Community

Today is the first day that I have been back at work in two weeks. I am so tired, and it took me three tries to make it out the door this morning!

I could spend hours/days/months talking about the mission trip to Mission, Texas, and a few more hours talking about camp. I'll be randomly posting about them over the next few days/weeks/months.

Things I learned in South Texas:
* teenagers will sleep in their clothes if they have to get up before the sun does
* it is way more fun to play soccer as a girl...hair flowing everywhere, kicking the ball the wrong way and nobody gets upset....way cool
* trips like this are very different when you take them as an adult vs. when you are the kid on the trip
* no matter how young you look or act, sometimes you just need a little adult time

The most important thing I learned in South Texas (thanks to Mikel, because there's no way that I could have come up with this on my own) is what it means to live in community. When we were down there, there were 20+ girls sharing two shower stalls and 3 bathroom stalls. Every morning, we got up, got dressed, and went to a church where the local members fed us in the garage/storage unit that they converted into a dining hall. That's what Paul meant by breaking bread together. Then, we left there and all went and did hard, manual labor and got dirtier than I could ever imagine. The local church brought us lunch, and then we worked more. We went back to that same church where they fed us dinner, and then we went "home". At night, we played hard together. Just before bed, we came together to worship and share about our day. Then we went to sleep and did it again the next day. That is what the first church was like.

I had a hard time leaving it...