Live. Your. Mission.

This January marks a year since I started Immersion and went on the most exciting, frustrating, and unpredictable journey of my life. Like these teams that are leaving now (by the way, add them to your prayers), we had no idea what we were getting into. I’ve never been with a group of strangers with whom I have laughed harder, prayed stronger, lived life fuller, and loved more than my 12 plus or minus team. And even though there are some of them that I don’t really keep in contact with, they are always in my thoughts. We went through some crazy stuff together. But we all made it out alive and that’s what really counts!

Experience Mission has the phrase “live your mission” as kind of like their motto. The dictionary defines mission as “a task or job someone is given to do”. To me, a mission is something you are willing to do whatever it takes and sacrifice whatever you must to accomplish it. If your mission is to be the most successful, then you are probably going to sacrifice time with those you love and miss out on a lot of the little things because you keep looking ahead. If your mission is to be the most popular, you might have to sacrifice some of your interests that not everyone thinks are cool. If your mission is to get the best grades, you are going to have to sacrifice a lot of sleep.

Recently I have been thinking about what Immersion 2015 meant for me and how it has changed me. Not all the ways are obvious like I maybe thought they would be. I still can only speak English. My diet hasn’t changed because of it (I will probably never consume as many plantations and pounds of rice and beans as I did during those six months). I don’t physically look different (well except for the scar and dent I have in my head. But thankfully you can’t really see that). I’m still me. I still enjoy the same kind of music and movies. I am still obsessed with Dunkin and will never fully understand anyone who isn’t. I still love my Seminoles. I’m just as awkward. Hanging out in the Caribbean for six months didn’t make me any cooler. The biggest change is the one you can’t see.  

My mission has changed since I went on Immersion. Making a ton of money has never really been a big motivator for me. I’ve realized that I don’t have to be popular to feel loved. School is obviously super important for me but not THE most important. In fact, before this trip, I didn’t even really have a mission. I didn’t know what I wanted out of life. But I realize now, that was because a pretty crucial piece was missing. God can’t just be a small part of our mission. He needs to be the center of our mission. He needs to be the focal point of all of the decisions we make. I’ve chosen to pursue a career in physical therapy for two reasons: one because I love God and I have prayed and trusted that He will lead me in the direction He wants me to. And second because I want to love people. I want to help give someone strength back in their leg but also strengthen their self-worth by showing them the love of Christ. I want to show people that walking again is possible. And with God, all things are possible.

So what is your mission? Is God the center of it? If He isn’t or you don’t have one, maybe you should consider a break in the Caribbean for six months. It might change your perspective.   

Praising God in the Desert

When’s the last time you praised God in the storm? Seriously think about it. I have noticed in my life that being in the storm or in the pit reminds me of my need for God and I cry out to Him. But how hard is it to remember to praise God when that’s where we are? It’s easy to glorify and thank God when things are going well because obviously we must be on good terms with God if He is blessing us. It’s a lot harder to worship when there doesn’t really seem to be a lot of things for us to be thankful for.

I think Paul is making his opinion very clear about how our worship should look:

“Rejoice always!

Pray constantly.

Give thanks in everything,

For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Don’t stifle the Spirit.

Don’t despise prophecies, but test all things.

Hold on to what is good.”

-          1 Thessalonians 5:16-21

But our culture likes to change it:

“Rejoice only when things are going your way.

Only pray when it’s convenient.

Give thanks when you get what you want.

 Does God really have a plan for you?

Don’t listen to that voice telling what is right and wrong. You know what is best for you.

Other people have no right telling you how to live your life either.

Protect what is yours. After all you worked hard to get it.”

I mean that sounds pretty messed up. But it’s so easy for that to become our mindset without us even realizing what is going on! It’s as if when things are going great, it’s all us. Like we made our lives awesome. But God gets the credit when things get difficult. I believe God is in all of that! When things are great, He’s looking down on us with this huge smile because He loves seeing you so happy. When things are hard, He’s looking down on us with love and compassion. He’s there for all of it.

Over and over again in the Old Testament, the Israelites are told to remember all that God had done for them. Psalms talks about God bringing them out of captivity and all of the miraculous way He provided for them in the desert. The writer of the Psalms didn’t see any of that for himself, but he knew all about it because there were festivals and traditions so that the people would never forget all of the wonderful things God had done for them. Maybe that’s something you need to do. Make a list of all the times God has provided for you in the “desert” and thank Him for it.

