As many of you know my favorite verse in the Bible comes from the book of James. “Count it all Joy, my Brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces Steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.”
I feel like this has been my go to verse for so much of my life, and it always is constantly repeated in my thoughts and in my prayers during Spring Break Mexicali Mission Week.
This year I feel like I fully comprehend what this verse means to me, and I’ll explain it through my week in Mexicali this year.
Being on the construction crew has it’s ups and downs. You listen to great music, you kinda joke around, you sing, you talk, but you have to work. Work when the sun rises, work till the sunsets. It especially gets stressful when you have no idea what you’re doing.
For example, the last day of working on the house, I was completely irritated, and stressed out. Mark had me painting and re-painting so many things, that I just about had enough with everything. I wanted to be done, I wanted so badly to just be done with all of it. And I could tell from the looks of everyone else they were kinda in the same boat as me.
But what God had in store for us at the end of the day will be a feeling I will never forget.
We finished the house. We made it livable. But most importantly we saw a dream/miracle come true. I remember us all just being an emotional wreck, I saw so much love and passion and heart from Mark and Marcia at the realization that God paved the way for this idea of theirs to happen. It was incredible. Seeing Izzy’s family members with tears full of joy at the realization that what seemed to be impossible was possible.
This. This moment was worth it. 4 days of hard work, suffering, exhaustion, stress, all worth it for that 30 minutes I got to feel God’s glory on us. It was all worth it.
And to be honest as much as I hate suffering, and hardships. I love them, it’s bittersweet. I feel like hardships, and suffering, bring people to together. I find it amazing to think that we meet these people who don’t speak the same language as us, or live hundreds, or maybe thousands of miles away from us in different countries, but we can easily be united by what we go through as people. It’s pretty amazing to think that we will never truly be alone because people go through the same hardships as we do.
And that’s what I experienced down in Mexicali. I experienced hardships, and struggles, but so did everyone else. And because of this I made a lot of great bonds with great people, I met new people, and it was an experience I will never forget.
And to wrap things up, I realized how excited I am for these cancer patients who will be living in this home. Because when you think of it, they will either beat the cancer, or not. But when they eventually reach the Kingdom of Heaven they will be complete, perfect, lacking in nothing. And they will realize all the suffering was worth it.