this was just for me to be able to process the trip.  How selfish am I?  But I hope it encourages you or that you at least find it interesting.

Blessings