Where Do You Find Your Joy?

This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to go on my first international mission trip to Peru. When I left, I had the attitude of bitterness over my circumstances. It wasn’t fair that I had to suffer, right? I mean I don’t have everything I want and that doesn’t make me happy. (This is not a great attitude to have, just in case you were wondering) When I arrived in Trujillo, Peru I had no idea what to expect. I also had no idea who was picking me up from the airport, but when I arrived I was greeted with the warmest and biggest smile I had ever seen. Not to mention he was happily waving me over to him. Pastor Franz is the pastor of a church in Trujillo that is doing extraordinary things for what they refer to as “Alto Trujillo”. He even made references to it being the last place in Trujillo that needs a Bible believing church, you know, the ends of the earth. When we arrived in Trujillo, he took the team and I to the hotel and instead of turning around and going right back out after a long and very early morning of travel. He told us that he wanted us to rest and he would be back later. When he did arrive back later, he took us to the house of one of his parishioners. They had prepared beds for each one of us and gave us more time to rest. They also fed us such a wonderful meal. In fact the whole time we were at that church we spent quite a bit of time in that home with that family. They fed us two meals a day and we all really felt like we were a part of that family. It was amazing. When I finally arrived at the Mission, where I would be working, I was speechless. The houses were made out of straw, and cardboard, and tarps. If they were lucky enough to be able to make bricks out of sand, mud, and water, they had them, but most houses did not. When I saw the massive line of children waiting for us at the door of the Mission, my heart broke for them. Here they are without running water, living in the desert of Trujillo in some extremely poor conditions. They have seemingly nothing, but they were smiling. They were so excited to get simple things, like stickers, from us and they loved to color pictures. They cherished the crayons because they don’t have them. Even the older children were excited about coloring! There was something about those children and their smiles that spoke to me. Here I was complaining about what I don’t have and then I saw these children who were so impoverished, yet so very happy and content. It just blew me away. It showed me that I was not content with God alone. It showed me that I didn’t believe that he was enough. It showed me that I was more concerned with material things more than my relationship with the Lord. All of those temporary things will pass away – money, wealth, material possessions – But God will not. He is here to stay. He should be a source of greater joy than anything else in this world. Those children in Peru understood that. I am working on trusting God day by day and allowing him to be enough for me. How about you?

“You have given me greater joy than those who have abundant harvests of grain and new wine” Psalm 4:7