Humility is evidence of thankfulness

Last year, (Though it seems it's been way longer than that) I went on a mission trip to Chile. It was amazing beyond my expectations. There's many different reasons why I would say that, but this gets close to summing it up.

We had two groups on our mission trip, there was group A, (which was the group I was in) and there was group B. Our groups would switch off positions of work. Group A would go from the church we were staying in, then start out the day going to the camp we were to work at. At the camp, there was a house, a half-bulit water tower, an empty space of land where we were to build dorms for college kids. The camp had a section that went down hill, and down the hill was a soccer field, piles of rocks, and there was a river where they did baptisms. Group B would start off going to a school and work with kids in an english class. Each of our groups would work in those two places for a certain amount of time, then we would switch off locations.

We did that for about four days straight. It took a lot out of our group. The whole trip was ten days long, and the whole time I only got three showers, and out of those, only one was a hot one. It was winter down there when we went, and one of the times I took a shower, I was on the verge of hypothermia.

At night we slept in the church, "Inglesia del pacto". There was no heat. All we had were our sweaters and sleeping bags. At night it was probably around 10 degrees farenheit. It was very hard for me to get to sleep, especially the first night. The time we were to wake up changed each time, but on average it was around seven.

The lunches we had were always great to me, it was like american food each time, but dinner was what I feared most. Each time it was a different Chilean food, and most of it was pretty good, but each and every time I ate it, I got sick.

Each morning we had to get up and go to work in the bitter cold weather. It was very wet most of the time down there too. It rained pretty often, so we had to wear boots because of all the mud.

So, the whole trip I was very tired, very sick, and very cold. But I can hardly remember what that all felt like, because there was something going on inside of me that was of much more importance.

At the end of each night, we would have a group meeting and sit in a circle and share the highlights of the day, and our youth leader would speak to us about what we need to work on and other sorts of things. Those nights were always very effective, and always humbling. A couple of the nights, quite a few people broke down in tears, including me.

We got to know a few people there very well, and most, if not all of us in our group made new friends. Quite a few of the people there could speak english, and most of the people who went to the church were around our age. I became very great friends with a few people, including someone who hardly spoke any english. We found out that even though we come from totally different backgrounds, we had a lot in common, and we could especially get along because we are one in Christ.

One of the things that really got to me was the last day we worked. We had accomplished so much, and the people from the church were very thankful. They went around to each and every one of us and washed our feet. It was such an astonishing display of humility. I know I probably wouldn't have done that. We could see how thankful they were that we worked with them with their display of humility.

Everything that happened really humbled me, and if all that I went through on that trip wouldn't have happened, I wouldn't be as thankful for everything as I am today. I could go on for years naming off all the things I'm thankful for.

That was the most effective trip I've went on, and I'm thankful that God put me there. That's the most I've endured in a time frame of ten days, but it got me to the point I'm at with God, and I'm so thankful to have been put in those positions. I throughly enjoyed that trip, and I still feel that bond with the friends I made there, though it's been over a year.

If I had to pick one thing to express my thankfulness for, I would say I'm thankful for where God has put me in my life to serve Him. I would rather be serving Him than doing anything else.