Well it is July. Which means the heat is in full swing down here in the southwest. My computer is telling me it is 96, and though it is a dry heat, it certainly is still hot.

I survived my trips, not without excitement of course. Our mission trip was nothing short of amazing, God has blessed me with an amazing group of youth, as well as amazing adults to work with.

So here is a trip run down, and the reason that I haven't gotten to this yet was that I have been playing catch up. Who knew that being gone for 2 weeks straight would cause me to get so far behind at work and in life. Now that I feel sufficiently rested, it is time for an update...

We worked at Lydia Patterson, a school for kids who basically know little to no English coming in. Most of the kids live in Juarez and travel across the border each day to go to school. We did a ton of painting, fixing up some areas for them, some yardwork, more painting, and did I mention more painting? We also managed to work ourselves out of a job. We had intended to work from Monday - Friday, have a fun day on Saturday and head back on Sunday. Instead, we worked Monday - Thursday, had fun on Friday and a lot of Saturday and got back on Saturday night. It worked out better for a lot of us and I am thankful that I have some really flexible parents so that we didn't have any troubles coming back earlier.

I did all of the nightly programming, and got out of a little of that with some other stuff we did. On Sunday we got there and got settled and had opening worship, Monday we had worship and games, Tuesday we went up to the lookout point in El Paso and worshipped up there. Wednesday night we went to another youth group's meeting and hung out with them which was good for our kids to be a part of, then Thursday the school threw us a big party/cookout. We had our final worship on Friday night which was an amazing witness to me of where our youth are at and where we need to be headed. It could not have been a better closing worship.

We of course had fun the whole week but also had fun on the way down and back. We took a little detour on our way down to visit White Sands National Monument and slide down the dunes. It was hot, and I want to go back in say October and try that again, but it was a good time. Friday we headed over to Carlsbad and went swimming in the river, which was kinda gross but a good way to end a hot week. We also made an attempt to see a bat flight out of the Carlsbad caverns, but we got rained out. We spent Saturday going down 750 ft into the bottom of Carlsbad caverns which was about the coolest thing ever except for my fear of heights. We hiked down, which is about a mile walk which surprisingly takes about 45 minutes because the whole time you're walking at about a 30-45 degree angle. It was cool though I think that if I go back I'll just take the elevator down.

On our way back, we had a crazy tire blow out on the trailer, but it all seemed to work out and we got back safely.

Overall it was certainly an amazing trip. On Thursday the other adults were asking me if I still wanted to be youth director, and I could honestly say, yes.

So today begins the journey. Finishing up one job, officially starting another, and seeing where God continues to lead me. It certainly has been an interesting journey so far, and something tells me I haven't seen anything yet.

Blogging may be sparse in July due to working two jobs, but I think it is a spiritual discipline that I need to keep up as it helps me really reflect on the journey that God has been leading me on, so I hope to really get back on it one of these days here soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 01, 2007 at 5:02 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.