Endings
Click here for a slideshow of my summer, if you have 18 minutes to spare.
Waking up from eight hours of sleep in a queen-sized bed in a huge room without another person ten inches above me was a weird experience, and if I’m honest, I don’t prefer it. Thirteen hours after leaving Tahoe Wednesday morning, I was home. It’s a bittersweet feeling, because I’m excited to go back to school and get back into the swing of things. Between marching band, my ResLife job, my cashiering job, my classes, and my involvement with Cru, I’m stoked to see what God has in store for this year. But the goodbyes on the last night of Project were by far the hardest goodbyes I’ve ever said. There were people there who became my family who I’m never going to see again. Fortunately most people are going to be at Cru Conference in Portland this winter break, and that makes the goodbye easier, but I’m still going to miss them as individuals until then, and I will always miss the incredible community that everyone created together.
The above picture is my life group at $5 Prom, where we all went thrift shopping and then danced.
Our last night together, we all boarded the MS Dixie II for a cruise and formal dinner around Lake Tahoe. The view was beautiful, and it was so much fun to get to spend our last bit of time together in such a relaxing environment where we could sit and talk, or stand and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation and have the wind whip our hair into each other’s faces (pictured below). Then that night when we got back, everyone gathered where the picnic tables once were (when we cleaned the camp we had to move all the picnic tables behind the shed and lock them up until next summer) and said goodbye. People left the next morning anywhere between 3am-9:30am, so you weren’t guaranteed to be awake to see everyone off, so all goodbyes happened that night. I tried to hug every single person, and squeeze in a few last laughs with my closest friends. There were a couple times when we all gathered in a circle and prayed, and a lot of small group prayers. But I think the thing I appreciated most about that night was the words that sentimentality brought forth from people’s mouths. My primary love language is, completely and undoubtedly, words of affirmation. When someone bluntly and directly tells me something they appreciate about me, my insides melt and my brain short-circuits (even if I don’t show it). And so many people that night were so encouraging in that way, that by the end my heart was full to overflowing. Although that was the hardest night of the entire mission, it certainly will always also be my favorite to remember.
The Kmart cashiers (pictured below with our coworker Alonso) had the opportunity this summer to witness to a couple of our coworkers, and we had the experience to present the Gospel to one guy in particular at Denny’s after midnight, and then hear him pray to commit his life to Jesus. That was a miraculous experience and getting to be a part of helping him understand what the whole Jesus thing is all about was so cool, and the biggest blessing of the entire summer.
Reflecting back over the last two months, I can identify a few main things that God taught me. We studied the book of Luke and the Holy Spirit allowed Luke’s words to come totally alive to me, so I got something out of each passage I read and discussed with my life group, but my main takeaways from the summer came through the wisdom and teaching of the leaders and guest speakers.
Having been raised by Christian parents, I grew up going to church, so I tend to think I know a lot about God and the Bible and Christianity in general. But more and more, I’m realizing that this is not the case. With our life groups, we went through a book called The Gospel-Centered Life. It explores extremely fundamental concepts of Christianity in a way that is entirely applicable to every situation. It’s easy to think that the Gospel is simple, and that I have it figured out, but this book forced me to come to terms with how little I truly understand and live it out. Because the Gospel is everything, and living a life truly centered around it looks so different from living a life centered around yourself and your head knowledge of God. Your life and your mind can revolve around Jesus independent of whether your heart revolves around him.
One way this was illustrated to me was on a teaching night during one of the first weeks of the summer, we were taught about what we called the Gospel Flow. Basically, a lot of people (see Luke 18:18-30) believe that it’s very important how they live, and that to be a good Christian and please God, they need to live a good life. But the Bible teaches that the Gospel starts with who God is (His character and promises), which is the reason for what He has done (because of His love for us and his desire to know us, He provided Jesus and blesses us constantly), which directly affects who we are (forgiven and justified so that when God looks at us, He sees only Jesus’ righteousness, not our sin), which finally affects how we live (filled with the Holy Spirit, bearing His fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control). We don’t have to work hard to do good things. We can’t do good things in our own power, anyway. All we can do is sit back and surrender to God, allowing Him to be our first love and priority, and desiring His will above our own, and as we do that we will see the Holy Spirit transforming our minds and actions and making our character more like the character of Jesus. In Galatians 5:22-26, Paul basically says, “Here are the bad things and here are the good things. Keep in step with the Spirit.” It’s not about avoiding the bad things and trying to do the good things because we know we should. Rather, the list is there as a tool to measure spiritual growth. The more you fall in love with Jesus, the less you’ll have a desire to sin and the more you’ll see the Holy Spirit producing its natural fruit.
Another seemingly foundational principle I learned was about prayer. I’ve ended prayers my whole life with “in Jesus’ name, amen” but it wasn’t until this summer that I gave a single thought to what that means. God’s name embodies His character, reputation, and will. To pray something in Jesus’ name means to pray it according to Jesus’ character, which was founded on God’s will. If you ask God for something contrary to His will, you are not asking it in His name, regardless of whether you attach that phrase to the end of your prayer. That was what God taught me about prayer this summer: to pray in Jesus’ name. I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m free to ask God to do things for me. I truly believe that God has the power to do anything I ask. He can make my day go by faster, make my headache feel better, or heal my sick friend. But I’m not promised that any of those things are part of His will. It may be that what He wants, and what is ultimately best for me is that my day is hard, my head hurts, and my friend has to pay thousands of dollars in medical bills. I can let God know that it is my will that He does those things for me, but also surrender my will to His and rejoice no matter what happens. If God doesn’t do those things for me, then He must have something better in mind. What I CAN pray for in complete confidence is things God has promised in His word. I can pray, like Jesus did, for God’s name to be hallowed, His kingdom to come, and His will to be done. I can pray for my daily bread and trust Him to give me everything I need. I can pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I can pray for strength and joy and the growth of my character in hard situations. I can pray that whatever someone is going through, that God would assure them and those around them that everything will work out for God’s glory and their ultimate good in the end.
My final main takeaway from the summer was the only one I was actually expecting going into it: I received incredible training and equipping on how to share my faith. I’ve always known what I believed about spiritual things, but it really wasn’t until this summer that I felt comfortable communicating my beliefs in a way I was confident someone who doesn’t believe the same things I do would understand. I also learned how to ask exploring questions in order to get a general sense of what another person believes. Most of all, I learned how to love another human soul enough to want them to experience the same satisfaction in life that I’ve found in Jesus, and how to respectfully, humbly, and lovingly disagree with someone about something that I find so important and integral to my existence.
I wouldn’t trade my summer in Lake Tahoe for all the riches in the world, but I look forward to the adventures this coming year has in store for me.
Tahoe, it’s been real.












