The trip is over and we’ve been
back for a few days. What is there left to tell you? God worked in some amazing
ways through us and we got to see some wonderful little miracles. Picking up
where I left off, Saturday morning the team went rafting. That was a great
experience, a chance to bond with each other and unwind after a week of hard
work. Pastor Jim rowed one of the rafts and Carl Smid, one of the church
members, rowed the other. Carl and Linda Smid are the ones who take us rafting
every year. They own all the equipment and that is their way of blessing us
when we do the trip. As always, it was a wonderful excursion. Pastor Jim gets
made fun of for his rowing every once in a while, and he got stuck on top of a
rock this time… so he’s got quite a few jabs coming his way.
After the rafting we headed back to
the church and spent the rest of the day cleaning up and packing up. We spent
hours making the church spotless but we left the VBS decorations up so that the
church members who hadn’t seen them could get a chance to experience what had
been going on that whole week. We then went to showers and had a big group
dessert time at the River Rock, a diner across the street from the church, then
came back for our last family time.
Pastor Jim and Mrs. Judy talked to
us about what a great blessing we had been. They have so much trouble getting
people involved in their community, and in particular on making an impact on
the kids and teens. They started in youth ministry and so it’s a great blessing
for them to see students around Riggins getting involved. They told us that a
strong teenaged Christian is something that these students never see, and so us
just coming and being ourselves shines a light into their world and makes the
few Christians there realize that they can live out their faith.
Jim gave us a few nuggets of wisdom
also. The one that changed my life 5 years ago when I first heard it from him,
and he shared again that night, was “People don’t care about how much you know
until they know about how much you care.” That little phrase from Pastor Jim 5
years ago revolutionized my life and the way I live out my faith. I hope and
pray that something he said sticks in the ears of the students who were there
this past Saturday.
The next morning we loaded up, took
group pictures, prayed, and were off to Boise to catch our flight back home.
The Theology Van (That’s what my SUV came to be called because I was always
talking theology when I drove places) had a great time listening to the audio
book of “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis and discussing the ideas he put
forward in the book. The other cars just slept and sang nonsensical songs, I’m
sure. ( *wink. Love you guys!) We got home safely and went our separate ways at
IAH. All’s well that ends well, and this definitely ended well.
Please continue to pray for this
trip and these kids in all the ways we’ve been talking about this past week.
They need God’s hand in their lives almost as much as we do. Pray for continued
growth from those in Riggins and from our students here in Houston. Pray that
the Universal church, which we have seen a snippet of this past week, will
soldier on through time and be ready for Christ when he returns.
A final thought for the students
who went on this trip:
I always hear pastors and youth
ministers encourage their students, “Don’t let what we did here stay here! Take
this trip back home with you and make an impact on your community! Your
spiritual growth will only stop if you let it.” It’s a true statement and I
agree that this is what we should want/strive for, but I’ve realized that this
encouragement never works. The trip always ends at the airport and kids go back
to the way they were before hand.
Instead I want to give a different
thought to the students: This trip is going to end. The impact you had here
will stop when you get back home. That’s human nature. You won’t always be on
this spiritual high, you won’t always be growing in your faith the way you were
on this one-week trip. That’s just the cold hard reality.
Instead of trying to ‘Keep the trip
going!’ I encourage you to remember. Remember what happened here. The law of
undulation will take its toll. You will go through trough periods of numbness
and dryness followed by peak periods of spiritual growth and richness and when
you get home, a trough period is waiting for you. But when you get through your
period of dryness a peak in your faith will arise again. Don’t let the troughs
you’re about to face make the peaks that will come ineffective. Look forward to
the future growth, remember the past growth you had in Riggins, and when the
present comes around, as it so often does, ask yourself, “If I were still in
Riggins? What would I be doing right now?” Then go and do that.
