And just think: I almost didn't go.
For the past seven days, I have been heavily occupied watching heaven meet earth. And let me be the first to say that when this takes place, crazy things happen. Here's the tale...
Each Spring Break, my church takes about 600 college students on a mission trip. In the past, they traveled to Juarez, Mexico, but due to political complications in recent years, they have taken everyone to a town on the border of Texas called Edinburg. The term town, however, is probably a little misleading. I was under the impression that all 600 of us would overwhelmingly descend upon this "town", and everyone living there would hear the Gospel at least 5 times. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), I was wrong. Edinburg is quite large, certainly as large as, if not larger, than Waco.
My life up until this trip has been incredibly. busy. Not the kind of busy in which you feel like you don't get to see your friends enough or don't have enough time to walk your dog, but in which you are battling exhaustion constantly, never getting a moment to yourself, and totally consumed by one thing (in my case, school). So to be quite frank, my excitement for the trip was rather minimal. All I wanted was to take a week off to sleep and just "be".
But God had different plans.
And if I've learned one thing about God recently, it's that his plans for us are good. Not good like a hamburger good, but good like something-that-just-happened-resonated-with-something-really-deep-inside-my-soul good. Yeah. That good.
So the trip...
Last Saturday morning, 600 college students piled into a bunch of buses and embarked on an 8-hour journey to the land of Edinburg, Texas. In the coming days, they proceeded to share the Gospel with various neighborhoods and witness heaven meeting earth. What that looks like is hard to describe. All I know is that when the glory of the Almighty God's infinitude meets human's depravity and finitude, things get shaken up, the church in Acts comes alive.
This week, I saw the blind receive sight, the lame walk, and the poor hear the good news (Matthew 11:5). All my skepticism went out the window. There's no room for doubt when you pray for a lady's foot and it's healed.
That's what happened the first day we went out on an outreach. Our team was dropped off in a very poor neighborhood known called the "Alamo", but more fondly referred to as "Little Mexico". Most houses were shanties. Undernourished dogs walked the streets. And trash decorated most front yards. We split up into groups of three and four and knocked on doors around the neighborhood to ask people if they needed help around the house or if we could pray for healing in some way.
The third house at which we stopped was where we met Marta. She was cordial but rather disinterested. We asked her if there was anything we could pray for and after a moment of silence, she said we could pray for her niece Desiree, whom she held in her arms. We prayed for Desiree, nothing very specific, and went on our way.
As we were talking to an older couple down the street, Marta rushed up and asked us to come back to her house. A bit perplexed, we finished up what we were doing down the street and headed back to Marta's. She invited us on to the porch and asked us to pray for her mother Maria whose foot had been hurting her for the past four or five months. I looked down and cringed. Her ankle was swollen and quite deformed; it was obvious that walking was quite painful and probably pretty unbearable.
We proceeded to lay hands upon Maria and pray for her foot. We did this three times. Each time we did, the pain subsided a little, and by the third time it was completely gone. To be sure, Maria got up and walked around a bit only to sit back down and assure us that there wasn't any more pain. Marta even pressed on a part of Maria's arch, which just five minutes before had made her flinch in pain, but now it didn't hurt at all.
I was shocked. I was in disbelief. Though I'd heard of this kind of stuff happening, I'd never actually been a part of it. My disbelief was finally shot down when we went back two days later and Maria said the pain was still gone. It was crazy! That's the only way to describe it.
And that's just one of the healings we were a part of throughout the trip. Each day, our team of about 90 people came back with testimonies of healings. And on one day alone we counted that there were over twenty-seven!
Even better though was the incredible number of salvations we saw. As we walked around the neighborhood, we also made it a point to share the Gospel with people. When it comes to this kind of stuff, I'm usually very timid. There's a part of me that assumes that people will say no. There's a part of me that figures everyone's already heard the Gospel because this is America, and if they're not Christians already, it's probably because they don't want to be. As a result, I miss out on helping people receive the greatest gift they could ever receive. (Needless to say, that was convicting, and I'm going to change some things.)
Anyway, back to the neighborhood. As we went around, we found so many people who were hungry and lost spiritually, and a countless number of them accepted the Lord! Plus, we found lots of others who were already believers and were very interested in starting a house church, of sorts. One in particular, named Maria, agreed to host of fiesta at her house on Thursday night. Over thirty of the people we'd interacted with that week came to the event and were eager to maintain community among each other. We have a small team staying back to do follow-up stuff in that area, so in the most basic sense, we planted a church in that neighborhood! If that's not cool, I don't know what is!
On the way home, I found myself chuckling at how different I'm coming back to school than most people. Most will probably have crazy stories, but of a different sort. They'll be returning with a nice tan and with lots of hours of sleep under their belt. And then there's me. I'll have some crazy stories to tell, that's for sure. And I'll be coming back just as pale as I left and with less hours of sleep under my belt than ever.
But I wouldn't trade that for anything because I've learned that
This is what I'm made for. This is what we're all made for. This is life. This is living. This is the kingdom. This is real. This is reality. This is an adventure. This is the adventure.
All of this is just a fraction of what happened while we were there. And all that happened while we were there is just a fraction of what can happen when we call heaven down to earth.
And just think: I almost didn't go.
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