Trust

Yesterday was a day of trust. In the morning, we were blindfolded and dropped off somewhere in Chicago and it was our task to find our way back. A man that we actually had never met, but he works with DOOR of Mennonite Mission Network came and picked us up. I knew that this was going to be a rough morning, when Team England got put in the back of the van. For those of you who have driven in Chicago or ridden with a local, the traffic moves at a fast rate with many swerves and turns. Imagine this blindfolded and in the back of a van with not as much air movement…I was doomed. The car sickness came…
What I learned most about this exercise, was not how to get back to where we started, but that trust is a big issue for me. I like to be in control, know where we are going, and watch the traffic when driving in a large city with lots of potential people who would want to run into me! Not only that, but I was trusting a man that I had met only moments earlier! But also it was trusting God to keep me safe. Trusting God with my life. That is what this next year of my life is going to be: trusting God to take care of me and use me in the ways that he wants to use me. I struggle with this, which was evident as we were driving and our driver was laying on the horn. I took off my blindfold to see what was going on, and saw a very large truck merging into our lane with nowhere for us to go! Trust. Trust in this man, and trust in God to keep us safe.
The funniest part was not even 10 seconds after we got dropped off, a lady stopped her car and rolled down her window and asked us for directions. I just walked over to her window and said, “ We actually just were blindfolded and dropped of here, so we honestly have no idea where we are. Sorry we can’t help…” Her face was priceless!
It was not hard to figure out where we were. We got on a bus and headed to the red line. We decided to use our free time buy stopping at Chinatown on the way back to JPUSA.
In the afternoon we got to do our first act of service in the city and we were so excited. We helped a JPUSA person, Anastasia pack backpacks with school supplies for the Leland House kids. Leland House in similar to a shelter where it houses families for a small amount of rent. I was told it was the basically the last step in coming out of homelessness before the real world. The neatest part was that the eight of us that went would get a basic description of the boy or girl we were filling the pack for and get to choose the colors and styles of materials for them. It was a lot of fun, we got it done quickly, and Anastasia was very thankful for us. It would have been a very long process if she were the only one!
Later that night Anastasia invited the girls of the group to go out to coffee at a little place called Dollop. I had heard from a previous RAD girl, Tiana, that this was the place to go and I was very excited not only to go to the recommended place, but to spend some time with some of the single girls at JPUSA. Besides Anastasia, we met Sara, Kim, and Hannah. It was a really great time of conversation about life, God working in us, and the work of JPUSA. The day definitely ended much better than it started….:)