This past month was so full-very thankful for all that Lord
brought our way! We had the chance to dive more deeply into relationships with faculty and
potential leaders in the schools, mixed cultures again with friends and family
visiting our island from different parts of the states, we’ve gotten to do a
whole school club (awesome) and had some sweet one-on-one time with friends! And most recently we got to gather with all of the other Caribbean areas for
the first ever Caribbean Committee/Leader Weekend!
This weekend came at a good time for everyone. Anyone that
works with high school kids know that spring is the busiest, most packed,
craziest (and a lot of other similar adjectives) time of the year for our
students and thus us. For kids without a lot of home support, this is the time
when we find ourselves helping them with projects at post-midnight hours,
studying for endless amount of BJCs and BJCSEs (British/Bahamian exam system),
trying to encourage the discipline it takes to make it to the end of the year
while secretly remembering the feeling that you will die if summer does not
come SOON! In short, spring is when coffee counts and Jesus gets our most pitiful cries for help on an hourly basis!
This incredible weekend with the Caribbean team pointed all of us back to why we do what we do! The midnight projects and 5am wake-ups are not out of obligation to a
community that “needs us”. These students desperately need the love of Jesus…we
know Him…we love Him…and He gives us the privilege of introducing Him to kids
we love. He could do it without us…but He choose to use each of us, ordinary
people, to reach out to His world. How freeing and simple is that? Jesus calls
for our hearts, and promises that with the full hearts of an obedient few He
can work miracles.
Seeing those obedient hearts reflected in the eyes of
everyone I met last weekend was a very powerful thing. It reminded me why Ben
and I are choosing to leave our families and the comforts of home, why people across
the globe spend time each week to pray for our little corner of the world, why
people sacrificially give of their hard earned money…and why it is all so worth
it. The kingdom draws near when we give our hearts and our lives to Him and His
work.
I have spent almost a year on this little rock in the big ocean
and have learned more things than I can count. I’ve learned that education is
not a given, that the hot sun is fun when I’m on vacation and tanning but not
so much when it makes our houses or the open classrooms unbearable, that not
all families are a gift and that food isn’t scarce when we share. But what I
have learned most of all is that, no matter what our outer circumstances, the
life and love we find when we let God be the one piecing it together is a
little bit like heaven…because it’s rooted in the One our souls long for.
