Swimming for the Bears

It has been a awhile since my last post, and I hope no one thought I died, though, I thought I was going to die a couple of weeks ago - I started practicing with the Missouri State Swim Team. Why did I connect swimming with my sudden demise? That's a tough question to answer. I haven't always viewed the sport this way. I've been a competitive swimmer for most of my life; from age nine to eighteen, I developed a strong devotion to the sport, constantly striving to achieve better results at almost any cost. I had gotten to the point where I was doing double practices plus weights and dryland workouts. I also had three different binders recording my times, goals and plans on how to achieve those goals. I lived to swim.

My hard work paid off, for I was competing at the international level.  With the way my training was going, I figured that by the time of the next Olympic Trials, I would have a qualifying time in at least one event. But God had other plans for me. When my father was diagnosed with SNUC (sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma - a super rare brain cancer), I had to majorly cut back on my training to be home to help care for the family. Our battle with cancer lasted two years, and when it was finally over, my swimming career was greatly diminished. I was no longer able to train, and had lost the drive to do anything, least of all swim. Despite my rotten attitude at the time, I was blessed to get a job coaching the sport, guiding younger athletes through the steps to achieving the success I once enjoyed. It was because this job that I began to miss participating in the sport. As I prepared to transfer to Missouri State University after earning my Associate of Art degree, my sister's swim coach suggested that I call the coach of Missouri State's team and ask for a walk-on spot. I thought that he was crazy, but it didn't hurt to ask. So I asked, and got the spot. To say I was shocked would be a understatement. I was excited to swim again, but I also dreaded the thought of training with Division I athletes while I am so out of shape. Going from swimming with the pack to trailing far behind is not a fun thing, and my pride started to wear into my way of thinking. Thoughts such as 'If they only knew how good I was.' pop into my head and make practice a miserable event. Everyday I have to ask God to take away my selfish feelings and replace them with ones of thanksgiving; so I guess, in a way swimming does lead to death -  the death of my pride. 

Every practice I must let my pride die, because I only gain harm if I allow it to live. It is extremely hard to be thankful for a gift when you think that you deserve better, and being able to swim again is a gift that I didn't earn and need to be grateful for. I must realize that my talent in swimming does not come from my strength, and refocus the glory where glory it due - to God. Now I live for Him!

Knowing

Well, my dear readers, I now find myself off campus, spending the holiday weekend with my family. I have never been happy to leave a mission field before, but by Friday I was nearly dying to go.  Because of these foreign feelings I questioned if my school truly was a missions field I was suppose to be actively serving on.  As I pondered how sad and restless I had been over the past few weeks, BANG! God hit me square on the head with Psalm 46:10. 

Be still, and know that I am God; 

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth.

Yeah, He pretty much answered my questioning. I was restless because I was focusing on what I was doing, what I was seeing, what I knew.  That’s one of the amazing things about the God I serve, His ways are high above my puny, simpleminded human ways. (Isaiah 55:8-9). It is very easy to concentrate on the weaknesses and limits I have, and completely miss the glory of God in my life.  I start to add up all of the times I was turned down when I brought God into the conversation, and blindly label what I do as worthless. I feel the pressure of the world and human judgments weighing down on me, and begin to turn to worldly excuses to explain my attempt to pursue godliness.  Paul had his share of feelings like this. He wrote of his experience in 2 Corinthians 1:9, stating that the reason for the pressures and desire to give up were given to him so that he might rely on God, who powerfully raised Jesus from the dead, rather than himself.  One would think that we would naturally choose to rely on the highest form of power in everything we do, but that is not the case. I often choose to view all of my activities only up to the capacity of my humanity, setting restrictions on the affects of my willingness to follow the Lord. I don’t see results, therefore nothing has happen- how silly is that way of thinking? I run around busily trying way too hard to reach out and forget to reach up first.  God is asking me to KNOW Him; that’s it, and He will take care of the rest.  

Be quiet my child, understand how awesome I am; 
and I will show the world my glory and they honor me in every place.

