Please enjoy part one of my missionary saga...
DAY 1 --
I went into the week blind as to what was coming. None of us knew the activities, how many people would be there, if we would be mixing with other church groups, or any other helpful details. I wish I could say I was excited, but my heart just wasn’t into it the days before we left and even as we were piling into the packed van. Not only was I uncomfortable with the idea of spending 10 days with more middle school boys than I thought doing street evangelism on the Strip, but I was physically uncomfortable due to the worst sunburn of my life. The back of my legs were so burnt and blistered after a beach trip on Wednesday that I couldn’t walk normally or bend my knees. Over the course of the van ride that day, my ankles, feet and calves began to swell for the first time ever, causing even more pain, discomfort, and honestly, some fear. Unfortunately, this persisted for most of the week, but more to come on that later. Despite my poor physical condition, my excitement grew during the 10 hours in the van, and that night when we reached Reno I was anxiously anticipating our arrival the following afternoon.
Our devotional lesson that night ended up being the perfect introduction to what the week would bring, now that I look back on it. Christopher brought our attention to Luke 24:13-32, a passage that describes two men who were too busy mourning Jesus’ death that they didn’t recognize that they were walking next to him and conversing with him. Too often we are the two men who ignore and/or don’t seek the presence of Jesus in our lives. How would we act if we were constantly aware of God’s presence? The rest of the week really challenged everyone to see God’s work in the city and in our own lives. I had been taught that God is everywhere, but I never stopped to consider what that meant for my own life and my relationship with him. Even though God is there doesn’t meant that we recognize him and let that knowledge change us and set us apart. After that, we shared what we were looking forward to most. I was very excited to meet people and have conversations with them, similar to my experience last year. Like last year, I really discovered what it meant to see people through God’s eyes, as His children, wanted and loved in His sight. I wanted the same experience. It was really cool to hear the other kids in the group, especially those on 13 years old, share their expectations of seeing people come to Christ, of breaking out of their comfort zone, of proclaiming the Gospel boldly. It was encouraging to be reminded that we were all there for the same purpose. That night God brought to mind a passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul writes about preaching the Gospel “not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power . . . For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified . . . So that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power.” I needed to rely on God’s power as opposed to my own, and I needed to allow him to work in and through me.
Unfortunately, I feel like the trip can be broken up into two parts, me struggles vs. group experiences. Ideally, everything would fit into “group experiences,” but my various injuries took me on my own winding road. Friday night, it hurt to walk and I was fearful of what the next day would bring. I remember praying that God would heal me, or reveal to me the reason He was allowing this to happen.
“God, why am I hurting? Why won’t you make this go away? I want to be able to go, and move, and not be crippled! Gah! This is so frustrating! Horrible timing! Please let me recover tomorrow! Please…”
It’s kind of funny, the days before the trip I had a feeling that Satan was going to try to stop me from going, and I ended up being right. My dad went as far as to call my mom in an attempt to keep me home because of my sunburn. Psh, like I was going to stay home because of a sunburn. I had hoped that was the extent of Satan’s meddling, but when my ankles started swelling, I knew it was another attempt at stopping me from going out and sharing the Gospel. I wish I could say it didn’t work, but it did to a certain extent.
DAY 2 –
In the car ride from Reno down to the YWAM base in Las Vegas, we were “surrounded” with desert. I put the quotations because it felt like nothing was around us. I never appreciated the desert scenery, and honestly I still don’t favor it, but after a few hours of looking out the window, I began to see the beauty of God’s creation in the rough mountains, the colors of the sand, and patterns of cacti etc. The drive down was a good indicator of what the rest of the trip would be, seeing God’s beauty in new and previously unappreciated things.
When we stepped out of the van at the YWAM base, we definitely weren’t on the Strip. The base is in what would be Vegas’ “red light district,” and honestly, isn’t that where the church should be? It was a sweltering 113 degrees outside and I was dumbstruck that the staff girls were wearing jeans. That went all the way to their feet. Whaa? They said you get used to the heat after a few weeks. The rest of the evening consisted of a pizza dinner with the three other church groups and an overview of the rules of the base. With the other groups, there was 40-something of us participating in the program, and I didn’t know if we were going to be working together or simply living together. We found out the next morning that we were all there as one large group, and our church groups were pretty much disbanded, which scared me at first but I loved that I knew everyone by the end of the week. There was a youth group of mostly girls from the Los Angeles area who I roomed with, a youth group from outside Spokane, WA who we meshed with really well, and a group of 35-70 year olds from Orlando, FL. The groups from CA and FL were so much fun because of the difference between their church and my own. When the adults from FL led some spontaneous worship before dinner or something, I experienced true gospel music (everyone from FL and CA was black, so just imagine how cool it was singing and clapping and stomping and shouting like I’ve only seen in movies).
After the sun had been down for a while and it had “cooled down” to a refreshing 100 degrees, everyone piled into vans and we drove a few miles to a point overlooking the entire city. We gathered and listened to facts about the place we would be serving for the next week.
Did you know that Las Vegas is…
· First in the nation in divorce, high school dropouts, homicide against women, rape, armed robbery, meth abuse and gambling addictions (8 billion dollars a year is gambled there)
· Second in the nation in auto theft
· Third in the nation in bankruptcies
· Fourth in the nation in alcohol related deaths and suicide
· 42 million dollars is spent on advertising for sex annually (Ex: there are 150 pages in the phone book offering a “good time”)
· Considered to be the epicenter of North American prostitution and trafficking. The sex business there generates nearly 6 billion dollars in revenue per year
· Over 33 million people visit the city annually from all over the world
I’m not going to pretend to have remembered all of that, the facts from the brochure on the Mission Adventure program at the base. We also learned about the frustrations with the local government and their mistreatment of the homeless, and the lack of action against the sex trade. More interesting than statistics though was the way he presented it. He showed us that the negative images we have of Las Vegas (sex, money, fame, materialism etc) are all exploitations of our own sin. No one can say they’re above it all, because we deal with exactly the same things, just on a smaller scale for the most part. We then had the opportunity to stand over the city and pray with people from all over the world for the week ahead and Las Vegas in general but also specifically. A staff girl brought a guitar and worshiped and I decided to join her and sing some Phil Wickham songs :) On a different note, my ankles were at their largest that night and I was seriously scared. It hurt to have any pressure on them at all, and I was reduced to sitting on a rock instead of standing over the city. I so wanted to focus solely on my prayers for Las Vegas, but they quickly turned into prayers for myself. Despite that though, the night was a wonderful way to start our ministry there.
No comments:
Post a Comment