Big Ol' Jet Airliner, Don't Carry Me Too Far Away

In a few hours I am traveling to the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Sea.

First time ever out of the country.  Except for one time when I walked over the border to see Niagara Falls from Canada.  And wouldn't you know, it looks exactly the same from that side.  Big and wet.  And worthy of navigating in a barrel.

     Anyhow, I'm very excited to finally get to venture out a bit into the world.  I'm going with a group called Campus Life that I was very involved with when I was in High School and would like to continue to work with in college and perhaps even as a profession.  We'll be visiting Santo Domingo, the capital, and working within schools and neighborhoods there spreading God's word of love through action and not little tracts or pamphlets or other more or less useless demonstrations.

     I tend to be a guy of "Doing" rather than "sitting around wishing", or at least when it comes to things I'm motivated to.  I add that proviso because I know there's a good load of people who would say "What about homework?!  Or building Rome in a day?!  Or my engagement ring?!"

     And they'd be right.  All that crap was largely unimportant to me.  Now however, a chance to "DO" rather than stand on a street corner and hand out clever little million dollar bills that then go into how eternity is like a million bucks.  Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that it is worth that, but it's only going to annoy people and will probably only rope in the easiest to persuade of people.  However, nothing says "We are legitimate" like leaving the comfort of your home, heading to a new and somewhat daunting world, and then rather than hitting up all the vacation zones, going into poor neighborhoods and schools to do work.  And even if we don't win any souls over, who's to say we didn't do any good?  That'd be a tough argument.

     It feels good to be on the brink of forging ahead somewhere new with God leading me there.  I am hoping that I am capable of making this trip solely about Him and others and not falling into vacation mode.  I think I can do it.  I'll probably be so worked up after the trip that you'll be getting an update so I suppose you'll find out if I did or didn't.

     If you by chance stumble across this before I'm back from my trip, the whole team will be documented online with daily blog postings, photos, videos perhaps, and more at

www.campuslifedrtrip.com.

     And with that I say good day.  Keep it classy.  And see if you can't perhaps wage your own little missions work campaign here at home.  If you aren't Christian, wage it for something you believe in.  Unless it's Satan.  Then we'll probably have to duke it out, and be forewarned, I am really good at checkers, chess, Risk, Sorry!, and Monopoly.  And those pretty much constitute 99% of the methods use to settle Christian/Satanist conflicts.

Checkmate anyone?