Highs and Lows

It's a common occurrence with my friends after a trip to send out our highs and lows, so here are mine from this trip. Ironically, they are the same event. The low was the 7.5 hour bus ride to the beach. That is a long drive regardless, but when you factor in that I was surrounded by people that I couldn't communicate with and dozens of kids throwing up, it made it a REALLY long drive. It was 7.5 hours to question what I was doing on this trip and if I could really make it the rest of the way. I felt very lonely and drained after that trip. I can't speak for the other people in my group, but I think it was difficult on all of us.

However, the trip to the beach was also the highlight of our trip. We had originally planned 1 day to go to the beach (thinking it was somewhere between 2-5 hours away). When we got there, the pastor told us how excited the kids were about going. He said they had been praying for 2 years that they would be able to go to the beach. That's long before we had plans to take them. He then told us it was 9 hours away and we'd have to stay overnight (luckily he overestimated and it was only 7.5 hours). This threw a small kink in our plans, and added a whole heck of a lot more travel time. But when he says they've been praying for it for 2 years, what can you do but be excited that you get to be a part of this. None of them had ever seen the beach. Along the way, we also discovered that they had never seen mountains before. Many of them had probably never been in an air conditioned bus or stayed in a hotel room before, either. What an honor to be able to provide them with this experience! I wish you could have seen them when they first got to the beach. With no hesitation they stripped of their clothes and ran to the water's edge. Their smiles were so huge! They laughed and jumped and splashed with so much excitement. It was amazing. This is one of my favorite pictures that I took during the trip. It's one of my favorite kids just sitting on a beach chair staring at the ocean. He just sat there for a long time entranced by the waves. To me, it just seems to capture their awe at God's creation. I hope that I'll never look at the ocean again without remembering this experience.