Our lead pastor, Jacob, and I leave for the Philippines on Monday with Trash Mountain Project. We’ll be meeting up with 4 others pastors from Kansas and South Dakota as well as several Trash Mountain Project staff members. We are going to visit three trash dump communities near Manila and we will each be teaching a session at a leadership conference for Filipino pastors and leaders.

With the busy holiday season, this trip snuck up on me. I have never felt so unprepared – mentally, spiritually, physically and all the other -lys. There are at least 3 items I should have bought online a month ago, but I just looked at them for the first time today. Jacob and I are both still working on our teaching sessions as we are preparing for Sunday, getting ready to launch Rooted and have everything in place while we are gone. But I am reminder that God is strong in our weaknesses. What better time can God work then when I am most unprepared, when I am unready, when I don’t have a plan?

A friend of mine gave me a card this week for my trip. She included a small journal and some Pepto Bismol (a must for international trips!) and a verse, 1 Thessalonians 2:4: “but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.”

Even though I do not feel ready, God is going to work in this trip! My job is not to have my fellow trip team members think I have it together, my job is to share the gospel, to equip leaders and to make sure that I am giving it all I’ve got. I want all my actions on this trip to be about God, not about me or how I look, so that I might be tested by God and pass.

This is going to be a hard trip, it’s going to be work, it’s going to take my energy, we will probably see a lot of things that will hard to take in, but that allows God the room to work in me!

Thank you everyone who have been praying for us, who gave money so we could go, who gave me journals to process and write down my experiences, and most of all to my friend who provided me with Pepto Bismol! We will try to keep you updated over the next couple of weeks!

-Alissa