Final Thoughts on the Mission Trip

One more mission trip in the books - and what a trip it was! I came home from Nashville physically tired from the work, but equally as tired from all the laughter and joy our group shared. (I swear, I should have a six-pack from laughing so much) That's the beautiful thing about these trips. The work is always paralleled and strengthened by an undeniable sense of fellowship with your fellow workers. You get to know people beyond the facade you see on Sunday mornings. It never fails that I am spiritually renewed after a mission trip. It is an amazing thing to see Christ working through others in their actions, words, and attitudes. The hands and feet of God are not limited to just our mission team, though. This work shows the true character of people I have never met and may never see again, but still they strengthen me. They give me faith - faith in tomorrow, because there is nothing a group of people working through, and for Christ, cannot accomplish. I look forward to many more trips and experiences in the future, and all the things I will surely learn in the process.

Amy

I'm so glad I went on the mission trip. A few days before we left, I was reluctant to going because all of my friends were going to the beach together and I'd be missing out. But, I stuck with my choice to go and I definitely don't regret it! It was so rewarding seeing the progress we made building houses and knowing that these people can have their homes back because of our work. I will MOST DEFINITELY be attending the next mission trip with FCC. I'm so glad I had this great experience as my first mission trip because it makes me want to do more. Thanks to everyone who contributed to allow me and the rest of the mission trippers to go to Nashville!

Darby

As long as I have had a car and driver license I have had a deep affinity for the road trip. Driving long distances often by myself has always given me the chance to meditate on my being and drown out the noise of the outside world. The road trip starts a few days in advance with the creation of the soundtrack of the trip. In years past this was a daunting feat of dubbing tapes, burning CDs and hoping that what I will want to listen to or what will speak to me is included into the numerous volumes. In this age of technological advances this process has become much easier but no less important.

After a beautiful Saturday relaxing and lazily floating the Illinois River with great friends, it was time to get on the road for the next adventure. As I left the comforts of friendship and got on the road for Nashville I pressed shuffle on the Ipod and decided to let the first few hours of music choose its self and simply let go in thought. The mix jumped from genre to genre, a little bluegrass followed by some rap followed by some classical pieces followed by some heavy metal and so on…. As the music played my mind drifted to the past mission trips, mentally preparing for the physical and emotional exhaustion that only a mission trip in a disaster area can provide, at this time the music was second to the mind.

Arriving to the church that hosted our group a brief moment of anxiety swept over me, knowing only my sister and brother-in-law I wondered what the other eight individuals in the group would be like, if their personalities would mesh with mine, if their work ethics would mesh with the task ahead, if the group would mesh with each other. Within minutes of meeting the group and settling into my new temporary home I knew for me and for the group that it was going to be a great week of service.

As we entered into each person’s house we were met with unique challenges and obstacles that needed to be faced to complete the task at hand. Although the differences were apparent in each house, the common thread in each house was that they were someone’s home. As the group I was working with started the first day, the owner of the house told us that she had been raised on that property and that the house we were working on had been moved to the land over 50 years before. A lyric from the drive the day before soon resonated through my mind’s speaker “Tear down the house, that I grew up in, I’ll never be the same again, Take everything that I’ve collected, and throw it in a pile.” This song by the Avett Brothers has spoken to me in the past for many different reasons, but on this day this songs first lyrics hit a new chord within me. We had been told that this owner had been a hoarder, knowing that about her then finding out that she had lived on this property her entire life I could not imagine the feelings of pain and loss that she had been experiencing for the last year.

Being the first mission trip with my sister in more than a decade, I was reminded of our childhood when our Mom would travel to Central America for mission trips, at my age I never really understood where she was going or why she was going. She would always return home with stories of weeks without running water, eating food we would never imagine eating and having their bus boarded by armed militia members. These stories instilled in me the belief that mission trips were not meant to be easy or comfortable, they were to push us out of our comfort zone and walk with those less fortunate. One night in Mississippi shortly after Katrina the mother of the house I was staying at was trying to thank those of us that came to volunteer, she kept saying, we don’t have a choice in being here, this is our home, thank you for giving up your comforts to join us in this situation. These words speak to me each and every trip since that experience, meaning to me that service is not only about the job of rebuilding someone’s home but also easing the emptiness and loneliness that someone feels as they see all they’ve worked for and collected thrown into the trash pile.

As the week progressed and the exhaustion of the day’s work started to mount in each of us, the reasons for each person’s participation became very honest and apparent. Those that approached the trip with the meaning of using their skills to help those that have lost everything continued through the week with little hardship. Those that approached the trip with the hopes of being surrounded by like-minded individuals and looking for affirmation of self and faith hit the proverbial wall early and hard. Disaster areas are unforgiving and brutal; if you approach them with hopes of feeling better about yourself you will not survive emotionally amongst the brutal honesty that devastation brings. But at looking at the tasks at hand and plodding through them, that happiness will come later when you can look back and process what you have learned about yourself and about those you served and served with. As the days went by I found it to be more of an honor to be serving with the group from First Christian as everyone congealed into a cohesive unit to serve the people of Nashville and let personal expectations and wants aside for those truly in need.

Leaving Nashville Friday afternoon, I found myself stuck in traffic the first twelve or so miles out of Nashville, for over an hour I sat at a near standstill. As much as I was ready to get home and as much as I wanted to set the cruise on 85 and fly off into the oncoming states I was slowed to a crawl. As the initial grumpiness and not so nice words left my mouth in exhaustion, a song came on the shuffle and my mood changed from irritation to reflection, “ I welcome the sun, the clouds and rain, the wind that sweeps the sky clean and lets the sun shine again. This is the most magnificent life has ever been. Here is heaven and earth and the brilliant sky in between. Blessed is this life and I'm gonna celebrate being alive.” I started to think how lucky I was to be able to drive home to my house that may be messy, but the mold only grows in the half gallon of milk in the fridge and not in the walls. I started to read the notes that each of us in the group wrote to each other. Having only known most of these people for six days a bond and friendship had been made between each of us through our willingness to work hard and serve complete strangers, each note brought a smile to my face and recent memories of each person and what we had worked on together flooded my mind. Thoughts of the conversation with the City’s Volunteer Coordinator and his statement that if Tulsa ever was devastated by a tornado or flood to expect a phone call from him and that he and his wife would arrive shortly after to volunteer in the rebuilding. This almost brought a tear to my left eye. Almost.

After a few days of being home the exhaustion and soreness has passed, but the memories and friendships will last well into the future. I look forward to seeing each and every member of our team again and find comfort with the feeling that each of them would lend me a hand in my time of need as I would happily lend a hand to them in theirs.

Craig

This mission trip was a real eye-opener for me. In the beginning I thought we would be working in very low income areas that had been affected by the floods. Once we got to some of the job sites, I realized that was not necessarily the case. It occurred to me that these were middle class people like myself that had been affected. So often I have taken for granted how blessed I have been and thought it would never happen to me. I have witnessed that disaster can strike anyone, anywhere. This trip has definitely made me more appreciative for what I have been given and opened my eyes to how blessed I am.

Amanda