I can't believe I haven't written since April. I believe that the time has come for a new post. It's been awhile since the first six weeks of my summer I spent as a summer missionary at a Life Teen camp called Covecrest in Georgia.
...Wow, what a loaded sentence. First of all, what the heck is Life Teen? What is Covecrest? What do you mean, you were a summer missionary? What did you do in six weeks that is worthy of calling you a missionary?
I hope that through the next few blog posts I can sort of explain what each of these things mean. For right now, I'm going to try to explain the whole "missionary" part.
I arrived at the Atlanta airport on May 15, 2011 to meet the summer missionaries at Camp Covecrest, not sure what to expect, but definitely not excited about the weeks to come. I was tired from getting up at 2:30 AM to catch a flight, I missed my boyfriend, and I didn't know a single person that I would be working with. I felt like this would be like a retreat where everyone would get really close to each other for a while and then we would all go home and barely speak again, or if we did it would be really fake and shallow. I didn't think anyone would understand me. Several times I was tempted to go to a ticket counter and buy a ticket back home, but I knew that I had already paid for a ticket home at the end of June so it would be a waste of money.
This all went on for about four hours. As I was sitting in a comfy chair reading a book, I noticed a college-aged girl walking toward me and looking at me. I was a little creeped out until she said, "Lorelle? Am I saying that right?" I knew it was another missionary so I nervously got up and said, "Hi! What's your name?" She replied, "I'm Shelby!" She gave me a big hug and we sat down and started talking. I felt so much better and said to myself, okay, you can do this.
As the weeks went on, I grew closer and closer to these people. Within a couple of days I felt right at home at Covecrest and the feeling that it was a bad idea went away. I soon realized that all those feelings came from the enemy, and he wanted to keep me away from Covecrest and its mission. All throughout my weeks there, the enemy kept trying to fill my head with lies, like lies that I couldn't let my guard down around my "brothers and sisters", that they were better at relational ministry than me, that they would all stay friends with each other after they left but would forget about me, and that I might as well forget about them.
This may sound really whiny and self-centered, but I want to show that God always wins. He showed me that each of these were lies. First of all, he showed that if I was vulnerable around my brothers and sisters, it would bring us closer together--it's not selfish to share yourself with someone; in fact, it's the exact opposite. Just because some of them were better at talking to teens than me, God showed me that we all have a part to play; my part was just less direct than theirs.
Also, I was beginning to feel that they didn't care about me at all (another lie). I discovered the truth when I had to go home for a couple of days for my great-aunt's funeral. Not only did my teens tell me they would miss me when I left, but when I came home to Covecrest, tons of people ran to me, giving me hugs and telling me they missed me so much. In fact, one of my missionary sisters even said "It just wasn't the same without you!" I was so touched that they missed me--it meant that I truly was a part of the team.
As for the question "So what did you do?" the best response I can give is the one I heard a missionary say: "We love on teens." And that's exactly what we did. When someone needed to talk about something, we made time for them. We spent every waking minute getting to know them, playing games with them, and hopefully showing them by example a life in Christ. We worked as a team to do God's work. We served them meals. We sat down with the teen who was all by herself and talked with her. And, most of all, we prayed like crazy for them, and when they left at the end of the week, we didn't want to part with them.
So, in short, what is a missionary? A missionary is simply someone who loves other people, and they love them so much that they want to bring them to Christ and help them get to heaven. We all are called to be missionaries. I was just lucky enough to officially have the title on my 12 t-shirts I got at camp. Missionaries can be sent into all sorts of fields--mine just happened to be a camp and the surrounding area of Northern Georgia. One of the greatest blessings of being a missionary there, though, was being surrounded by dozens of them and living in community with them.
Wow! So this is almost a month since I've been home and this is all I have. Hopefully more soon. I love you all, and please contact me with any prayer requests you might have--even if I don't know you I'll pray for you!
Love,
Lolly
