Can you believe it? November is here! For some reason, this month always catches me by surprise. I'm not sure why. I think it's because I get so busy with the back-to-school rush, that, all of the sudden, it's Halloween and November sneaks up on me and yells BOO!
And once November starts...forget it...it's over already. Thanksgiving, perhaps my favorite holiday, comes to me and finds me unprepared and unaware. I don't want that to happen to me this year. I want to be intentional about being grateful for the blessings God has so generously decided to share with me. So, I want to make sure I don't take them for granted. I want to make November, Thanksgiving Month in this blog. It is my goal to post something every day of this month about gratitude, starting today!
So, here we go.
I am grateful today for Dylan's experience during the Mission Trip he just came back from. He went to West Virginia in July with the Youth Group and when they came back, Youth Director, Lee Harris announced that perhaps they would be going back down again in October for another round. That meant, the kids would have to miss about 3 days of school. Dan is never happy about having the kids miss school, but we thought this was important, and if Dylan's grades were good, we were going to let him go.
Of course, we blinked and it was time to drop him off at the church on a cold October morning. I couldn't stay because I had to rush back to the office for appointments. I felt bad just leaving him there, but I couldn't help it. He was not very interested in the fact that the trip had just gotten extended until Sunday (originally they were going to come back on Saturday), but I told him that he would enjoy it and to just go with it. I also told him to look for Jesus moments...moments of awareness of His presence in the fellowship of the mission work. That morning, I said good bye to my little boy and prayed the trip would be transformative.
Yesterday, when we picked him up, he was glowing. I usually ask him to tell me the about his favorite things and his least favorite things every time he goes somewhere or does something special, and he filled up the 45 minutes of the trip back home with stories of the last few days. The stories were filled with funny details, surprising events, sparks and joy. And when I asked him about anything he did not like, he couldn't think of anything! There had been no room for anything he didn't savored in the trip. Friendships became stronger, and new ones emerged. The reality of extreme poverty went from abstract to concrete. Hard work redeemed the times. And the awareness of Jesus moments was evident in my young son's heart. What else is there in life?
I am grateful for the opportunity to invest in Dylan's soul. I am grateful for the Church who is willing to sponsor these trips so our youth can grow up stronger in their faith. I am grateful for Lee and Dawn who are willing to take on the enormous task to love these young people so much that they say yes to undertaking these trips. I am grateful to Our Lord and Savior for giving these young men and women a chance to hear His voice as He calls them His own.
Dylan said to me after he came back from school this afternoon that he felt a little lost at school today because he didn't have his mission team around. He missed them so, that he reached out and decided it was a good idea to have a group chat so they could keep in touch. How about that?
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