Day 5 - Tuesday

So I've been trying to think all week of some way to describe how I feel when I'm on mission trips , but I still can't find a way to put it into words. Instead, I'm going to try to describe the feeling I get when I'm working with the people in this country.

This metaphor has a bit of a story behind it and will be really obscure and completely random but I hope it will make sense in the end. As a lot of you will already know, the team took a few hours off on Sunday to relax at the beach. The best part about that experience, in my mind, was the mother of all sunburns that I got in the short 3 hour period we were there. Needless to say, I put layers upon layers of aloe vera on my burn and collapsed onto my bed (without showering or changing clothes). The feeling that I get when I work with the amazing people here is the same feeling I will get tonight when I climb into bed: the sudden realization that I still have a layer of sand in my bed.

What I mean by that is that we are only with these groups of people for a short time (like the short 3 hours we spent at the beach), whether working in different bateys every day or on the same site with construction, but I always get the feeling that weeks from now, or even years from now, someone that I had an impact on (hopefully not one that is as uncomfortable as sand in the bed) will remember that a random group of Americans came to them and showed them a small glimpse of God's love. Just like how I tell myself to wash off the sand before sleeping, maybe they will think of the way that we touched their lives and will make an effort to do the same to someone else in their own lives.

Jake Perkins