Up until 2013 I have never left the content of North America. For the fifth missions trip I had the amazing opportunity to travel to England. We flew into Heathrow Airport in London, England from a redeye so we arrived in the morning to try and quickly adjust to the six hour time change. We then took a Train to York, England where we would stay that night.
As we are all exhausted the people we are staying with show us around York and I bet that if people really payed attention to us they would see walking zombies. As we reached our rooms we were tempted to fall asleep right after dinner but they had something else for us to do, praying that we wouldn't fall asleep.
The next morning we said goodbye and then took another train to Cambridge, England where we would stay for the remainder of the trip. We had the opportunity to explore Cambridge as well and try different types of food they had.
Seeing such amazing architecture in those old buildings and looking at the intense detail was so fascinating to realize how the technology was when these cathedrals and buildings were being made and how impressive it is because they are so wonderfully designed. Such detail and work put into buildings that sometimes those working on it wouldn't see it finished because it took them so long to build them.
As we entered into the missions section of our trip it was an interesting time. I had talked to people about my faith before but this was the first time I was on a week long trip just to talk to people. It started out slow and it was difficult to start up conversations with people. But once I started it was easy to continue. I realized that I wasn't just meeting people from England but all over Europe.
We played soccer in the field of one of the parks we hung out at to speak with people brought in a lot of people we had never met before and then we were able to start up a conversation with them. I started talking with this one guy on the second day there and I had never came across someone who believed what he did. He was from Switzerland and He told me that he did not believe that history is reliable and he had to be there to see something happen or he doesn't believe the even occurred. He continued to explain that he didn't know if the Revolutionary ware occurred or the Civil war. I really didn't know how to talk to him about anything because without believing in the reliability of history then you can't believe much at all.
As I was speaking with this young man I found it difficult to reason with him so I had a friend nearby go and find the youth pastor that was with us to help me converse with this new ideology. It worked in the beginning because he was able to show the guy that his belief had so many holes in it and he even admitted it to himself, but he was still adamant on remaining in the belief category. He told us that he knows many people who believe what he does...I have yet to met another person who does, but maybe one day soon and I'll know what to say.
I also spoke with two girls who had never heard about God before and this was strange to me, they were taught evolution in school but they knew there was a reason for life more than just being an accident. I spoke with them for three hours and gave them some books to read about significance when you are a child of God. I don't know where they are today, but I hope that they are well wherever their life path has lead them.
Life Lesson #24: When going to a different time zone taking a red eye get you quickly adjusted to the time zone, but if you don't sleep on the plane you will be very exhausted.