For me personally, this is something I am working on right now. I have recently had some unexpected medical things come up and it’s scary. And I have spent a lot of time crying out to God. But I was reminded by a friend that I had a giant pole fall on my head and God took care of me then! Why wouldn’t He take of me now? My pole encounter was only a few months ago and of course when it had just happened, I thanked God for His healing all the time. But as life goes on and you feel like you have reached this mountain you can’t overcome, maybe it’s time to turn around and look at all of the ones God has already brought you over and thank Him for those. Maybe you need to bake a cake and have a party of your own to thank God for His blessings even if it doesn’t seem like this is the time to be celebrating anything. Besides, a little cake never hurt anything! 

So What Happens Next

So you want to know what’s like readjusting back to normal life after a mission trip? It’s hard. It’s very hard. Especially since I had never been away from home for more than a month. And even then it wasn’t like I had ever been outside of America for that long. So how do you adjust back to life in America after that long? You surround yourself with love and people who care about you and want to listen or are okay with just being quiet. Friends that want to take you to all of the restaurants you missed eating at. Your church family is key. A family that greet you on Sundays with a smile and a hug and who want to make sure that America is treating you right. And of course you need God. Because sometimes He’s the only person that can possibly understand what you are going through. And the only person who can make sense of all of the incomprehensible thoughts you have going on through your head. Plus, God never has to fit you into His schedule!

As far as what happens next (because that is what a lot of people want to know) I’m still not 100% sure. The thing I do know for sure is that I want missions to continue to be a part of my life for the rest of my life. The exact details are still a work in progress. I do know that writing these blogs have sparked a new interest for the communications world. Well I mean what I know of the communications world… Maybe it’s more of like public relations. I’m not sure. Which is why I’ve started meeting with a career counselor because my indecisiveness requires professional help. Honestly though: my ideal job would be the next Beth Moore and get to travel all across America talking to people and writing books and getting to pray for people I’ve never met before. But I am not Beth Moore so I have to figure out what Audrey Johnson wants to do with her life. 

Until then, I am working a lot to be able to afford tuition for school and to get myself as financially ready as I can for whatever lies ahead. And no I don’t have the most glamorous job in the world. I serve chicken to people and get paid to do it. But I’m learning to praise God where I am. And some days that is hard because I want to be Beth Moore. I want to be traveling the world. But for whatever reason, God put me here. Because this is where He needs me to be. And I’m learning to be thankful for the time here with my family not and running around globe. No, staying put is not exactly what I had in mind. But the future is unpredictable and exhausting so for now, I’m learning to be okay with the blessing of being here. 

Reflections (Probably Part 1 of Many)

Well it's officially almost been two weeks since I have been home. And while I love being home with my family and my friends, I do miss my immersion life. I miss my host families and my immersion family even more. It's a strange transition going from seeing a group of people almost every day to be suddenly separated from all of them. Modern technology allows us to still communicate with each other from time to time but I wish they were here with me. One of the things I wasn't expecting to struggle with is making decisions! During our trip, we would often fantasize about how great it will be when we could choose what food we wanted to eat and when we wanted to eat it and having more than our few outfits to choose from but now that I can, it's overwhelming! I just want to snuggle up with my t-shirts and have pizza delivered to my house so I don't have to go out into the real world. Thankfully, I have been able to keep myself busy by planning times with friends to catch up or I would probably become a hermit.  

However, seeing people can still sometimes be a challenge. Especially when you want to try to sum up 6 months of your life into a coffee date. There's really not a very good way to do it. It's hard to describe what I experienced because it's all about the people I met. Not about how many buildings we built or how many projects we accomplished. It's all about the relationships we met, and when you go to a new place every couple of months, you meet a lot of people. And honestly, I don't know how well I impacted the people there. Of course I loved strangers like my family and tried to show the joy I have received from Christ to everyone I met, but I can never repay some of these families I met for how wonderful they made my experience. And maybe that's what we were supposed to learn. Sure, the places we went to did not have the technology and comforts we have in America. But when that all is gone, you get to see the beauty in these people's hearts. And that's what I will take away from this trip.

