leaving on a jet plane…

This week I’m switching pastry brushes for paint brushes, spreading peanut butter for spreading cement and hanging up my apron in exchange for flip flops and a ball cap.

As you read this, I will be in the Dominican Republic on a construction mission trip. We’re building a house for family and leading a VBS. We’re also giving out indestructible soccer balls, instruction on dental hygiene and the Word of God in a women’s Bible study so that they may have life and have it to the full.

I’m excited yet uncertain.

Though we are doing God’s work to help a family in need, it is the work He will be doing in me that brings the apprehension. Because I know I won’t return unchanged.

And when I come back from the poverty, the dirt floors, the hearts that know what it means to trust in the Lord just to exist, will any of what I hold dear now matter? Will I be quicker to snap at my children’s complaints over the abundant, fresh but not favorite, food they are served? Will I be less tolerant of my first world concerns over snowbanks taking over parking spaces and the desire for more living space and wanting new, wanting more?  How quickly will my senses dull and forget the very real needs of dry shelter and safe water and enough food for every meal?

I share this to explain perhaps a little silence at brownberry tales as I participate in and process through the mission trip. It may be quiet here for one week, or two or three. I don’t know. I won’t know until I return.

My prayer is that this work of recording recipes and stories is one that God called me to do and so will continue. And if you pray, then please join me in praying for the family who will receive a new home and the women who will receive the Word of God.