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| Hello from Donegal!!!!! Good to see y'all after a while!! |
Good
afternoon everybody! So today I’m going to write on something very dear and
near to me: my nose.
Ok I’m
going to talk about having a cold, which took a solid month to go away, but it
was the strangest thing. So I had a cough all during Christmas break, but then
right after January retreat we went to do a series of retreats in County Kerry.
During that time my cough turned into a cold and I felt sick those retreat days
I still went, but it was not comfortable. Ironically enough, those were the
best retreats we have done yet. God was really working through each and every
one of us, and I believe that there are some teens that genuinely encountered
Jesus for the first time.
Then we
returned to County Dublin and County Donegal and during those times I began to
recover. I began to physically feel better and I even felt confident enough to
go off my cold medicine. I even had a day off just to rest. However, we
returned to County Kerry at the end of that week and everything came back full
force. I began to actually feel bad and my body hurt. I was still needed for
retreats so I still went, but it’s been two weeks since that and I still have
the residual cough and runny nose. And I was not the worst on my team. Several
other girls started getting sick around the same time I did. One girl even just
had to go to the doctors for an infection. All of the men have had coughs and
one has even felt worse than I believe most of us did during the retreats.
Part of
it is just the business of our schedule. Part of it is the physical aspect of
many of us are from warmer, dryer climates and we’re here in Ireland with the
cold and the rain. But I think there’s also a spiritual aspect of it. When
you’re sick, it’s so much easier just to cruise through the day and not invest.
I think the devil would like nothing more. He doesn’t want us to have any
impact on these teens. He wants us to roll in and just run through the motions
of the day. He does not want energetic missionaries on fire for the Lord; he
wants missionaries who want nothing more than to lie and bed and to act like
it.
The key
word in there is “to act like that”. There were many days during those times
that me and my teammates wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and sleep.
However, we decided to push back the sickness. We decided to push back on any
sense of feeling unwell and to give the youth every ounce of ourselves. We decided to sacrifice. And that’s what
Jesus wants. Things are going to go crazy. Sickness happens, no matter what
directly or indirectly causes it. It’s our response that’s important. We can
either choose to give in and to feel bad and feel sorry for ourselves. Or we
can choose to sacrifice and to go through with it. And the sacrifice helps
unite us to Jesus, and it reaps rewards from the youth.
I would
say there are direct results. Like during our retreats we have a time of prayer
where we ask the youth what they’d like to pray for. I’ve had more teens accept
prayer than refuse, and I think that’s always a victory. Then some have prayed
for things that would blow your mind away. I don’t want to go into too many
details, but it’s the kind of things that show you that they’re paying
attention to the retreat during the day and are absorbing what we have for
them. Then I have had one teammate report that she had a youth thank her for
praying with them. Then each retreat we’ve had confession, most the teens go!!
While I’m sure that most would still have gone, the question is: if we weren’t
sacrificing, who would not go? Which young person would not encounter Jesus in
this way? Or even any way at all? That isn’t something I want at all.
So I’ll
take the stuffy nose. I’ll take the runny nose. I’ll take the sinuses being
thrown off. If it helps somebody get to Heaven, I’ll take it. I hope everybody,
whether you’re on my team or just reading this blog, feels the same.
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| Some of us overlooking the Ring of Kerry |
