Guatemala

The cost of postponing a mission trip

September 28, 2020 by Kristin Leave a Comment

UPDATE: In a Twitter conversation with American Airlines customer service, I learned I could get full vouchers without having new travel dates. When I called American Airlines to officially cancel our tickets this morning, that customer service representative said our tickets were eligible for a full refund! That’s better news than I was expecting, and I’m grateful for the accommodations that were made. The airline turned out to be more helpful than the travel agent who specializes in humanitarian travel. At least now I know for next time.

We have to indefinitely postpone our mission trip to Guatemala, again, thanks to COVID-19. And we are going to lose $1,800, thanks to American Airlines.

In the spring of 2019, we started planning to lead a short-term mission team to Guatemala with our friends who serve as Bethel Ministries International. We prayed, raised money, collected household and school items to give away, and watched God assemble a team of 12 people – five adults and seven kids. The plan was to build two houses, distribute 50 wheelchairs, and visit about 20 families during our families’ Spring Break, which would have been in April 2020.

A couple of weeks before, as our country and others shut down, we had to postpone this trip. At the time, October seemed far enough removed from the worldwide pandemic. Of course, we’ve since realized that’s not happening next week like planned.

Yes, Guatemala borders are technically open. With a negative COVID test, we could get into Guatemala City. But that’s just too risky for us and the people we want to serve. There are local COVID precautions here in rural Kentucky as well as rural Guatemala where we’d be serving that make this trip not viable right now.

That’s disappointing, obviously, but understandable. One, there’s a risk of having to quarantine in a foreign country with parts of three families still in the U.S. and not with our team. Plus there’s no vaccine yet to offer another layer of protection for us and the Guatemalans who struggled with malnutrition and limited access to healthcare before this coronavirus altered our world.

Making plans these days, especially too many months in advance, is difficult now. So many uncertainties exist, especially when considering traveling to a developing nation with an at-risk population. Of course, this also makes us want to help the more. We’ve been able to send some money to aid Bethel Ministries in the work the missionaries are continuing to do.

With that said, we don’t have dates set for our next attempt at a mission trip. And without travel dates set before the end of 2021, American Airlines won’t refund our tickets in full because of the type of ticket we bought. We were trying to be good stewards of the money people donated and sacrificed for us to go, but now we are going to lose $150 per ticket, so $1,800 total for the 12 tickets we purchased in January, well before we knew COVID was going to be a disruption.

In Guatemala, that $1,800 could provide so much relief. Specifically, the money we are just wasting with American Airlines would provide:

a month’s worth of food for 36 families,
six triple bunk beds for families who sleep on dirt floors,
eight wood cook stoves that pipe the smoke out of the house,
a good portion of a metal house with concrete floors, or
twenty-one wash stations that have sinks and holding tanks for water.

I understand COVID has been hard on every single business, ministry, and family in some way. I know people’s livelihoods are at stake. But I also know we have a team of people willing to go serve when the time is right. My hope is American Airlines would just let us leave our tickets open for when we have dates, like a great big team voucher.

The question isn’t if we will go but when. And that’s uncertainty I have to go be okay with. I wish American Airlines could be too.

The sounds of Becoming

January 20, 2020 by Kristin 6 Comments

“I am miles from where I was
It’s so far from where I want to be
With each step I learn to trust
The maker is still making me …”
– Jason Gray in “Becoming”

In September, I sat with on my counselor’s couch and told her about this idea of transformation being a process of order to disorder to reorder. I stole the concept from singer/songwriter Jason Gray who was inspired by Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr’s idea and wrote some songs about it. On the heels of a hard year, these songs helped me make sense out of conflict, disappointment, loss, and grief. They helped me see how God was working even when my heart and head hurt.

These songs are part of a three-part project that’s being released in segments. The first set of songs – “Order” – has been out since September and I’ve been listening to it frequently. There is also a five-day devotional that goes along with the songs and spoke truth into my wounded soul. I can’t carry a tune and I haven’t played my clarinet since 1993, but other people’s songs have always marked my seasons and helped me along.

