choir tour/mission trip

Bright and early tomorrow morning a group of 50 teenagers and adults from First Baptist Nashville will head out on a choir tour/mission trip to eastern Kentucky. I am driving the cargo van on this journey, the first of three student ministry trips I will make this summer, meaning I'll spent 23 out of the next 41 days away from home.

In the midst of preparations for the trip, my thoughts drifted back to the one and only choir tour/mission trip that I participated in during my high school years. In 1981, the summer before my senior year, my youth group traveled in three 15-passenger vans to Detroit, driving through the night to get there. (In retrospect, I wonder why that was necessary?) We slept on cots in classrooms in a school, conducted a Vacation Bible School in another school, and performed several concerts (including a sparsely attended one in a city park).

For VBS, I was one of three students assigned to teach a class for sixth graders. On the first day, only two students showed up - Lori (a sixth grader) and Jennie (an eighth grader). We weren't about turn 50% of our potential students away, so we welcomed Jennie with open arms. By the end of the week, Jennie and I had become fast friends. After all, I was only three years older than she was. When we parted, we promised to stay in touch, and in the months to come we corresponded regularly.

Fast forward four years. In January 1985, five months before I would graduate from the University of Tennessee, Paul and I got engaged. When I wrote Jennie to share my good news, she responded promptly, pledging to attend the wedding. A trip from Detroit to Knoxville would be her high school graduation present, and I was thrilled to be reunited with her on my special day. Two years later my mother and I made a road trip from Washington, D.C. - where Paul and I were living - to Detroit so we could be with Jennie on her wedding day.

I am grateful for Jennie and a friendship that has spanned nearly three decades. You can never tell what God will do on a mission trip!