Two Weeks to Go

Two weeks from now the second half of the team will be leaving for Africa, and the first wave with Susan and I will be in Africa, but not yet at the conference location. I'm personally not in the pre-trip jitters yet, too much to do in the interim. Looks like I'll at least have a trip to the east coast for work - and my boss mentioned Friday that he might also need me to do a quick trip to Germany. I'm hoping it's just the 5,000 mile round trip in the week leading up to our trip, and not an extra European round trip as well, but if it's both trips - no big deal - spent enough time as a road warrier that I know the drill. It's like last night - Susan asked me if I was tired from the weekend - On Friday night I flew up to the bay area to visit my youngest son, Alex, who had surgery that day. Saturday after another visit with him, I hopped in the car with my oldest son, Jonathan, and drove the 400 miles back to Orange County, and spent Sunday with him. I sent Jonathan back north shortly before 5pm, after spending a couple hours helping him with some maintenance on his car (didn't tell me til we got here that his motor mount was missing a through-bolt). After that, Susan and I did some shopping for a few items of clothing I needed for the trip, then went home and we finished cutting and gluing 150 prayer bookmarks for the team. I was too busy to get tired.

With this being my second short term missions trip, I find I'm getting bolder in talking to coworkers and others about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, in general just getting the word out about what God's doing with me here. My first trip my line was "I'm going to Paraguay on a missions trip" and that was about it. I was in New York a couple weeks ago with my company's Chief Operating Officer, and went into detail about the trip. At first he said not much of a vacation (and certainly the flying won't be), but as I spoke further, he started getting it. I find when I really dedicate myself to God, the work is much easier than when I'm just using Joe's will to do the work. I remember in Paraguay I had to build a set of shelves for over a sink in the church kitchen. I had relatively crude tools - a small circular saw, no proper workbench, etc., but God helped me cut an amazingly tight set of dados in the sides - something I wouldn't have thought possible with the tools at hand.

This will be a different trip - ministering to the missionary kids, but again, I trust God will provide the patience I need, and will give me the words I need for these kids. I also know the time will be a blessing to the parents who will be able to focus on the conference and recharging themselves, and not have to worry about the kids.

One of the things I'm trying to work on is to be more present. Susan is probably the biggest victim of this - of me doing something with her, but not fully being there - having part of me focused on something else. I ask for prayer to be fully present and focused on God's work while on the trip.