Continent Jump

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.

Mexico Round Two

After this first year of crushing disappointment, it only seems fit that we were again to return to Mexico in and unfortunate turn on circumstances.  Originally the plan was to go to Panama in August 2012.  A month or two prior to the trip our youth pastor got a job on the other side of the country in California.  And he was scheduled to start work before our trip.  By now I had learned to live on my toes and expect the unexpected when it comes to ministry.


None of the other pastors on staff had the availability to go with us to Panama and the youth pastor taking over had no experience down there.  So in drastic measures we quickly switch the trip to Mexico for a second year in a row.


The route was the same as the summer prior, we flew into California and drove down into Mexico.  This trip though was much more child oriented.  We did help with some construction projects but nothing as demanding as the year prior. But this trip was still a blessing.

Since my youth pastor was already moved into his house we went to visit him at the college he still works at.  This campus is in Marietta, California and has natural hot springs.  The smell wasn't particularly that appealing but the warmth quickly changed our minds. We got to experience college life and eat some great food that only the west coast offers us.


I learned that making balloon animals is way harder than it looks and takes a skill of some sort to make them awesome.  We sang some of our spanish worship songs that I learned in my spanish class.  The kids couldn't get enough of them.  At the orphanage that we spent decent amount of time at one of the workers daughters was fluent in english.  She served as our translator with many of the little children.

One day we spent with some local people from a village I spent the day with a brother and sister who never said a word to anyone.  When their mother came to get then she smiled at me and took her kids.  She pointed at a piece of paper that said thank you written on it with the children's ages; 4 and 5.  I never figured out their names or their mothers for that matter.  Maybe they all couldn't talk or they were silenced.

We spent some time at the beach doing devotions and just getting to know each other through the missions trip.  At first I was really upset about the fact that I didn't have the opportunity to go to Panama, but as the bible says when the Lord closes a door he opens a window.  This was one of the first times I started to open up about my spiritual journey.  I made a few friends cry while I told my story but in the end it was all worth it.

Life Lesson #20: Sharing my testimony the first time was hard, but it only got easier with experience.

Replacement Missions Trip

When you are called at one in the morning and are told that your missions trip to Nicaragua is cancelled the day you are going to leave, you are probably really mad.  I know I was!  I was a few hours from getting on a plane and our trip was cancelled because of an airline issue.  But as God would have it Mexico in August 2011 was the replacement trip. 

It was a few weeks later into the middle of August and we got on a plane and flew over to California.  But our journey was not finished, we then got white fifteen passages vanes and drove six hours down into Mexico.  We went to a little town in the Baja California Peninsula.

This size hour drive was perhaps the scariest ride of my life.  We are driving through the mountains on a two narrow lane road with a guard rail for only half the trip.  Most of the cars that passed on the other side were primarily semi-trucks. Music was the only thing that kept everyone calm and until the song by Carrie Underwood Jesus take the Wheel came on.  


My youth pastor was driving and as this song came on he started singing loudly and every time the words 'Jesus take the wheel' came on he let go of the steering wheel.  The roads were curvy and all of us started to scream.  My friend sitting in the passenger seat a few months into having her license grabbed the wheel to steady the van.  I quickly changed the song to something else and my youth pastor continued to sing the lyrics but replacing 'Jesus take the wheel' with 'Jesus take Camille' which was the name of one of the girls in our van.

The entire trip down took extremely long but we made it into Mexico and made it to the valley in which we stayed for the whole trip.  Up to this point for me all the missions trips I have been on have been children focused, this trip was different.  We brought the extra money we raised and used it to build a house for someone.  This first step was to get the equipment needed. After we did that then we split up into three different groups to go to three different places each day.

This is the house we built

For the first day my group went to a place called the dome.  There we built the chairs, benches, and beds that were going into this house.  It was a long day with a lot of hammering and soar hands.  We were kindly given food from the neighbors that lived in the section where the dome was.  One of the houses was the pastors family of the church there as well and the other building was an orphanage.  We played with the kids for only a few minutes, but they loved every minute of it and it was a great distraction for us.  Our hands were red and our arms were weak but we kept on cutting the wood and building the furniture.

The second day my team went to the building sight and we had two purposes that day.  The group that was their before us had put up the frame to the the house.  Our job was to paint the sides blue, put up the shingles on the roof, nail in the drainage system when it rains, and to dig the hole for the outhouse.  We knew it was going to be a long day a head of us but we wanted to work hard and we wanted to make the best of what we were given.

As a person who is afraid of heights I decided  to work on the roof and it was scary but very entertaining.  We started off painting the sides blue, which means that we got blue paint on us.  They once we got one side painted we let others take over and started working on the roof.  We put down the tar and started placing the shingles.  After we were all finished we started nailing in the metal storm drainage which after a hard day of nailing wood together the day before to much more effort than we all thought.  Once that was finished we were covered in blue paint and black tar.  

