Three years ago at Summer Games University, a friend of mine, Jeremy, told me about a missions trip he was going to be going on to Kingston, Jamaica. He didn't know much about it at the time but he was excited to go and told me I should think about going too. Fast forward a few months to a Thursday night at BASIC, a college ministry at UNI, I met Carter Moore for the first time and through a series of questions, I came to realize that Carter was the guy leading this trip that Jeremy had prompted me about a few months prior.
After talking with Carter about what the trip would look like, I decided to go for it. It seemed like a cool opportunity to get out of the country for the first time and spend spring break in a place a lot warmer than Iowa. Looking back, I went to Jamaica for the wrong reasons; I was selfish in what I wanted out of the trip. Nevertheless, come March 15, 2013, I packed up my things into a van with some of my friends and we headed to Chicago for the flight to Jamaica.
Now that it has been a few years, my clarity of what happened that week has improved so much. I remember talking about how cool it was to experience worship with deaf people. I talked about how much I was served more than I served them. I talked about how my life was changed because of the trip.
But that's not really what God was doing in my heart during that week.
Those things are things that happened to some of the other people on the trip, and because I didn't know what I was feeling back then, I hopped onto what they had to say and took it as my own experiences. I felt that I needed to know what God was up to because it seemed like everybody else on the trip knew. It took me a couple of months to begin to understand what God was working on in me during that season of my life.
During that season, God was revealing to me how impatient of a person I can be. I found myself being impatient with other people and I found myself being impatient with myself. The thing I discovered the most during this time of my life, though, was how impatient I can be with God. Those of you who know me well know that I like instant gratification. I enjoy quick access to news and information and I need answers as soon as I have a question. If I can't get that, it frustrates me. It frustrates me to not know something and not be able to figure it out; and that is what has habitually frustrated me in my relationship with God.
By no means am I perfect, and so I stand here today telling you these things not as someone who has overcome them completely, but as someone who has come a long way from 2013.
So back to Jamaica. Why go on another trip?
In 2014 and 2015, I was asked if I wanted to return to Jamaica and serve the same kids from 2013, but it never felt right. I was still growing and trying to understand what a healthy relationship with God looked like and around the time of those two trips, growing in my faith didn't look like leaving the country to serve others when I felt like I really needed to still grow a lot myself.
Now, I am ready though. Like I said, I'm still learning and growing in my relationship with Christ, but we always will be. I'm in a much healthier place with my relationship with God now and when I was asked if I wanted to return to Jamaica this year, it really felt right. I don't know why God wants me to go back. I don't know what the reason for feeling this push to return is, but I do know that I wouldn't have learned how to be patient and except the things I do not know or don't have control over if it wasn't for my trip 3 years ago.
What can you do?
Pray. Pray for the teams safety as we travel next March. Pray for our hearts to be prepared for whatever God is doing in us, even if we don't recognize what it is right away. Most importantly though, pray for the CCCD and the kiddos we will be serving; they are the sole reason I have this incredible opportunity.
Support me financially. As everything else in our world does, this trip is costing me a good chunk of money. I'm a broke college kid trying to pay his way through graduate school and so if I can fundraise a good majority of this trip, I would be forever grateful to those who have the means to spare a few bucks to help me out. The trip costs $1,700 so I have a ways to go but if you can help me by donating, I would greatly appreciate it. You can donate by sending cash or a check to me at 1502 Delta Drive, Cedar Falls, IA 50613.