Mission Madness: Taking the First Step

This past weekend our youth group participated in Mission Madness. Mission Madness is a state wide youth group retreat where we focus on..well.. mission. The whole theme for the weekend was "Step By Step". We learned to take the first step even if it was out of our comfort zone, and then take each step together with the people we are serving.
We participated in mission sites where we shoveled and spread mulch in a garden that would help feed the hungry this coming summer, another site broke down bikes to be used for scrap pieces to build new bikes for people that had no other way of transportation.  The thing that impacted me the most from the weekend first started out with a short story that one of the leaders shared Saturday Morning before we went to work. Growing up, his family didn't have as much money as others. He received two boxes food every Saturday morning. He didn't think much of those boxes until one Saturday morning in high school when he opened the door and two of his classmates were standing there with the boxes. Those two classmates no longer treated him as one of their peers, they treated him as a project. The people we serve should never be treated as less. We should walk together with them on their journey, not look down on them. I thought about this whole concept and the story that the leader had shared all day while I was spreading mulch. Little did I know that this concept of stepping out and stepping together would soon come to play in my life. As I was eating dinner Saturday night, I recognized a familiar face. I realized it was Maura, a  girl from the Virginia Hydrocephalus group. I had never actually met Maura, but our moms had talked a little online and I had seen her updates on her recent struggle with brain surgeries and hospitalizations. Now If you know me, you know I'm a bit timid when it comes to talking to new people. So Beth and my mom had to talk me in to going up to her that evening. But Boy I sure am glad that those two talked me into it. I didn't know it, but Maura had been searching for someone that understood some of the things she's going through. I was in her shoes of constant hospitalizations just a few years ago. But now since I stepped out, we'll be able to step together in our paths with hydrocephalus. Without all the talk of stepping out and stepping together I probably would have never gone up to Maura. For Maura and I to show up at the same Mission Madness weekend is quite frankly a miracle. God works in mysterious ways to have two teenage girls fighting the same rare condition. He's put me to work even beyond the mission site from last weekend. I hope God will continue to work through me to provide Maura a since of comfort and understanding, and I thank him for putting me for on that mission trip last weekend.