So, of course, I looked to see if Jason Gray was on tour. He didn’t have any dates near me, but not long after he posted on Instagram about wanting to schedule some small shows with him and his guitar. My mind started intertwining lots of ideas I had to make a concert part of a bigger fundraiser for our mission team that’s headed to Guatemala in April and needed to raise thousands of dollars to build two houses, visit about 20 families and help meet some of the physical needs, and distribute 50 wheelchairs. Jason Gray and I exchanged some emails and got a date on the calendar.

The date was last night, and this morning my heart is full.

My natural Enneagram One way is to think about how more seats could have been filled or more money raised, but I know God is asking me to unclench my fists and hold my palms wide open. It’s an ongoing conversation God and I have and one we’ll probably continuing having because Jesus saved me from my sins but he’s still saving me from my anxious ways.

Last night Jason talked about how our weaknesses are what make us safe places for each other. Then he sang about how the wounds are where the light gets in, trusting is a lot like falling, and sometimes the truth is hard to tell ourselves. He sang about how we’re all still becoming and being made new. He sang about how it’s good to be alive, even if we have to be reminded who we are.

Before the concert, we had a chili cook-off with 11 pots of chili from my friends, a silent auction of donations from other friends, and a bake sale my daughter and her best friend headed up. There were lots of ways to support our mission projects and these families in Guatemala we’ll get to serve, but, more importantly, there were many ways to be connected to one another. That’s where God does beautiful work.

Maybe it’s on a counselor’s couch, through the songs of a stranger who seems to understand, or while planning an event so a team of people can serve together, but we are at our best when we make room for each other – even when the brokenness is obvious and the wounds are far from healed.

Jason Gray opened his show with “Becoming” – one of those songs from the “Order” project. That’s my word this year. In 2020, I want to focus on becoming more like Christ, resting in real life knowing living surrendered is far more productive than controlling and clinching. Jason didn’t know that’s where I am, but he knew that’s where he’d been and trusted he wasn’t the only one.

Let’s live with heaven in mind

February 13, 2019 by Kristin 16 Comments

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

– Revelation 7:9-12 (ESV)

I thought of heaven when I listened to my Kenyan friend pray last week at small group. I remembered the prayers in Spanish when we blessed the home we built for a family near Tecpan, Guatemala in June. I am drawn to worship music that lets me hear accents of people’s homes, whether that’s Ireland or Georgia.

All the tongues, even the ones I can’t understand with my American ears, are praising the same God, the one who sent his son for us. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us and the tapestry of accents is going to be beautiful when we get there.

“The fact is that you cannot make sense out of life unless you look at it from the vantage point of eternity. If all God’s grace gives us is a little better here and now, if it doesn’t finally fix all that sin had broken, then perhaps we have believed in vain. … There has to be more to God’s plan than this world of sin, sickness, sorrow, and death. There has to be more than the temporary pleasures of this physical world. Yes, there is more, and when you live like there’s more to come, you live in a radically different way.”

– Paul David Tripp in “New Morning Mercies”

As I shuttle kids around and navigate all the conversations required, I don’t think about heaven as much as I should. I think about what it’s like to live here in our self-absorbed culture, how I should best raise my kids to be believers here, and whether I’m doing enough to point them to Jesus. But I don’t parent with heaven in mind.

I want to change that.

I want to point them to Jesus because he’s preparing a place for them too, not just because his example is the right way to live here in our temporary homes.

I want to teach them about living with an eternal perspective because then so few things will matter like we think they do. I want to love and learn alongside them.

I want to believe what Jesus says. I want to live with a gaze toward heaven, where all the tribes and nations will be one. I’m guessing I’ll understand those prayers from the Guatemalans when we get there.

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Extra, extra!

PODCAST: In honor of Valentine’s Day, I got to chat with my friend Mary Carver about TV marriages for her podcast, The Couch. Be sure to tune in to our episode plus the other recent episodes. {LISTEN HERE or HERE.}

LOVE STORY: Plus the story of #TeamTaylor began 21 years ago when Greg and I went on our first date on Valentine’s Day after we’d met a week earlier. {READ HERE.}

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#PorchStories Party