So I now I am taking on the challenge of striving to understand a God who's ways are far above my own, which means I must step out of my own ways just to begin to work towards grasping His. But hey, stepping away from the confusion I claim as my knowledge so I can achieve incomparable, uncontainable unimaginable wisdom doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

Transitions

The definition of transitions is: movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept,ext. For me transitions means the moving from one battlefield to another. I never thought that I would see more hopelessness than what I saw in Panama as I watched people worship and idolize to powerless blocks of wood; but I was wrong. I now find myself smack in the middle of a group of people who idolize themselves and worship pleasure. Yeah, I know, "Welcome to college Glorydawn! Wake up, this is how it has always been." Sadly, in America, one's college years is accepted as the time to live to the fullest and discover who you are; better interpreted as a time with no restraints. But for me it is different, because this is my new battlefield. 

In Panama I was asked if I act differently at home compared to what I did in ministry there. I could not answer no, for I didn't spend my days walking up to complete strangers and asking if I could go into their homes and talk to them.  It is not unusual to live differently in different places. Sociologist theorize that a person's performance (behavior) is influenced by both their audience and setting, and the person switches from one set of behaviors to another as these two variables change. So what I did in Panama as a Missionary could be completely different from what I do in my home country. But what if I were to get stuck in one mode? What if I chose to see everyday and every person as an opportunity to share God's love? What if I saw my campus as a new battlefield that God specifically sent me to? Well, this is exactly what I aim to do, with God's help of course. 

As a student living on campus, I have many opportunities and open doors that others don't have.  For example, I eat in the student dinning center for almost every meal. I have a slightly crazy schedule this semester and because of this my friends can't eat with me. Now, I could choose to be have a blind eye, and shut down my ministry mode and simply eat alone, quiet with my own thoughts; or I could see this as an opportunity to reach out. Every time I go in to eat by myself, I look for someone who is sitting alone, walk up to them and ask if I could eat with them. Is it easy? No. I am considered to be a shy person, so every time I walk into the dinning center I have to give myself a little pep talk and pray A LOT. Secondly, Americans have developed a kind of language that signals others when they want to be left alone. We do this by hiding behind cellphones or laptops, using ipods, filling the seats next to us with bags or covering all of the table space with our books. (Another sociology thing I learned, man, my professor should give me kudos.) So it is really hard to walk up and ask to talk to someone who is sending out every kind of signal that they think it would be best if they were left alone. Thirdly, if a person does say that I can eat with them, I have to be extremely mentally focused, so if there is any chance (even if it is the tinniest hint of a chance) for me to talk about God and His love, I can grab it and run with it.  

Interestingly enough, I have yet to be rejected. Every person I have asked to eat with has said yes and helped keep the conversation lively. What they haven't done is let me talk about God-but I'm praying for that chance to pop up. 

This is what it is like to throw a wrench in the gears of society; to get stuck in the abnormal. No matter how hard or unconformable it may appear, I have found that functioning within God's will is sooooo much better than outside of it.

Loving Panama

Ugh! I have been trying to figure out how to describe how my time in Panama was and I can't. I wish I could just throw out the words, and that they would organize themselves in such a way that you could fully understand how God tested, provided, and blessed me there.

I guess the best way to start is by reviewing the thoughts I had when I was preparing my heart to serve in Panama. When searching for a theme verse for my trip I read chapter 5, verse 2 of every book of the Bible because I calculated that I would be serving Panama for 52 days. Looking back, this way of finding a verse for my trip sounds silly, but the verse I found was perfect-Ephesians 5:2 And live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 52 Days of love. Love, that truly was the essence of my time in Panama. Love is an extremely important factor to bring onto the mission field. First of all, it is the way outsiders identify us as Jesus's disciples( John 13:35). Secondly, we as missionaries cannot function effectively without loving first.  In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul explains that no matter how many spiritual gifts God gives to a person, if they didn't use them in love, they gain absolutely nothing. Paul then goes on to describe what perfect love looks like:
Patient
Kind
Doesn't envy
Doesn't boast
Is not proud or self-centered
Does not dishonor others 
Is not quick tempered 
Doesn't take any joy in evil but delights in the truth
Always protects
Always trusts
Always hopes
Always perseveres
It's a rather extensive list of qualities that I normally take for granted, but during my two months in Panama God refreshed ;) my ability to love. 

