Lord, have mercy!

Right now I am sitting on a southwest flight heading to Tampa, Fl. This past week I had been with some 112 youth on a mission trip in La Grange, TX. This week has been a rollercoaster of emotion for me. I arrived with our 8 youth in LaGrange totally prepared for an amazing week of serving God’s people. The week started of great, we were totally prepared because we had all of our tools, materials, and supplies ready and loaded in the trailer. However when we get there we discover that D.H.S (Department of Human Services has not done their job, we had ZERO projects to work on about 2 weeks before the camp and by the day camp started we had about 10. Now for a mission camp with about 112 youth you need approximately 35 projects to keep the youth working all week. I was what is called a color group leader which basically means I over saw 5 teams made up of an adult and 5 youth each. My job was to basically act a foreman for all the site these teams would work on. On Monday the first day of work we had a job for each team to work at and many more sites that needed to be surveyed. The next thing to go wrong at camp was that the programming or non-work activities were not well planned. Most of the time worship would start late, things were shuffled around and it was a real mess. I was worried that the 8 youth that I had on the mission trip were really annoyed or unhappy with the camp. Not only that I wa supposed to share the Thursday night message with the youth about salvation, well actually it was first Tuesday and then Saturday and finally set for Thursday, but instead I was cancelled all together because on older lady from another church wanted to do a skit all by herself that last 30 minutes. Finally on the Friday of camp I get a call that my grandfather had passed away (the reason I am on a flight right now). This whole week I have been asking God to help me to understand all that was going on around me. I was feeling spiritually demotivated. As I reflect here on the airplane I have begun to realize that just because I don’t have control, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t. As I talked with the kids on the way back I discovered that God hadmoved each and everyone of them. We had a total of 18 sites completed and 2 of those sites we restored 2 small country churches which required the work of 4 teams each. We had a big impact on the lives of the people in La Grange. As I fly to Tampa I know that God has control of my life and that is something that this world cannot take from me.