Connection Through Creation
June 21, 2024 | Written by Trevor Waters, Youth Participant.
Traveling to the Dominican Republic for the Bibles & Bricks Mission Trip has always been a dream of mine. I’ve been excited to come here for so many years. But now that it was finally time, the nervousness and fear caught up to me. What will being so far away from home be like? What if nobody understands me due to language barriers? What will really experiencing a new country for the first time be like? I held onto these feelings and questions the first couple days of the trip until I realized that through God’s creation, we are all much more connected than it seems.
God created the heavens and earth; the seas and sky; the sun, moon, and stars; the creatures of the water and sky; and the creatures of the land for all his children; so it’s cool to think that I share God’s greatest gifts with all the children we’ve been doing VBS with this week.
Today we worked around the language barrier by making animal noises with kids from a nearby barrio. A cow, a pig, a chicken, a horse, a gorilla; all God’s creatures. We didn’t need to be connected through our language. We were connected in the sense that a cow still moos, a pig still oinks, a chicken still clucks, a horse still neighs, and a gorilla still makes whatever sound a gorilla makes.
Serving on and experiencing this mission trip has really opened my eyes to different cultures and ways of life. We have a completely different lifestyle in the United States from the families living in the small barrios of San Juan de la Maguana, so knowing that I’m a part of the highlight of many of these children’s summers means everything to me.
