Happy Monday TUESDAY, blogbots!
I started rummaging through old unpublished entries on here last night, and I came across this one, about Panama. I thought I'd go for it, since I haven’t yet and
it’s been nearly six full months since we got back from the 2017 trip. In the midst of all the other stuff I never got around to
documenting, this too fell by the wayside, and that’s not okay.
One of the things that hit me as I was looking back through
the first couple days of pictures from the 2017 trip, is how much I really took for granted this time around. Even two months later, some of the finite details had just then registered
with me. This, just as any other missions trip, could have gone way worse. Could’ve
had serious logistic hurdles. Could’ve, for all we knew, been a complete disaster.
But it wasn’t. I’m looking back six months and feeling for the first time, a real
gratitude for how that trip turned out.
I’ve been to Panama twice now, and am more cognizant of how
those two trips varied:
2015: Rewind almost three(ish) years ago, to when I stepped off my front porch at 3am with my hiking
pack and loaded into the van with Chris, Aaron, Marissa and Quinn, for my first
Panamanian trip. I was nervous – not in an overwhelming way, but in a way that
made me hyper-aware of committing every last detail to memory. I had no idea
what to expect. My team, as far as I
was concerned at that point, consisted of the people in that van. A confession
I’ll make now is that while we sat by the gates at CVG, I penned an open letter
to nobody in particular, just in case something
were to happen.
That was the state of my heart as I boarded the first plane
to New Jersey. That was my focus. I’d completely lost sight in that moment of
why I was there in the first place. I got on the plane and cried. We were less
than two total hours into the trip and I was already a mess – nerves compounded
with disappointment in myself for allowing the doubt to creep in. And then I prayed.
For the remainder of that first leg, I prayed. I praised. I made a mental list of and thanked God for each person on
the team, in the seats beside me. For our church family who’d backed us. For
the missionaries who would be responsible for us while we were there. For our
families back home, who would be doing life per usual for the week that we were
gone.
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equipo ♥♥
suiche, panama | ngobe reservation | 2015 |
And then I prayed that He would, if nothing else on that
trip, help me to live in the moment.
And that is exactly what happened. I spent a week tucked into the side of a remote Ngobe village serving the most incredible families, to whom I am eternally indebted for what they taught me about myself in the process. I
came home with an entire journal filled with memories. With moments. With names
of new lifelong friends, and places and feelings and descriptions. With notes
for my future self. Ways I’d been challenged, and truths I’d realized. I came
home and re-lived that trip for months. The
foundation had been laid in my heart for Panama, for MG3, for the Vega family,
for the Ngobe people. I knew I would be back.
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| suiche, panama | ngobe reservation | 2015 |
And I’d only arrived at that place because I finally let go
of me, and let God move.
"For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline."
- 2 Timothy 1:7
*****************
MAY/JUNE 2017: Forward
to 2017’s trip. Chris had made attempts in 2016 to form a team, but for
reasons I’ll never know, it didn’t happen. We accepted that, and started
praying for whatever 2017 might hold. It was February when the plans were
finally announced for Lightpoint to be sending its inaugural team of
missionaries out of the country. We were to be that team. We barely became a
full team; a few who expressed initial interest ended up unable to commit, at
least for this year. I prayed and again propositioned Marianne, who’d been
unable to go in 2016, in hopes that maybe.. just maybe.. this year would work.
And she WAS. And so was her boyfriend, Derrek. And so we
became a team of four: Chris, Mare, Derrek and myself. Chris had orchestrated
with Todd, a pastor from Crosspoint Church in Cleveland, for the four of us to
rendezvous with his team before we got to Panama. We accepted that at face
value, and took diligently then to our weekly FaceTime conference calls, where
Chris was able to connect with Mare & Derrek and lead us as a team to
prepare for Panama 2017.
Approaching the 2017 trip, I was confident of an exponentially
higher number of things than I’d been in 2015. Marianne is my best friend, Derrek is her boyfriend, and I’ve had two more years
to really get to know Chris and his family. Our international team consisted of people that were no longer strangers to me, and I felt at peace knowing that all the new faces of this expedition would still come with the familiar.
We flew from Cincinnati to Atlanta on the first morning out, and met there with Todd's team, which was a compilation of members from Crosspoint in Cleveland, and then two other couples from Todd's hometown church in Benton, AR (Holland Chapel). Together we had managed to rally 3 churches and 3 different states' worth of teammates, combining for the first time in the Atlanta airport just hours before we were to embark on a pack-only hike into one of the most remote areas of another country.
Now's not the time for Trust Issues.
We touched down in Panama and seemed as though we didn't stop moving until we got back off the plane seven days later back in Cincinnati. Already a much different pace than 2015. Remembering what I'd eaten 2 hours in the past was a task, let alone compartmentalizing each of the days, and what they stood to represent. For all I can say, this trip was a blur. In a good way, but a blur no less.
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team vermoncinnati ;) - chris, cori, derrek, mare
en route to balsa/algorrobo, panama | ngobe reservation | 2017 |
To nobody's surprise, I took literally a couple
thousand pictures, but I'll admit that I am really
seeing some of these pictures for the first time, even now. I'm recalling the hours we spent dragging our bags off the bus and stuffing them back on again. Of how we all adjusted to our surroundings, and became wholly reliant on translators to speak in Ngabe on our behalf. How we trusted each other without question, and set foot onto the mountains for hours of hiking into a village.
Letting go of myself on a trip like this is not an option. The difference in how I had to let myself go on this year's Panama adventure was equal yet nearly opposite the way I had to before.
It's something I struggle with obviously on the missions field, but absolutely and frequently off that map, too. And if there was ever a weekday built to test my resolve, it's a
Monday,
dressed up as TUESDAY. Today really didn't prove to be one of those days, I
guess, but I know they're very real, and that separating myself from the voices of control, inadequacy and guilt that I am often prone to hearing is often harder done than said.
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2017 equipo : ngabe, esp, eeu
balsa/algorrobo, panama | ngobe reservation outset | 2017 |
I'm posting this
now, because as I set the stage for my 2018, it includes reflecting on a prompt I'd obviously had one day halfway through 2017. I don't know why I didn't post this in its entirety originally (when I first wrote it, in July 2017), but I'm posting now to give myself something to look back on even a week from now, when I'm not
feeling particularly sentimental about this the way I am today. I have no idea what 2018 holds, what the Panama trip will look like this year, and although I'm not wired to trust easily, I know there are bigger plans in motion than my doubt. It's a tough pill to swallow, but that's a part of the journey that's just as crucial as being along for the ride. My only real wish, believe it or not, is to be pushed so far out of my comfort zone on the next trip that I have no choice but to stare down whatever two options there are, knowing both will catalyze me in a permanent, hopefully positive way.
With
all of that being said, any and all prayers would be hugely appreciated as we work through orchestrating this year's trip. It will be a completely different trip, if I understand it correctly, but hey.. I'm in. :)
xo |
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