Move that Bus!

I must confess that I love going on mission’s trips! But when you come back to the real world you do experience a bit of a spiritual low. I hope that I will always be able to go on short- term trips. It was so amazing to be able to go on the trip with my father. To build a home for a needy family and hand over the keys at completion was amazing! The whole time I wanted to yell “Move that Bus”! Just because I am a big cheese ball. In all seriousness, I hope one day I can take my whole family on a short-term trip. It is how I visualize heaven (except without the whole streets of gold thing). People coming together for one purpose. To glorify the kingdom of God.
God has really blessed me with new friendships and a desire to serve in the high school group of my church. It has been a desire of mine for some time but through this trip he has made it very clear that this is where I should be.
My dad made a great point when we were debriefing as a group after the trip. He said “he always wanted to be at a point where something was going wrong in his life so that he needed to go to God for help”. That when we were building the walls of our house two of the walls were build entirely wrong and with so little time we got very far behind. The man who we were building the house for was an unemployed bricklayer who also happened to be incredible at stucco…. God totally sent a professional stucco guy to our job site. That has never happened in the history of mission’s trips! This was a miracle to our group. Four days to build a house goes by quick.
This point that my dad made is simple but profound. As a man who wants to be self-made it is so hard to let God lead when I have my own vision of how things should be. The reality of things is that I am being like some crazy backseat driver that is hollering out directions to God. He kind of invented the earth. He probably has a good idea of where he wants to steer my life.

Orange is for Freedom

Lately I cannot stop thinking about the fact that slavery still exists in our world today. I have always felt like I wanted to make a difference in the world I live in. What better way to do it than to set a person free. Most of the people in the world today are on the same page where they do not agree with slavery but it still happens. I herd that in the 1800’s if you were to buy a slave it would cost you the equivalent of $40k. Today you can buy a human life for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50.00!
This is insane to me! My friends and I are talking about politics and I cannot believe that people are not mentioning slavery in their debates. They might all be against it but the fact that no candidate has mentioned it. There are great organizations out there offering news and counsel on what to do to stop the trade of human life.

I was talking to my boss at the salvation Army asking him if he had ever knew anyone who was involved in organizations making a difference. He said that the Army did an event in San Francisco that put price tags on children and put them in storefronts. I thought that would be a great idea to raise awareness in Santa Cruz. Who knows? I just hope that I can make a difference in my world. If this is a way that I can, then I am all for it.

I don't want to get to the end of my life with a ton of worldly treasures but no heart treasures. The scene from the end of Schindler's List always sticks out to me. He just save the lives of so many Jews and still wishes he could have saved more. He looks at his car and gold pin and ring. He is troubled with the weight of how meaningless those things are when compared with human life.



http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/