Being separated from your phone and computer for so long gives you the opportunity to spend a lot of talking to God, which is something that I unfortunately don't really spend a lot of time doing. It made me realize that maybe the times we feel like we don't hear God's voice is because we allow so much other stuff to block it out. But when we look in the Bible, those who really wanted to hear God's voice separated themselves from the distractions of this world so that they could hear Him. Jesus went and prayed by Himself. Elijah was taken up on the mountain so he could hear God. Sometimes God wants to tell us the next step He wants us to take in our lives. Or sometimes He just wants to tell us about someone who needs our prayers. Don't be afraid to listen.

Live Dangerously

So imagine this for a moment: you are asleep in your bed, having wonderful dreams. And then around 1:30am you wake up to the sound that's the equivalent of hail hitting your car in the winter (something I don't have a lot of experience with but work with me). But of course, after a second your brain realizes it's the rainy season in Belize and considering your house has a tin roof, rain is hitting basically a giant speaker system. Then it hits you.. "Whoa! Next Thursday I will be getting ready to board a plane to go home!!" Which gets you thinking about everything you have experienced the past six months and things you hope to experience when you get home and the next thing you know it's 4am and you haven't really done much sleeping. The whole point of that story is me saying that I GET TO BE HOME IN A WEEK!! And again, not that I don't love Belize, I just really miss America.

But before I get carried away, here is a little bit of what has been going on. Last Thursday, I got to go back to 7 Miles because one of my host sisters was graduating primary school! It took our siblings a bit to warm back up to us but it didn't take long for us to pick right back up where we left off. Our 7 Miles parents were super excited to have us back. They even begged us to stay the night with them but considering it's an hour car ride to get back to Santa Elena and there is no phone reception, we had to say no and return home. It was hard leaving them the first time when we knew we were
going to be coming back but it was really hard to leave them that time. We left with the hope that maybe one day God will give us an opportunity to return to this family that loved us like one of their own.

This week has been one full of projects to keep ourselves busy while we prepare for returning home. There is a week long team in a city not too far from where we are so a few of us have gone every day to help out with their project. It is a fine line between being helpful and being invasive. One of their leaders asked us to give their group a summary of what our trip is about which is nice sometimes to be reminded that yeah, what we are doing is pretty cool! It can be easy to (in a weird way) take this trip for granted because it is our life for the moment. But it is actually pretty awesome.

Yesterday we went to this place called "A Painted Conversation". This lady had this vision to create a mural that represents this area and get people of the community involved in making something beautiful. I'm not exactly sure how she put it together but basically, she created this image on the computer that she traces block by block onto these very large painting papers and creates like a paint by number. Then groups or individuals can come in and paint part of it and when it is finished, it will be a big, beautiful masterpiece inspired and put together by members of this community. It was really cool just listening to her vision of the mural and explaining everything she feels like it represents. Plus, I find paint by numbers very relaxing and they require no actual talent so it was right up my ally!

Since this is my last blog post before I return home, I would like to end it with something for you to contemplate. And not just in a "hmm... interesting" way but in a "whoa! Maybe I should really think/ pray about that" kind of way. So the other day, we were downtown and we saw someone had grafittied "Be dangerous. It's safe out there." Which at first just seems kind of funny because normally you would switch the words "safe" and "dangerous" but then I got thinking about how
different life would be if we lived like that. Not just like in a way where we would maybe go on more adventures but what if you lived your spiritual life dangerously? It's so easy to live our lives in a spiritual safety zone with our safe churches. And safe friends. But what would happen if you let God lead you out of that safety net? I don't want to really give examples of that because I don't want to limit your ideas but think about it. What would happen if you decided to live dangerously for Christ? Yeah, it's kind of a scary thought but God breathed galaxies into exhistance! He can do some pretty cool stuff! Why not be a part of it? Who knows, you might get to do something cool like live for a while in some cool foreign places ;)

I Can't Belize It!

This past week we reached a very pivital date. June 12th marked 5 months since we left home and officially less than 3 weeks until we get to be back! This trip has been great and I definitely wouldn't trade my experience for anything but being away from home for so long really makes you miss it a lot. Especially because it seems the closer we get, the more we dream about being home. Maybe because we can actually deram about all the things we miss with the hope it will one day soon be our reality. Belize really isn't all that bad though. For instance, I am currently writing this blog from an air conditioned ice cream shop... Sometimes you just kind of need to spoil yourself a bit :)