The first thing God did when He taught me how to love the people in Panama, was He asked me to make sacrifices. The most obvious sacrifice was facing my fear of the diseases and large bugs found in the jungle of Panama. Knowing that night time brought out cockroaches the size of dollar bills(and who knows what else) and being covered in red lumps,bumps,spots and patches of bug bites was definitely not my cup of tea. But there were also the little things, such as not shaving for two months and wearing smelly, dark, heat absorbing clothes and then feeling like I was being suffocated in sweat. It was theses sacrifices that took my thoughts and redirected them towards others, for I had nothing to be proud of.

The next lesson God gave me was the harsh reminder that not everyone wants to be loved. While God had made my love humble and selfless through sacrifices, it was by rejection that he fully matured my love in all the other areas needed to make it perfect. My love learned to hope and persevere when the Nationals shut their doors to me and I had to pray and talk my way in. My love developed stronger patience and distaste of evil every time I had to confront and correct those who wandered or broke the rules. And most importantly, my love was taught to fully trust God when I saw little to no results in all of my toils.

Even though learning to truly love was a slow and painful process, it is my deepest desire that God continues to expand my love in knowledge and depth of insight (Philippians 1:9-10).  I poured my heart out all over Panama, and I know that God used that love to do miraculous things!

Goodbye?

Graduation is finally over! The stress of finals, finding and sending transcripts,and ensuring that every last cost is wrapped up is done. It is now time to pack up and move on. I have never thought of graduation as a time of goodbyes, but now I see that it is.With my graduation from the community college that I have been attending for the last two years, I am forced to leave multiple things; jobs, teachers, friends. The funny thing is that I never really said goodbye to anyone. There were plenty of "We have to keep in touch"es and "I better be hearing from you"es, I even talked about saying goodbye, but I never said it.The truth is, I have never been good at saying goodbye, most of the time I simply disappeared from my acquaintance's life. And now that it is time for me to go, I find saying goodbye to the school a very hard thing to do. I believe what makes it so hard is the amount of impact that everyone from the school has had on my life.

The first day I walked through the doors of the school, I was a broken girl. It had been five months since my dad lost his battle to SNUC (sinunasal unadifferentiated carcinoma) cancer, and all of my dreams and motivation had died with him. I had no desire to take on any challenges, after all, why should I work hard if my life is just going to end like my father's; tired, pained and unable to speak. My plan was to get in and out as quickly as I could, doing no more than what was required, however, I did not factor into my plans the help and encouragement I would receive from the faculty. Despite my self-pity and low self-esteem, my instructors were able to see my potential and coaxed out my best efforts. They encouraged me and pointed out that I possessed the abilities to succeeded in a broad range of subjects as far apart as theater, journalism, and mathematics. The lessons that I have learned from them have forever changed my life.

I am also indebted to my friends, though I am shocked to say that I have friends, they too have changed my life.Going from a city in California with a population of nearly 300,000 to a small Midwestern town was a huge culture shock for me. Everyone knew everyone else and all the things about their past and often their futures. And there I was, coming from a city with an extremely high crime rate, and the people here wanted me to be social. Me, a person who saw letting people know you, as also letting them know your vulnerability. Me, social?  My family has moved quite a bit, in fact the longest I have live in one town was 5 years; so friendships were a come and go thing for me. I knew I was leaving in two years and I didn't go out of my way to make friends, and yet, interactions between the students provided an unavoidable setting for relationships to develop. Students that I was forced to work with soon became my friends, and constantly checked in with me; how did the test go? How late did the homework keep me up? How was I doing? How was my day going? These were questions I never expected, and I often had a difficult time answering them. And then there were the people who talked to me just to talk to me. That extremely puzzled me. Why on earth would anyone go out of their way to be social with an unsocial person? (Granted, I am easily exasperated, and therefore provide plenty of amusement.) These friends came steadily, and the conversations that came out of their visits usually left me critically thinking. Every time I needed to complain or freak out about something, they were always ready to listen. I will greatly miss these people who so kindly took me in.

And now with graduation comes a time of change, because with the completion of anything, one must expect change. This fact was presented to me when one of my instructors told me that because I was no longer their student, I could find them on facebook, so we could keep in touch. I was so taken back by the reminder that I must say goodbye to the life I had been living for the past two years, that I told them that they probably would not want me as a facebook friend ( and I apologize for this strange reaction). But change does not mean the end of everything. Though I must close the door on my life at the community college, I refuse to say goodbye to the relationships I have gained while I was there. No, that door will remain open, always ready to welcome me back.

