Let me back up. You need a bit of backstory to fully understand and appreciate this leap of faith. *PS, this is a LONGer story so it will be broken up in a few different posts coming out over the course of the next few weeks (promise).
As I wrote a few months ago (if you haven’t read that post, go do so here, I’ll wait ....), in the Spring of 2006 I really had to press in to the Lord to hear what HE wanted me to do for the summer. I was used to going on every missions & youth trip the student ministry at my home church, Metro Church of God in Birmingham, offered plus several camps and local ministry opportunities like VBS and kids camp. But that year, I was roughly 6 months into a new, “real” job with vacation days, sick days, clock-in hours, etc. I, for the first time pretty much since birth, had to really contemplate what my summer was going to look like.
So I pressed in & prayed and felt the Lord telling me Mexico. Our youth group was headed to Ensenada, Mexico the last weeks of June and I knew that God was leading me in that direction. So I signed up and helped lead that trip. The dates lined up perfectly for me to even have a few days of recovery time before heading back to work thanks to a conveniently place long weekend for July 4.
As I sit here thinking about it, my first international trip & my second missions trip altogether was also to Mexico, back when I was 15, when we went to Mexico City. Fast-forward 13 years of trips every single summer and my last short-term trip was going to be Mexico again!! Seems fitting!