The weekend was a very fun but very crazy one. Our sister had her quinceanera on Sunday which meant all this past week, we had various people coming in and out of our house helping our mom with cooking and preparing decorations. Saturday night, we had like 20 people come over to our house to help make tamales. Like several hundred tamales. And since Bekah an I are unexperienced tamale makers, we were given the glamorous job of cleaning leaves (which if you have never made tamales before, it acutally is an important part of the process). Oh and if you read my last blog post, I said we were going to try to get fun party dresses. Well, we kept going in and out of stores confused why none of the stuff was fitting us properly until someone finally told us that all of the clothes are in petite sizes. And considering I am 5'8" and my roommate is 5'10", it's no wonder none of this stuff fit us. We didn't need to start weight watchers when we got home, we just are a lot bigger than the people that live here are. So even though we had to wear the same church apparel that we have been wearing for the past 5 months, we still had a good time at the party... Until a rain storm decided to come through and make an appearance. Picture experiencing a small hurricane in a building with no windows and a tin roof. It makes it sound and feel a lot more dramatic than it probably was but it definitely sent everyone in a panic. But hey, at least it wasn't hot anymore.

So as you may or may not know, our team is the first immersion team to come to Belize which is cool because it's new to not just us but also to our organization but also hard because we don't really have any of the solid connections we have had in the other places. Which leaves your team with two options: either be bored and frustrated or go out and find stuff to do! So some people on our team have started making connections for us to get involved with some preschools and apparently Thursday we are going to go paint a mural that will be put up on some public place. So we will be getting to make a visible mark on the community. Maybe it will be something other teams will get to see and know that we did that!

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about the concept of love. Love of family. Love of friends. Love of strangers. Love of people who maybe are difficult to love. In God's mind, choosing to love people isn't an option. It's the only option. Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love God with all we got and love our neighbors as ourselves. There doesn't need to be any more instructions than that because if we are so focused on loving others and loving God, we won't want to commit sin that would hurt them. Everything else just kind of falls into place when we put the needs of ourselves aside and love others with everything inside of us. And that's what I am going to keep doing for these last 16 days. Loving with all of my everything.

Last Stop: Santa Elana!

Well, I didn't think we would ever actually get here but we have finally made it to our last stop on our trip! Last Saturday, we made our last move from 7 Miles to Santa Elana, Belize. Which even though both are in Belize, they are very different because Santa Elana is a city and we haven't lived in a city for a while. It is kind of weird to be around so much traffic and so close to so many stores. And this isn't even that big of a city! Further proof of how going home is going to be a major adjustment.

Our last few weeks in 7 Miles were ones filled with lots of adventure hikes and even more peanuts. But Rachel and I did manage to get all of them done! Our family obviously did most of the work because apparently we are not very fast. Our last day, our family took us to the river for one last day of swimming. We got to play around in the water with our siblings and even started teaching them how to swim! The thing that was so amazing about our 7 Miles family is how much they felt like family. We have lived with several different families throughout our trip and although I have never felt like I didn't belong in a house or questioned their hospitality, this family made me feel like one of their own. Like our parents really became our parents and took care of us when we were sick and our siblings really became our siblings and we all laughed like siblings and sometimes even got on each other's nerves like real brothers and sisters. There were lots of tears and hugs when we left. But hopefully, God will let me come back to visit my 7 Miles family.

In my Santa Elana family, I have my parents and then 2 teenage sisters and a 12 year old brother, which it is fun having siblings closer to my age. Our dad is a brick mason and our mom keeps herself busy selling kitchen products and helping make food for all of the parties that we attend. Which with all of the graduations and stuff going on right now is a lot. Plus, we go to church like all the time. Like if people got doughnuts every time they went to church, the whole country would have diabetes. And one of our sisters is having her quinceanera next Sunday!! So we have been helping get all of the decorations together and our sisters are helping us go shopping for the perfect party dress. It is actually very helpful to be so busy because it helps distract from the fact we are so close to being home!! (as of 6/4 we are 28 days away from being home!)

So I have been reading through 1 and 2 Kings because I don't really even know when I have read those through all the way and I came across this story that just blew my mind! It's found in 2 Kings 6 and Elisha is in a sticky situation because a king wants him dead and has surrounded the city he is in with an army. So naturally, Elisha's friend that is with him starts freaking out because there doesn't really seem to be a way out. Then Elisha prays that God will open his friend's eyes and his friend looks again and the Bible says he saw "the hills full of horses and chariots of fire". Like what?! Can you imagine how cool that must have been to see?? And the thing is that God has us surrounded by His army all the time, keeping us safe from all that is after us. Like that song by Chris Tomlin! God's angel army is by our side!