Written by Renee Brush, Ph.D.

If you have followed this blog or my IG page for any span of time, then you may know that my goal for this year – or really the past couple of years – has been to become more grounded. I have been mostly isolated and dissociated for much of the past several years and that has slowly been changing over the past 2-3 years as I have been healing. This year, I am trying to become more grounded by following the messages I have been receiving from God, which included finding a small community through a course called “Rooted.”

 One of the reasons I had joined the Rooted group was to find a way that I could be part of the church. How could I best use my skills and talents to serve the church community? Since I had never been raised in the church, I didn’t know anything about serving within the church.

After my first night at Rooted, I introduced myself as someone who has been watching services online because I didn’t know anyone who attended the church, and I didn’t want to go alone. By the end of that first night, I had several invitations to sit with people depending on which service I went to. It was so nice! And, because I felt comfortable around my new friends - as I have already talked about in my previous blog post - I was willing to sit with all of them!  And since then, I have been going to church nearly every Sunday for the first time in my 57 years.

At the very first service I attended, they announced the church’s upcoming mission conference, to learn about the various ways one could serve in the church. I immediately signed up for it, right there while they were talking about it. You had to pick two ways to serve that you wanted to learn about. I chose human trafficking and their mission trips, which they call “Serve and Learn Trips” (or SALT).

When I was going through graduate school and receiving trauma training, the program I was in did certifications through trips where you service some community that had experienced a natural devastation, such as a hurricane. I never was able to attend one of those trips because of timing and such, so a mission trip, being similar, was very much on the forefront of my mind. But, as I was thinking about going, I really only wanted to go to Europe. My church has a trip that goes to the Czech Republic, but it was already full for this year. Other trips were to countries in Africa and Central America, and I wasn’t really interested in either of those. But I went to the talk, anyway, thinking I would learn about the trips for next year.

So, I woke up that Saturday on the first weekend in February, very early, to go to this conference. As I was driving to the conference, there was a rainbow on an otherwise sunny morning, which I knew was a sign that I was going to the exact place where I needed to be.

The keynote speaker for the conference was a woman named Katie, who it turned out headed the organization in Central America with whom my church partners. I listened to her story and instantly resonated with her history. She learned about the love of Jesus Christ from outside of her family as a child and eventually that love is what drove her to her mission work. Her story moved me. I had only recently started living surrendered to Jesus and here before me was this woman whose adult life was guided by her own surrender.

I went to the first talk that I had chosen, which was about human trafficking. From that trauma training that I mentioned earlier, I knew that human trafficking is a big issue in my area, and I wanted to meet some of the people that work in local organizations. After the talk, I introduced myself to one of the speakers. Nothing has happened here yet besides exchanging emails with this person, but I feel certain I will help women from this area or domestic violence histories in some way.

Then I went to the SALT talk where I listened to Brad and Laurie speak about all of the trips that our church does. All of the trips sound interesting, honestly, but they said the trip to Central America is a good one if you have never been on a mission trip before. Again, something in me moved. As they were talking, they mentioned that they personally were leading a trip at the end of May that returned the day before Memorial Day. Of all the trips, that felt like the one trip I could make happen with my schedule. The funny thing is - I had specifically told a friend the previous afternoon that I was NOT going anywhere this year. And, then all of a sudden, I am considering going to Central American in three short months!

But there was a bit of a problem. My passport was expired (like 20 years expired! Lol), and I would need to get a new one. And of course, I would need to find a way to get the money. For those of you that have been following me, you will know that I do not really like to be seen… and yet, when Brad and Laurie were done with their talk, there I was, walking very boldly up to the stage to ask them if they thought it possible that I could go on the trip with them in May. As Brad talked it through with me, Laurie was looking it up on her phone. And the state’s website said that passports were being processed fairly quickly – but I would have to get on it immediately. So, I left with instructions from Brad on who I needed to contact at the church to get on the team and to get working on obtaining my passport. We all agreed that if God meant for me to go, then He would make it happen.

