What She Needs is Here

Our youngest leaves for her last high school mission trip this Sunday. Our church heads over the border every year to Tijuana, Mexico to help build homes with Amor Ministries. This will be her 3rd trip. Freshman year she had her big brother, sophomore year the two of them were reeling from the news that we were moving away from the Harbor and to the Midwest, and junior year she wasn’t able to go due to the move. Now she’ll know what to expect. She's been know to slip away from the hammering to spend time with the babies and children for whom the homes are being built.

I’m helping her pack from afar. Lately our conversations have been about what she needs... “Did you buy a new tub? Your old ones are here, in the garage.”

“Your sleeping bag and pad are in the basement closet. Shoot, the nail belt is here too. Daddy has been using it at Mitch’s apartment. He’s building them shelves.”

Yep. Many of the things she needs for the trip are not out in Washington, but here in Illinois. That doesn’t do her much good and we just couldn’t fit everything in my car last January. (It’s also a bit tricky to get big items on plane flights.) So….she’s replaced them with new, or borrowed from friends.

All four of our children have participated in our Chapel Hill Youth Group Mexico Mission Trip. The experience has taught them to be thankful for all we have, to be globally minded and to be compassionate toward people of all walks of life. The trips have also brought them closer to Jesus.

My youngest daughter has a HUGE heart. (All her career testing results keep telling her to become a counselor.) I doubt this will be her last mission trip; she’ll most likely sign up during college or as an adult at her future church home. No matter who is on her building “team” or whose supplies she’s borrowing, what she really needs will be there. God always meets her and she comes home changed…

I am still here (in Illinois). I couldn’t commission and pray over her last Sunday at church, but her big sister and my good friends could. Although my body is here, my heart is with her. I will be her prayer warrior until she returns with pictures and stories of how she saw God at work in Tijuana.

“I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.” Ephesians 1:16

She’s packing her bin. I’ll soon be packing moving boxes. We both are headed on adventures.
Here… There… Wherever we're headed, we'll have what we need.

In His Grip, Jane