What God Taught Me in the DR

Thursday, Day 6: Exhaustion is beginning to set in. At least that means everyone will sleep exceptionally well! But anyway, today was the first day of our second VBS, at a church plant in La Victoria, and that went very well.

 

The whole day was rather similar to the others, with construction in the morning and VBS at night, although we did something extra after lunch: 

Instead of heading straight home to collapse on our beds, we walked around the land the church sits on. The plan was to walk and pray over the land, the church, and the community.

I myself am not very good at prayer, and it’s often a struggle to be in communion with God. My prayers aren’t frequent enough and they are sometimes shallow and impersonal, which is silly because this is the God of the universe we are talking about.

But today was different.

We started walking in the heat and humidity, and immediately God stilled my mind and brought my heart to rest. All of the love and laughter and God-moments of the trip started coming to my mind, and that was the first time the reality of this mission trip started sinking in. Something our team leader, Kristen, said at the beginning of the week came flooding back and stuck right in the front of my mind:

We didn’t bring Jesus. He was already here. We brought hardly anything of value with us; we are here to join God in what He is doing. We are here to join the love that is already evident.

This community is beautiful. People who may not even know Christ personally are a part of His work here. We have been shown more generosity in the six days we’ve been here than I thought possible, coming from both strangers and friends alike. The Church here is stunningly vivid, and the truth is that we are incredibly privileged to have joined in here. The fact that my Heavenly Father allows me to share this good news and His wonderful love is beyond anything I can expression, and I am just beginning to grasp the wonder of it.

Though I will probably be overwhelmed by stress or physical circumstances or exhaustion again soon, I hope and pray that I find my way back to that place at God’s feet again when that time comes.