So, when you only post one blog per year, I guess you have no right to call yourself a blogger. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. I do … but I just don’t have the time, or at least I don’t make the time. And in recent years I have become less interested in writing about myself. So maybe I’ll write about about somebody or something else.
But I do feel like I should write something about my annual mission trip to Mexico. This is something I have done now for close to 20 years–first with Shadow Mountain Community Church and now College Avenue Baptist Church. At CABC, we try to take families rather than youth groups, so that parents can experience the awesomeness of serving the poor in Mexico as well as their kids. This trip has the potentiak to disrupt a family’s lifestyle and priorities in a big way.
It’s also good for an old guy like me. This year I didn’t have to be the team leader (thanks Bill Davis!) so I was able to just go and serve along with the rest of the folks who went. It was harder for me to go this year because of my wife Marci’s disability (MS). All of our kids are now living far from us, so it’s harder now for me to leave Marci alone. But Marci’s sister Dixie came to stay with her for the week so I was able to go (thank you Dixie!)
It’s also harder for me to go because I’m not as physically fit as I was twenty years ago. And I don’t like getting out of my comfort zone or putting myself at risk quite as much as I did when I was younger. But I consider this trip to be something of a spiritual discipline for me, something I need to do to exercise my faith and trust in God. Part of me hates the hard work, the time and cost of going on the trip, the inconvenience of living in tight quarters with a bunch of people I don’t know very well, feeling stupid because I don’t speak Spanish, not having the comforts and amenities of home, etc. etc. On the other hand, I need to be humbled now and then and forced to put the needs of others ahead of my own for a few days. I am confident that we do a lot of good in Mexico, but I think that a lot more good takes place in my own soul as well as the souls of other members of our team.
Will I go next year? I hope so, but like I say, it’s getting harder. We’ll see. If you would like to see a video of our team at work (and a few other teams who were there the same week), visit https://vimeo.com/229337401.
