nic journal summer 2009! (preview)

this is the short, summarized version of this summer's nic trip. the longer, more detailed version is taking longer than expected cause it's quite...extensive. :p :) thanks for waiting!! :D


Nic Summer 2009.

One of the main themes of this summer's trip was learning how to wait. For me specifically, it was learning how to be obedient to what God calls me to do, even when I don't and may never really understand his reasons or his thoughts.

For me, this trip was about becoming like Abram. When we first find of him in the book of Genesis, we read,

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." (12:1)

God doesn't tell Abram where to go. God doesn't tell Abram why.

But He does give Abram this...a promise.

...and I will bless you. (v. 2)

But even in this promise, God doesn't tell Abram with what he's going to bless him. God doesn't tell Abram how. God doesn't tell Abram when.

Yet it says,

"So Abram left as the LORD had told him." (v.4)

Several times were our plans for this trip delayed, changed or canceled. We've had unexpected visitors, unexpected weather, unexpected circumstances, unexpected illnesses, unexpected difficulties, unexpected extended periods of waiting. As ones who have grown up in a time and place where one must constantly do, do, do, work, work, work, go, go, go, waiting felt at times like a slow death. Several times have I asked myself, "Why am I here? What have you brought me to this place for?" and have I tried to quell my uneasy heart by telling it, "It's ok. God's going to redeem all this by the end of the trip. He must be prepping things to do something BIG."

That "something BIG" never came. It took me a while to realize that we sometimes put too much emphasis on things that are CRAZY EXPLOSIVE AMAZING, not realizing that, in God's Kingdom, there is also beauty in silence, in the quiet, in the still.

Before we even realized it, God poured into the local churches and the leadership and families in through us in those moments of waiting. We've spent more time sitting, talking, eating with these people than we have in all the previous trips combined. Even when I didn't realize or understand, God was still faithful.

While I (think I) realize some of the importance of this trip, it is still unclear to me whether this is the whole point. I still think sometimes that it's all going to make sense about three years from now, wavering back and forth in this mindset that demands a clear purpose in order for me to do or pursue something God has called me to do.

I want to become like Abram, who responded to God's calling even though he didn't understand or know what God was thinking or planning. Abram's path ahead of him was dark, but he still said, "Yes, Lord."

Would I respond to God's call even when I don't know the where, why, what, how and when? Would I hold onto God's promise that "in all things God words for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28)? Would I hold on to the truth that God has my good in mind?


I want to become one who says, "Yes, Lord."

at the hospital for patients with burns.

nic team summer 2009