3/19/10

Show Us Your Life - Mission Trips!

Well good morning and happy Friday! I'm joining Kelly over at Kelly's Korner for her weekly Show Us Your Life carnival.

So you wanna know about mission trips huh?

Well alright then!

I have only been on one, but I would love to do a hundred more!
Life. Changing. is all I can say!

Chris and I went to Slovakia with our church college group in 2004. Slovakia had recently made the transition from communist to democracy after the split of Czechoslovakia.

***sidenote: Now I do have tons of pictures, but no access to them at the moment. I promise I will have pictures up by Monday!***

Our mission: Teach at an English camp for 14 days

Our Literature: The Bible

Apparently, Slovakian students are required to know a certain amount of languages before they can graduate high school. Therefore, kids go to various camps during the summer to help them along with this. The camp had different tiers ranging from beginners to advanced. I taught an advanced English group. Chris was with beginners.

It was a little weird at first. It took a minute for the kids to warm up to us.
Slovakia was beautiful!
I learned so much.
Like, how much I adored ice. Apparently you only got ice (and just a couple pieces) in the city.
Or, how much I loved Mexican food.
And definitely how much I hated Slovak food. Not lovin the sour kraut.
I have lots of food issues. And so basically I only ate bread and salt & vinegar potato chips for 14 days.

But then I learned so much more.
We entered a town where the only religion was Catholic or atheist. Those who were Catholic only were because their families were. No one practiced it. We were in a group of kids who had no. idea. that. there. is. a. God. who. LOVES. them. And to their surprise, we were going to tell them all about Him! See when you have students eager to learn English, they're eager to read the material. And when your material is carefully chosen scriptures from the bible, and part of your lesson is reading comprehension...well that's right, we HAD to dive in and discuss everything.

So there was this one kid in my class, Mathew. He was an atheist. Hated God actually. His best friend's father died. He couldn't figure out why God would let that happen. I had an "in" with this kid. Chris was his roommate. So we tag teamed it. I would tell Chris what we discussed in class and Chris would pick up where we left off once they got in their rooms. Chris would tell me what they talked about, and I'd drive that point home in class. And so on and so on.

And do you know what happened that very last day of camp?
Mathew accepted Christ!!!!
He let his walls down.
See all along he was desperate for this "God" we love so much but couldn't grasp it.
And finally it clicked for him.
And you know what else?
His sister was a counselor at the camp. She could never get through to him.
She was so stinkin excited.

Then there was another guy who had no idea that he could talk directly to God and we taught him how to pray. It was so amazing how on fire he was because he finally had a connection with Jesus! Just awesome!

I could spend all day telling the ins and outs of this trip. I mean I would go back in a heart beat if I could.

The last day we were there we did baptisms in the river. Amazing.

I'm so blessed to have been a part of it.

2 comments:

  1. Your zest for life and the Lord is so evident and contagious! Love it!

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  2. Thanks so much for sharing and for your servant's heart! Can't wait to meet Matthew in Heaven!

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