I always laugh that God is constantly assuring me that I belong in youth ministry. Somehow, I always ended up surrounded by teenagers. One time, on a mission trip to Guyana, we were told to sit apart from the other Americans during the church service. So, I sat in an empty row, kind of mid-back in the church. As people started filling in, can you guess who I was surrounded by? The youth group! Yep, somehow I ended up in the youth row.
Another example was during my garage sale to raise money for this trip to Africa, it was a slow morning, and these two junior high boys came out of nowhere, sat down, and talked with me for a half an hour. I still don't know who they are or where they came from, because they said they were visiting family and were from out of town.
This is how it goes!
So, as I signed up for this journey to take a sabbatical and do mission work in Africa, all I could think about was...I can't wait to hold the babies! I get 2 months of playing and loving on little kids! As of right now, my nephews are constantly being smothered by Auntie, because I can just sit there and love on them! In the US, we have a thing called "Stranger Danger!" Even if they are not strangers, its weird for an adult to run up and snuggle children that are not related to them. In other countries, parents will just hand you their babies, and you can love on any child. It's AWESOME! So, that's what I was expecting for this trip to Africa.
As a part of our Vacation Bible School next week, the children are going to be writing letters to the children of Village of Hope. Today, I was sent the list so that we could pair up the children, write letters by name, and hopefully match ages. Much to my surprise, the majority of the village is ages 13-17! I got a good laugh about this! I'm leaving youth ministry for youth ministry! God's got it figured out!
There will be other kids there, but the youngest is 7 and there are only a few between 7-12. So, I guess I'm more equipped than I realized! God's got a plan, and we both got a laugh!
Who knows what I will be learning while I'm there? Who knows what's in store for me? Whatever it is, God is using me and equipping me to go!