My Home In Mexico

This is the first time in six years that I am not spending spring break in Mexico. For six years I have raised money, worked to get ahead in my studies, and missed out on other trips; all so I could spend four days building a home for a stranger. I enjoyed the culture and sunshine, but for the most part, my time was spent working. I remember my first year, being part of the foundation building bucket brigade on day one, and not being able to lift my arms above my head for the rest of the week. I was a puny little eighth grader, who probably shouldn't have carried as much as I did, but I never noticed my sore shoulders while I was working. There is also the memory from my second trip, when another high school student and myself were asked to construct a wall unsupervised. To make the project even more challenging, the only building space available was on a road that had an uneven downward slope.We spent almost two hours measuring, cutting and nailing together the lumber; and with the project 99% done, we were told that this wall was the one with the door, not a window.

This meant that we not only had to build the correct wall, we had to tear apart the one we had put so much effort into. It was another hour before the wall was finished. And I can't forget the year that it rained so hard the my tent was completely flooded; or the time that bus two forgot to come pick us up and we had to fit about 75 (dirty and sweaty) people on one small bus.

You may be wondering, why I kept going for six consecutive years. Why I would choose to spend my vacation doing some of the hardest physical labor I have ever done. Strangely enough, the answer to why I did it is because it nurtured my spirit. Through the process of
constructing a small, one room house, I developed patience and trust. I experienced the satisfying feeling of putting 110% of my effort into a life changing project. The leaders of the work crews mentored me in both building techniques and growth in my relationship with God, and in turn, I had a chance to mentor those placed under my leadership. And the Mexican people, so excited to receive the simple gift we offered, not only taught me how to be grateful, but open my eyes to how powerful the gift of love is. My time in Mexico has awaken my desire to work on the mission field and I've come to realize that I have never felt more at home than when I was building a home for someone else.

What you bring, you carry.

Last month, I volunteered with Extreme Makeover Home Edition in Joplin, and helped with their project to build seven houses in seven days. Since coming back home from this experience, I have been asked multiple questions such as: what did you do? (move, sort and assemble furniture.), what house did you work on? (house #1, the Howard's) and will you be on TV? (there is probably a 10% chance that I could be spotted during the unloading furniture production shot.); but the question that has most important answer is what did I learn? While I believe that many lessons can be learned from my experience, one of the best lessons comes from some advice that I gave to co-worker of mine that was volunteering a couple of days after I went : what you bring, you carry.

During the seven hours I spent on the work site I noticed that many of the volunteers were carrying large purses or bags and others' pockets were bulging. They were carrying around cameras, cellphones, granola bars, water; and the weight of these things really slowed them down. There was no provided place to put their stuff, and even if they were able to put it down, there was the worry of forgetting it or someone walking off with it. I understood the need of cellphones, medical aids and car keys, but I was baffled by the volunteers that brought along water and food, those who didn't believe that their basic needs would be provided for. Extreme Makeover Home Edition has been in production for over eight years, and within those years they have worked on perfecting the way they create the show, this includes how they treat their volunteers. They knew that we would need to stay hydrated and would probably get hungry as well; and they maintained a constant supply of cold beverages on the work site, and a food tent for the volunteers just down the hill. Another thing that surprise me was how many cameras I saw people bring with them. Every single volunteer allowed onto the work site had signed a form promising not to publish any photographs of any of the houses. They were also warned that with exemption of the press, those whose who became a hindrance by asking for pictures, would be asked to leave. To put it simple, we volunteered to work, not to get behind-the-scenes tours; and the cameras serve not only as added weight, but an extra temptation.

While Extreme Makeover Home Edition: Joplin 7 in 7, may be a once in a lifetime experience, the lessons learned from it can be applied to other missions. Just as the show knew and accommodated for their volunteers' needs, God understands every need His workers have, and can provide for them in ways that are beyond their wildest dreams. And even though bringing your worries, fears, and expectations on your missions won't prohibit you from going, it will slow you down. If you are constantly looking for what you want to get out of your mission experience, you can miss multiple opportunities you didn't know to look for.

So, I warn you that whatever you bring with you, you must carry. Whatever you refuse to leave behind is your burden. God has offered to be the carrier of your needs (Ps.55:22), but in the end, the choice is yours.