Most of the guys had spent the day digging the the hole an they were getting to a point in which they couldn't fit in the hole to dig.  I then volunteered my small frame to start digging until it was deep enough that we could put the outhouse that one that the other groups had built.  The hole was so deep that I wasn't able to get myself out of the hole.  Instead two of my guy friends had to grab me by the arms to pull me out.  We arrived back to base later than we were supposed to and went straight to dinner.  Most of the group was covered in blue paint, but the exception was three people (myself included).  We were covered in blue paint, tar, and dirt.  As we tried to wash it all off after dinner we seemed to be very unsuccessful.  We attempted to use gasoline to try to scrub some of it off, it only worked a little bit.

On the third day we went to the house that the pastor of the church in which we came down to help.  The house was in the process of being built and their family was filled with almost 20 kids so it was a few stories high.  They needed to add another floor so the best option was to create a basement.  This day we then spent the whole day digging in the dirt to start to create the basement.  It was three straight days of working hard and the reward was great.  We built a house and added some electricity for a family in the church, built all the furniture for it, and dug out majority of a future basement.  It was hard but all of it was used by God to reach people, a nice addition is I can say I have built a house!

Life Lesson #16: Working with you hands for three days straight in the hot sun will be hard, but enduring through it means that God will use you for a much grater purpose and saving a life instead of just giving them a home. 

Take Two: 2010

Dominican Republic August 2010: an amazing trip for the second time. I was given the opportunity to return to the D.R. after I graduated from middle school. I was just about to enter into my freshman year and I was so excited to return and see some of the same kids I had seen the summer before. Going back again helped further my faith experience with God.

This trip was a time for me to move out of the stages of junior high and enter into the life of a high schooler. This trip no one got sick and we thanked God every day for that. For my first trip I didn't have that many of my friends so it was easier to make new ones and not make it an experience with friends. 

As I was on my second missions trip I felt more like a professional than the rest of my friends. This trip I also brought along my younger brother who was going to be going into seventh grade. He had never done anything like this before. In the few months before the trip we discovered a small heart condition that my brother, Cody, had.  It caused him to pass out if he wasn't drinking enough water or eating enough nutritional food. We notified the youth pastor who was in charge of the trip and he became worried.

My mother's exact words to him when we found out was, "Cody had a heart condition. He might pass out on you, but don't worry Kelsey will know what to do." As any adult would feel nervous if they were taking someone else's kid to a third world country and leaving his health in the hands of his thirteen year old sister would feel. He was terrified. Through this experience my brother survived and nothing went wrong, with his health anyway.
In the end we all returned safely and we spread the good news of the Lord to everyone we met. We played card games and other sorts of games to strengthen our relationship with each other as a group. We learned that even the words balloon animal could bring the biggest joy to the children with nothing.
This second trip really opened up my eyes to see the world as it was. While visiting the boys orphanage the older boys made sure the younger ones received the gifts and the most attention. Those children had nothing and they were wiling to receive nothing in order for the younger ones to get more. I knew I wouldn't be visiting again till many years later so it was bittersweet to leave, but I returned home with a better idea of how I needed to live my life.

Life Lesson #11: All the possessions in the world will never make you truly happy.

Sick Little Missionaries

When I stepped into the hot humid air for the first time in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic I knew my life was going to change. I had never been on a missions trip and this was the first one. I was nervous but at the same time very excited. It was the summer in between seventh and eight grade, the air was hot but I was ready.

For the trip we stayed with Score International which was a compound within the poorer parts of the Dominican Republic.  We went to sugarcane villages each day.  We meet more and more kids as the week went on.  We went to a few orphanages to play with the kids there.  Those children taught me a lot about life even though we had no way of having a real conversation together.

We passed out food to families in some of the villages and put on a skit for them to see.  We acted out simple needs that we have or sins that we all commit while people just passed by.  But, then after it all Jesus came and saved us all from what we were suffering with.  We had someone explain what was going on in spanish so the could further understand.

On this trip little did I know that this beautiful week was going to take a turn for the worst. When one of the students on the trip began throwing up it just went down hill from there.  We had brought a sickness with us that infected us all.  Those who weren't sick helped those who were, thus spreading the germs faster among the students.  When the leaders started getting sick it was to hard to go any where and complete the mission we were sent there to do.

Rapidly one by one we each got sick.  I was one of the last ones to catch the horrible virus.  We each threw up so much that when we got to a point where we had nothing more to throw up.  Our bodies were weak and most of us slept a lot.  I slept through most of the day waking up at seven o'clock at night to go to the bathroom and drink more water.  Then I fell asleep that night at 9 o'clock to sleep through the night till 8:30.

Once most of us recovered we planned on going out again to visit some of the villages.  When I ate food for the first time with another girl in my room it took us all but ten minutes to throw it back up again.  Myself and a few others missed the souvenir shopping day but our friends bought things for us. Unfortunately, things don't always go as planned but God's work still gets done even if it is your own heart. This was first learning experience of what it means to be truly grateful for what you have.  There are people in this world with way less and we must think of that when we complain about the items we do have. 

This trip impacted me so much and I grew in my spiritual walk with the Lord that I decided I would come back the next summer as well.  No one got sick on that one and I even brought my little brother Cody who had just finished sixth grade along for the trip.  I got to see some of the same kids as I did the year before and even spend time with some new kids in different villages.

Life Lesson #9: Don't take anything/anyone for granted because you never know how long they or you will be around.