One Way United

This is something I actually wrote 12 days ago on November 6th on my personal blog. However, we have decided to post all trip related stuff onto this page rather than having our own seperate pages. So here it is:

After returning from Guatemala in September I felt completely changed by God. I felt like a new person. It was such an amazing spiritual journey for me. I loved the team I went with, I loved the villagers. I felt God’s presence every day. There is another team going down in January and I will probably not be going. Before I left for my last trip I had already bought my ticket for Buenos Aires leaving 3 days before the next Cajixay team would leave. Since coming back, I have prayed and asked God, if you want me to change my ticket and go to Cajixay in January, I will do it. I never felt a strong enough call to justify the financial commitment that that trip would take or the prospect of leaving Adam by himself for two weeks in Buenos Aires! I still felt a strong desire in my heart to see the villagers again, to visit that area again, to share another great experience with my team members. However, I also knew that there would be more chances for that, that January was only one trip and there would be many more. I also know, with how much love I feel for everybody there, that I will be back. But it was still a tough decision. For a while I thought I had pretty much made up my mind, that I was not going to go because I did not feel a strong enough call to go back in January specifically. But then I received a few emails from people, and I thought about the team leaving without me and it made me sad thinking I would not be with them. Yesterday, I thought about it most of the day, I prayed about it. At one point I just playfully took a coin and said “ok God, if it’s heads I go to Cajixay. If it’s tails I stick with the plan.” I had no intentions on deciding by flipping a coin but I was desperate. I flipped once, it was tails. I said ok, lets try again. It was tails. Then I was like ok…best of five. The next flip was tails. I prayed again…is that really want you want from me? I flipped again…it was tails. I flipped three more times after that…all the tosses came up tails. This was a little freaky…does God really speak through coin flips? I went down to Adam’s room and explained what happened. Amused, he flipped a couple times for me and the coin did the random thing. Probably knowing I can be a bit looney, he probably didn’t think very much of it. He went back to doing his homework and I went back upstairs. Of course I was still amazed at my run of trails. I prayed some more, switched coins and tails came up three more times in a row. I went back down and interrupted Adam’s homework again to tell him that the coin landed tails for me 10 times in a row now. I went back upstairs, flipped twice more. Both times landed tails. I am not making this story up. I started to get the feeling that maybe, just maybe God was trying to tell me something. Of course I wasn’t going to stop there though. I had a run of 12 in a row! I got two heads in a row and decided to stop. The probability of flipping 12 tails in a row by chance is 1/4096. Believe it or not I still was not convinced. Sometimes I think God could slap me across the face and I would think “wow…that was a strong sudden burst of wind!” I refused to decide on coin flips. I thought about it some more and realized I would be an absolutely terrible friend to make Adam go to Buenos Aires for two weeks by himself with no connections (Dani’s bro will be in Guatemala). I could not do that to him. I know the team going down to Cajixay will be an awesome team without me so I realized I was needed more in Buenos Aires. Also, knowing that I will have more chances later to go to Guatemala, comforted me. In other words, after feeling very conflicted for a day, I am back on board with the plan. Leaving January 10th for Buenos Aires. Boo ya!

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An adventure like this is not to be taken lightly. Many people have considered this “trip” to be just a short excursion in celebration of graduating college and delaying the onset of “real life”. It is that in part. Indeed when I first asked Jordan if he wanted to do a trip together after college that was really all I had envisioned. If you had told me it would grow in to something so much more I would never have imagined it. But somehow it did. Slowly the trip became not a vacation, but a full-fledged journey dedicated to discovering life and serving God. When Jordan had proposed centering the trip around service I became very excited, a lot more than I probably let on. For as long as I can remember I’d dreamed of doing something like this, but I often just attributed it to young silly flights of fancy. You can see how the prospect of making it real would be exciting, and a little freaky.

When I was younger I volunteered while in high school and loved every minute of it. when I came to college I didn’t have quite as much time for it and began to miss that connection. I’d been real interested in Jordan’s previous mission trips and a little envious. In my recent active walk with God I’d often felt like I was on my own a lot and didn’t really have the resources available that so many others around me did. When I’d heard people talk about their missions and how they’d felt about it I’d find myself feeling very happy for them and like I had absolutely nothing to contribute.

All in all I had a large awareness of being mostly on my own and disconnected from others, even if we held the same ideals. Not a really good place to be. And when I took that and applied it to the trip it developed some problems. Jordan would talk about how he missed serving the people of Gautemala and how he couldn’t wait to get to South America, and I would once again feel like I had nothing to say. As much as I wanted to go, I just did not think I was feeling God’s call to do so. Try as I might I just didn’t feel like I was needed there, and that disturbed me deeply.

Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?
Amos 3:3

I’d read verses like that and I would get nervous. How could this trip be all that I (and Jordan) wanted it to be if I didn’t feel like I was really meant to be there? Christians are supposed to be unified in their faith and I didn’t feel that at all. I would think and pray and search for an answer, and still nothing. When you’re about to undertake a journey such as this it can be disheartening.

Jordan had talked about unity before, several times in fact, and although it sounded nice to me I could never quite bring myself to believe in it. For many reasons I had a soloist attitude: you have to do everything for yourself because life doesn’t give you much of a choice. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I still couldn’t make myself cross that gap. But after it became clear that this was bothering Jordan, I decided that I needed to give one last leap of faith.

Jordan and I have being doing these daily devotions to God every morning. I had been enjoying them, but for a while I’d felt there was something missing. There should have been more going on then reading a few Bible verses and talking about what we thought it meant. So I went and pulled together every meaningful verse on love I could find. I wanted to show how much Jesus wanted to love us, and how much he wanted us to love each other.

That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ;
Colossians 2:2

So I prepared my devotion and the night before I prayed that God would reveal something to me through it. I didn’t sleep much that night. The next morning Jordan and I begin as we always do with a brief prayer. Silently I prayed that God would speak through me and give me the strength to do what I otherwise could not. And then I began talking about love and how God created us to be in union with him and with one another. As I was coming to the end:

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

This was one of the most personally relevant verses I’ve ever read. I’d hoped that reading out loud would have an impact on the both of us. I was starting to feel something, but not quite. And then came the last verse:

Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1 Peter 1:21-22

As I finished reading and Jordan and I were both standing up, I felt a twinge. These were some of the most beautiful passages I’d ever read, and overall I’d thought the devotional itself had gone well. But it still seemed like something was missing to me; that God hadn’t quite revealed himself like I’d been praying for. In this moment I played my last Ace. I moved in close and gave Jordan the biggest hug I had. And in that moment something amazing happened. This wasn’t just an ordinary “It’s good to see you hug”. I felt this odd warm feeling come over me along with a profound sense of peace. I’d gotten to know Jordan pretty well in the last few years, but I have never felt more connected to him than I did at that very moment. It truly did feel like we were “knit together in love”, and that somewhere God was smiling.

Since then I’ve felt an excitement about my upcoming journey that I hadn’t before. I can hardly wait to get started and truly feel that God was nudging me toward this. Whatever the future will bring I am raring to go.

I know I can do this now. I’m sure my Brother Jordan will be happy to hear it.

~Adam

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