The next day, I looked up how to get a passport and found out I could go to several nearby post offices with my application and the money. I already knew I needed to expedite the processing and the shipping to get it quickly and in time for us to get the airplane tickets. It was a full week at work, so I had to go during my lunch break. I found a post office within 10 minutes of my office that had a full-service passport office where they would also take my picture that had an appointment during my lunch hour. I made an appointment for Tuesday, literally two days later.

That Tuesday, I was worried about time because it felt like I was really cutting it close. But then my 2pm client had to cancel her appointment because she was sick. So, I emailed my 1pm client and told her I might be late because I had a personal lunch appointment. We ended up moving our appointment to 1:30 to be safe.

The passport office not only takes appointments during the lunch hour, but they also take walk-ins during that time. But that day, when I walked in, there was a sign that read, “Due to a staff shortage, we will only be talking clients with appointments today.” I gave a huge sigh of relief! There was only me and one other client in there trying to get passports. When I was working with the office employee, she said I was lucky to have gotten an appointment so quickly – usually the appointments are difficult to get, she said. I was in and out of that appointment and back to my office by 1pm.  

I told the woman that I was going to Central America at the end of May. She told me that I would have my passport by then, no problem. Based on what Laurie had read on the State Dept’s website and what this woman was saying, I figured I would have my passport in one month. That meant I would have my passport mid-March.

I was VERY much surprised TWO WEEKS later when I came home to find a letter-sized priority mailer on my porch! The time between deciding to go on this trip and receiving my passport took a short two weeks. I couldn’t believe it, but, as they say, God works in mysterious ways.

At this point, I had already been accepted onto the team, but this was the first time I really felt the trip would happen because it was so obvious God was at work behind the scenes. In fact, looking back at it now, I think I had peace the whole time. I never doubted – deep down, anyway – that it would happen.

Then, the next step was to save up the money. The SALT guide did give us tips on how to fundraise and write up a letter to ask people for money. I posted something on Facebook, but it probably wasn’t the best way to do it. I didn’t get any responses to it. In the end, I was doing something one day and had an idea that I figured was a message from God on how I could save the money. So, I did what the thought said, and I was able to set aside large chunks of money each month. As we got closer to the time, the church bought the tickets, and they ended up being a lot cheaper than the estimate. So, it ended up being a lot easier than I expected at first. I had the trip paid off in plenty of time!

There were seven of us total going on the trip. I had already met Brad and Laurie, and they had been so helpful. I met the others on an initial zoom meeting, but do you really meet people that way? I truly met them all when Brad and Laurie had us all over to their house to complete all of the paperwork.

When I walked into the house, Laurie came over and gave me a big ole bear hug! And Brad gave me a very warm greeting, maybe also a hug. I was one of the last ones to get there and so I then met Jim and Elizabeth, and they were also very friendly. Robert was on zoom because he didn’t live in the area, so I didn’t really get to know him until we were on the trip. Later, Leigh came in and then we were all there. We had paperwork to fill out and we were talking about the trip and what to expect. Brad gave us a history of the country and what they had done before. A couple of the people had been on a trip with them before and so he asked them if there was anything they would like to do when we were there.

Talking with this group of people was so easy. And that’s not usually an experience I have, so I internally felt a sense of calm. Taking a trip with seven people usually is a feat, but I wasn’t worried about it. If there was any confusion, Laurie was usually quick to say, “Don’t worry about it. We will take care of it!” And they were excellent leaders, so I always felt certain they were going to take care of us. That first in-person meeting gave me a sense that we would get along fine.

So, these are called “Serve and Learn Trips” because we are serving, but we are also learning – about the culture but also about the people that we are visiting. These trips tend to be more about building relationships than about making buildings or projects. And that was something I was looking forward to the trip.

As I was preparing for the trip, my friends and my clients (I didn’t tell all of them, but I told some) would ask me what I would be learning. And I honestly could not tell them what. I could tell them what I knew based on what Brad and Laurie had told us, but that was it. I knew in my heart that this was going to be a transformational trip for me, but I could not tell anyone why – except that I just knew it.

I just knew that I would learn whatever God wanted me to learn when I got there. And I would be open to whatever it was.

And I did learn a lot on that trip. But THAT story is for the next post! Come back next week to read about our trip and see some pictures.