I'm Back, Jack

“How was your trip? I can’t wait hear all about it!”

I cannot count how many times I have been asked this since I landed back in the US a week ago.  My response?  “It was amazing.  Life changing.  It sounds cliché, but I feel like a different person.”

How do you sum up life’s experiences into words?  I always say that I wish I could give out a USB or DVD with my experience on it that you could download into your head…then you would not just hear about my experience, you would KNOW it…you would FEEL it. 

The trip to Asia was long.  Four flights and one night in a random hotel that reminded me of The Shining along the way before we finally arrived.  We left PDX on Saturday morning and it was Monday late morning by the time we reached our destination.  And then we dove right in.  We met the most beautiful, welcoming, smiley children I’ve ever seen, so eager to love on you and be loved.  We toured temples, visited night markets for shopping, worked on the new property where the girls will be moving eventually.  We mowed a field, weed wacked, did cement work, moved heavy cement bricks around, helped build a hydroponic garden and pond for growing fish, raked a dirt field for rocks, and planted a garden.  We sweated.  A lot.  It was at least 90 degrees every day and probably just as humid.  Thank you Jesus, for the invention of dry fit clothing, oscillating fans, AC and baby wipes.  We at so much rice that we thought we would burst.  No traveler’s diarrhea for our team!  Now if only we had been prepared for the opposite problem…bloating now has new meaning.  Learn from - I will now be traveling with Starbucks VIA on all international trips in the future. 

People say that travel changes you.  Opens your eyes to how big the world is, and how small our day-to-day life is by comparison.  I was expecting that.  I didn’t have many expectations for this trip really, but I did know it would stretch me and I would be in an environment where I had no control and little influence.  A good exercise in personal growth for someone like myself who plans experiences for other people every day!  Talk about giving up the reigns.  And it was absolutely liberating.  To be a part of something that I was supposed to EXPERIENCE, rather orchestrate for others.  And so that is what I did. 

Two weeks is a long time.  Two weeks from today, Thanksgiving will be over and many of us will be shopping till we drop on Black Friday.  Doesn’t that feel like ages from now?  But two weeks was just enough time for this trip.  Just enough to marinate in the experience…to live and breathe the country’s culture, our team dynamic.  This experience and desire to go on this specific trip was put in my heart by the Lord over a year ago…before the trip was even scheduled.   My heart leading up to the trip was, “okay Lord, I know that this opportunity and experience is from you.  What do you want me to learn?  What do you want me to take away?  How do you want to change me?”  And I’m so grateful, because I did learn, He gave me so many “take aways” and He did change me. 

“Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed. 

For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe,

even if you were told.”

Habakkuk 1:5

I underlined and dated this verse in my beloved Bible on May 25, 2003.  It’s one of my “life verses.”  It’s not just about the nations; it’s about me, about us.  It’s about God’s heart for His people.  You and me.  And He is right.  I am amazed. If someone would have told me eight years ago what God would do in my life and that He would bless me with this experience to go to Asia, and that I would want to go, I would not have believed them.

Reason #5,278 why my God is AWESOME…He knows me better than I know myself.

This sweet girl has my heart.  She is 11, has been at the home for 5 months and wants to be a doctor.  On this night we gave all the kids brand new Dakine backpacks (some kids carried their books in a grocery sack), and all the girls got hair clips from Forever 21.