| Where to even start?!?!
Ok, first of all, I’M SORRY for not writing while I was in Scotland. It turned out that we didn’t have internet access, so I couldn’t post anything.
The trip was amazing!! I think instead of trying to sum it up in words, I’ll post random bits from my journal. So please enjoy!!
July 16
So…for my quiet time, I’m sitting on this ancient stone wall, listening to the birds sing, a creek (called a burn here) ripple, and a huge gorgeous castle is on my right. :)
We’re in the lowlands, but the mountains here are just as high as the ones in VA, so the highlands must be gorgeous! I was really expecting the lowlands to be more modern, but five minutes out of Glasgow, it looks like it probably did in the eighteenth century. Even the houses are stucco cottages with big wooden shutters. :)
the Overtoun House...where we stayed. The missionaries living there are turning it into a home for un-wed mothers. It's a real 19th century castle!!
July 19
Yesterday, we went out on our second day of ministry. It was so cool—our MIGS (groups of five who stay together for safety; it stands for Ministry In Groups) washed windshields (called windscreens here) of just random cars in the mall parking lot, and then we put little cards on them inviting people to church. It was so cool washing the windscreens because you were totally doing it for Jesus—no one would see them until we were gone. Though one lady did come out and thank us PROFUSELY. She was so surprised someone would do something like that for her.
After we finished that, we went over to talk to some of the people who were watching the drama that other group was doing. One guy got saved! And one guy wanted us to pray for him because he had a tumor on his leg and he couldn’t walk on it. So we did, and God healed him! And we gave him a coat because he was only wearing a t-shirt and I guess all his money was going into doctor’s bills. The un-employment rate in this town is 60%!
For our first free day, we drove up into the Highlands! We even got to go hiking in them. I think this picture is worth a thousand words!
No, this is not a postcard picture. It was the real thing! :)
July 23
The last few days, we’ve done VBS for 16 kids. My MIG was in charge of the games two days ago, and it was so funny, because we were playing Red Light Green Light, and some of the kids started yelling out other colors to confuse us. Eventually we noticed that whenever they said “grey’, only the Americans were getting confused, because grey and green sound exactly alike in Scottish!
Our memory verse for them is Joshua 1:9, and it’s amazing how fast they memorized it. Some of the kids have grown up in Christian homes, and others haven’t, but they’ve all figured out that prayer works. One of the boys’ blood sugar had dropped really low and it was preventing him from being able to play. So he asked Audrey and I to pray for him. An hour later, he won a foot race!
Today we’re doing yard work around the castle. It’s a big party area at night, and the missionaries here are hoping if it’s cleaned up, there’ll be less partying. It feels like we’re not doing anything and not making a difference…but if you had to pick the hardest continent to minister on, it would be Europe. It is so unbelievably secular. It’s like taking a hammer to thick ice and tapping on it. You aren’t going to see real fruits for years, but there’s a whole heck of a lot going on underneath the surface.
Unit23 Skatepark!!
July 27
We went out on ministry to a skate park in Glasgow yesterday afternoon, and our MIG talked to a whole bunch of friendly people, and then we saw Woody talking to five big guys by himself, so we went over to support him. One of the boys was acting very cynical and condescending, but he jumped at the chance to attend Deeper on Thursday, and said he wanted to come and talk with us again. The other guy said he was a Catholic and religious, but almost started crying, and was like, “why does God allow all this f**king crap and bad things happen if He’s so loving?” and he wasn’t just trying to be difficult; you could tell he was genuinely hurt.
July 30
“My beloved is like a dove hiding in the cracks of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff. Show Me your face, and let Me hear your voice. Your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.”
-Song of Songs 2:14
Jesus longs for time with us. He’s a jealous God. He wants fellowship with me way more than I realize. He’s jealous for my time. It’s like Rebecca said last night—it’s easy to give money to God; just put it in the plate and you’re done. But it’s a much harder things to tithe time. But here we have 24 hours in a day and we can barely hand over 15 minutes.
You can almost hear Jesus’ tears in that verse. His deep yearning, longing, and waiting for us to meet with Him. And we’re reluctant to do so!
Jesus, I’m sorry for not giving you all my time. I had fun singing to You yesterday while I cleaned. I want more times like that. Sometimes it’s easy for me to put You in one little time slot, like quiet time, and not really worship You the rest of the day. Please forgive me. I really love quiet times now. At first I was like, “a whole hour to Bible study and worship?!” But now it’s my favorite part of the day. The day would be crappy without it. The days I just write, or think, are usually horrible.
July 31
Our MIG passed out flyers in these shady apartment complexes. It was awful—they smelled like beer, smoke, and vomit, and someone had peed over one set of stairs. The elevator took FOREVER and there were knife marks in the walls, broken glass everywhere, and the F word scrawled on everything. We were riding up one creaky elevator, and Doug was like, “I wonder how many people have died in here?”
It really wasn’t that funny, haha. Though I don’t usually mind doing things like that…we’ve gone into shady places of town before. But we had to cover 14 floors on the first one and I was already sick. At one point I thought I was going to black out—I guess from smelling vomit on the stairs. There was such a dark spirit over the place—of hopelessness. Just walking in there made me feel hopeless and discouraged. I can understand why someone without any real hope would want to commit suicide. And sometimes the air felt so heavy, you could hardly breathe.
After we got out of that one, Dan was in the parking lot and he said the Holy Spirit had told him to come back and go into the second apartment with us. So he did and nothing happened except a Rottweiler was barking at us on one floor, and Abrecia thinks she got her hand burned with a cigarette, because when she was pushing the flyer through the box, it was super hot on the other side. But I felt so miserable after getting out of there.
I slept going into Glasgow and when we got there, me and Kathryn wanted to stay in the vans because she had a migraine. But Amy said we should go out and do ministry anyways, unless we were about to die, in which case we could tell someone and come back to the vans. Kathryn and I seriously almost cried, haha. But I forced myself to walk around the skate park and I’m glad I did, because I felt better walking around, and if I hadn’t, I probably would’ve been kicking myself.
No one seemed too responsive to our MIG and after a while, we saw Sadie’s MIG surrounded by boys, so we walked over there to see if they were having a conversation with the guys. They were, but it was several going on at once, and like, one boy was drawing pictures of naked people to be annoying and they were all really high on pot. One of the boys was the same one that Woody had talked to last week, but he was totally strung out now.
So we were sitting in the curb, and the boys started slowly surrounding us, REALLY closely, and we could hear them cussing us out. They had knives—everyone has a knife here—and Chris was like, “ok, let’s go over to that tree now.” He was getting super nervous, because he was the only guy in our MIG right then, because Doug was with the skaters—earlier, he had led two of them to the Lord!
…so that’s a small sampling of what we did! It was incredibly hard, but good. And God did a lot of work in MY life, which surprised me, though I don’t know why it should have, lol.
I’m glad to be home, but at the same time, I’m missing everyone on my team and just missing being in Scotland. There is defintely such a thing as mission trip withdrawal. :) But I'm so thankful that I had the opportunity to go, and there'll be more posts and more pictures coming soon!! | 