Ultimate Workout- India 2008

Forgive the loooong delay. So much has happened I last wrote. I'll have to go back to retrace my steps. I'm in Kazakhstan now, substitute teaching at an English language institute for a week and a half. Wow! Life is so weird. I'll have to write more about my adventures in both Kazakhstan and Kyrgizstan next time. Below is a little meditation on Maranatha's recent Ultimate Workout India project. For those of you who don't know, UW is short term mission trip designed to challenge teenagers in the areas of spirituality and leadership. It had an enormous impact on me throughout my teen years. I mean, ENORMOUS. Anyway, here's what I wrote for Maranatha's magazine-- it'll help you understand where my heart has been this summer. I don't know what it will look like after they edit and publish it:

We just had an Ultimate Workout. It was rigorous and real: that’s what made it a workout. And it broke even my most wild expectations. After years of advising other fellow Ultimate Workout participants not to box in God with narrow hopes and calculated plans for personal growth, I still find myself falling for the game. God graciously smashed my dreams this year, delivering a truth more lasting—more ultimate—than any short-term spiritual high I could have asked for.

Two days after the project I am left sitting here in an air-conditioned room tracing the face of each participant in the jumbo-glossy group photo we had taken in front of the Taj Mahal. Each teen came with a story and went home with an added chapter unique to their own. 17 year-old ______ signed up from ____ because of her fascination with Indian culture and her desire to make a difference in the lives of others. Recently the idea of studying theology after high school entered her mind. Ultimate Workout gave her the opportunity to think that possibility through in a compelling environment. _______, 18, challenged me with his boyish energy and generous laughter, but most of all, with his genuine pursuit of a loving and compassionate God. ___ hopes to return to India as a school teacher one day.

I will never forget these people, and I don’t think they will soon forget Ultimate Workout-India, either.

Ultimate Workout-India introduced its first annual project last year in Orissa. The target volunteer group has been teens with past mission trip experience—particularly Ultimate Workout experience—and those young people seeking the most intense leadership and spiritual growth opportunities. We came to the project this year with lofty ideals. But by the grace of God, we fast found ourselves confronted with the reality of our human brokenness. The project scope was to help prepare for the opening of the Kadapa Adventist School in Andhra Pradesh, a new facility working closely with a program called Adventist Child India (ACI). ACI provides sponsorships for Adventist village children whose families make less than two dollars a day to come and study as borders at the Kadapa School. Our work for this UW-India had five components: interaction with the children at the school, construction of a wall around the compound, landscaping and beautifying of the campus, sanding of the new 3-child bunk beds for the dormitories, and prayer and visitation in the local villages.

We hit day one hard, mastering the art of block-laying and bogenvelia-bush planting in short order. The teamwork and group camaraderie was terrific and I remember being extremely grateful for the teens God had brought to India this year. But warm fuzzy feelings get stretched on mission trips where the sun shines hot, personalities grate, and unfamiliar living conditions strip away the comfortable borders we build for ourselves at home. One particularly sobering setback came on day three of our project: a wave of the stomach flu washed through our group, knocking two-thirds of the participants down flat on their backs. Discouragement threatened as we watched our newly-planted bogenvelias wither away under the hot sun.

Though undesirable from a human standpoint, these circumstances gave us a hard, honest look at ourselves. We struggled to comprehend how as individuals we deal with discomfort, heat, illness, and the reality of life and death in something as simple as a flowering tree. Sometimes the revelations were disappointing. We found ourselves to be complainers. We were tempted by exhaustion and apathy and the weight of our shattered expectations. Other times found us deeply humbled at what God was able to accomplish even through our limitations. After the sickness passed we made our way back to regroup by the bogenvelias. Brokenness begs teachability, and day by day—through trial and error—we learned how to keep our plants alive. First we regulated our watering times. Next we tried manure. Finally the school children taught us to build little circular walls around the bushes so that they could retain moisture better. The work we did was not grand or earth-shattering, but it was truth-telling in that it required such virtues as patience, discernment, consistency, and faithfulness. For me the plant nursery was a marvelous parable of how we nurture people, indeed, how God nurtured our group bit by bit in spite of our incredible resistance. His hand prevailed.

Generosity is God’s response to our clenched fists. It pours over us whether or not we receive, because it is his initiative. We saw it at work so many times this year. It came through in glorious sunsets watched from rooftops with new friends. It poured from the hearts of villagers who invited us into their homes for prayer and shelter from monsoon rains. The girls on our team slept in the same building as the young students of the Kadapa school. One morning I was feeling particularly grumpy— a trio of girls came up wanting to know if I could remember their names. I was incensed. With hundreds of children swarming the grounds of the Kadapa school, how could they actually expect me to remember each of their names? I brushed past them with obvious annoyance, seeking a room where I could close the door to their pushy demands. But before I could reach such mock security I was ambushed by twenty little girls who pulled my bewildered face down to their level and showered me with kisses.

The holiness of these moments pressed upon me with final clarity during the last Friday night worship our group shared together. We organized a communion service and decorated a rooftop with candles for special ambiance. But that evening was particularly windy, and even our best efforts couldn’t stop the lights from blowing out. We were angry and disappointed until we looked up into the night sky and saw the stars. They shone much greater and more luminous than the silly wax candles we were trying so hard to keep lit. God must have been laughing.

Looking back now, again, on the faces of this year’s participants, I am filled with wonder and gratitude over the joy that is available to those who recognize their inadequacy. Hardships invite broken people to stop and recognize the active and unchanging presence of God in all circumstances. This is the greatness of our weakness—the kind we boast in. And I do boast now, two days after this UW- India. I boast in the God of surprises—the God who showed us the truth that he is greater than our weakness. Indeed, it is in our weak places that he is most strong.