The Preperation

In order for us to be completely prepared for the work that we will be doing in Hilton Head, we have had meetings every few Sundays to talk about what we need to be doing before we leave. Our hearts need to be prepared to do God's work on this trip and our minds need to be ready for everything we will encounter.

During the first meeting we attempted to answer some questions on our own. Some of the questions were "What is the mission of God?" and "What does it mean to be on mission with God?" After personally reflecting on these questions, we came together and discussed our answers. My answer, at least to the former, is that He hopes to spread the God News and bring salvation to all; that ended up being half true. Bringing salvation to all is one statement that basically summed up all of the answers that we came up with as a youth group. God wants everyone to join Him in heaven when their time comes. Other activities we did this night were writing a prayer asking God to help prepare us for participating in His mission in Hilton Head and practicing sharing our testimonies with others. There may be opportunities to share our testimonies with the residents of Hilton Head and we want to make sure that we share our story while still showing God's effect on our lives.

During another meeting we talked about the qualities that each of us must have within ourselves in order to do well in Hilton Head or to gain anything for ourselves in our personal relationships with God. Something that stood out to me was that we need to come as a vessel full of God's love that is ready to be emptied unto the people of Hilton Head, and not with the personal goal of self-betterment. We also talked about making sure that we are ready for the work that we will be doing (see 2 Timothy 2:20-21). Teenagers have tendencies of procrastinating or just not putting in effort, but these meetings really helped stress the importance of preparing our hearts and being a family as we doing God's work together as a family (see 1 Peter 1:8-9).

One concept that really stuck with me personally was the  SOAP box method (scripture, observe, act, pray). This is a way to really understand the word of God and how it ties into your life. The SOAP box method is done by digging into scripture, observing how you can use it in you life, acting with it applied to your life, then pray about the verse(s) (and in our case, the trip) in order to gain all knowledge from it.

Some other major thought-provoking ideas that were read to us included self-control: not selfish, perseverance: striving for daily consistency with God, knowledge: study the Word and Jesus Christ, mutual affection: have love during the trip and at home, love: show it.