My spring break looked a little different this year. Instead of going home or somewhere warm with a beach, I went to NYC where the high all week was in the 50s. I did get to go sightseeing. That wasn’t the reason for going, it was for a mission trip with my campus ministry. I’m not saying this to get any praise because if you want to know the truth I didn’t want to go. The weekend before I had gotten sick, and I just wanted to be at home with my mom. I also had been struggling with my faith, mad at God for things I didn’t understand. So, in all honesty I went in there expecting nothing and going because I had spent money to go and didn’t want it to be wasted. The first day we were there we had gotten split into three different groups and were sent to different campuses. They gave us resources to use to talk to others on campus about God and have those difficult conversations. I was in this new place going somewhere where I was sure these people would laugh in my face, I was terrified, and I still didn’t feel qualified because I was struggling. How was I supposed to help anyone when it felt like my head was hardly above water? Because of recent incidents, I thought that God had left me, that he didn’t hear my cries, and that I had to go through the pain alone. Well, he answered in the very first conversation. We got to the college, and I was paired with one of my friends and then a leader at that college. We went up to a girl sitting in the cafeteria and asked if she had time to do a survey and sat down. The leader did most of the talking. The girl was a Muslim and I didn’t have many interactions with other religions so I was thankful he was talking, but I was also thinking there was no way this girl is going to accept Christ, I mean from what little I knew Muslims were so strong in their beliefs and I doubted that God could or would do anything,(because I felt like that’s how it was going in my life.) The more the girl talked the more she opened up, about how she felt so stressed, how she felt so alone, things Christians and non-Christians have felt before. I talked a little about my experience and how my relationship with God had helped me get through that, even if I had forgotten that recently. Well, we got through the questions, and we asked her if she wanted a personal relationship with Jesus, and she did. On my very first day in New York, I was able to see someone accept Christ. I saw someone lost and struggling desperately searching for love and then finding him. It was a very emotional encounter for me, not only because I saw someone accept Christ, but because my view of the God I serve changed completely. It allowed me to remember that I was once that girl, I was lost and searching for something, and he came to me, that he loved me then and he still loves me now. He had never left me; he was still there and even used a nonbeliever to remind me of that. The rest of the week I went into those conversations thinking differently. I prayed that I would say what I needed to that could help those who were hurting. I went in expecting God to move, even if I didn’t see the fruit right then. He did, I met so many people who could relate to what I had gone through. I met Christians that felt unheard or felt like a burden to God. I made friends, we laughed, and we cried. I learned a lot during the trip and could probably write three more pages about it but here are my top three. The first is that God does love you, he loves you so much and all the time, he cares what you’re going through, and he just wants you to trust in him. The second is that you don’t know why you go through the valleys, but you go through them for a reason. You may not know why right then and there and you may never know, but I do know that if I hadn’t gone through those dark times, then I may not have been able to connect with those I talked to like I did and the third is that he provides, I made friends in NYC but I also made deeper connections with those who went on that trip with me. I now have more people I can go to when things get rough. So, I encourage you to stand strong, you will have times when your faith falters but don’t give up, you never know how God can use your story. I also encourage you to start those hard conversations, you never know whose life could change just by starting that conversation. And finally, it’s okay to let others in, that’s eventually how you heal, God didn’t want us going through this life alone. I didn’t write this to get the praise, I wrote this to praise the one that changed my life and has changed many lives around me.
” Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
Matthew 28:20