This has been an interesting mission trip for me, filled with all sorts of conflicting emotions. I haven’t been sleeping well, so I’ve been sort of grumpy, and while many of our team members are sharing hallelujah moments, I’ve been having major moments of discouragement. As someone who has a big passion for missions, it’s been a frustrating time.

I’ve spent the majority of the week working in local schools bringing a little Vacation Bible School to the local kids. Yesterday, my group was taken to a school way out in the middle of nowhere, thrown into a small, stuffy room, and then had about 100 kids dumped in with us while the teachers “vamosed” to somewhere. So here we were, outnumbered 10 to 1, with only two translators to help. As we did our lessons, the kids became restless until they were barely paying attention at all. Some of the looks on their faces said to me, “Who are you and why are you here?” We had no one to help with discipline. As they left the room, they left trash all over the floor from the crafts. (One small girl stayed behind to help me clean up. That was an encouragement.) Through all this frustrations, I’ve been dealing with thoughts such as, “Are short term missions really effective? What can we possibly accomplish with these kids in an hour and a half? Is it really having an impact? Why am I here?” Again, for a passionate, wannabe missionary, these are tough emotions to deal with.

After this tough morning, though, God gave me a blessing. The VBS team was in the same “village” as the medical team. We walked by their building and saw the long line of people waiting for treatment. One of the nurses on our team suggested we offer them some water, as they had been standing for hours in the heat. So, I, along with two other team members, walked by the crowd and offered small cups of cold water. I thought of when Jesus says that when you offer even just a cup of cold water, you have blessed others.

Last night, I shared my frustrations from the day with the group and was thanked by several for sharing. And this morning, my team had a much better experience with the kids we interacted with. I felt like we connected more (I even got to kick a soccer ball around with some of them… now there’s real ministry!) and even connected with the teachers. It was the encouragement that I needed that short term mission trips can indeed be productive.

This afternoon, we got to have a pinata party! We went to another local school, and brought a Winnie the Pooh pinata. We beat Pooh to death, did some crafts, and just had some fun. The construction crew had the afternoon off and were given the choice of coming to the party. My sweet husband decided to come along and get a glimpse into my week. At the end, as the kids were leaving, one little boy kissed all the ladies on the cheek as he said goodbye. He kissed me and Drew told him (in Spanish), “Be careful. That’s my wife!” The boy turned, raised his eyebrows, and put up his fists as if to fight. So Drew took him on! At one point, Drew grabbed his bag of goodies from the pinata. So the boy shrugged, took my hand and started to pull me away. Drew told me, “I guess you’re only worth $4 worth of pinata stuff!” We took some fun pictures with him. He was a good sport and shook Drew’s hand in the end, I suppose admitting defeat. He was kind of cute though…