In the summer of 2022, I went on a student life mission trip with Living Stones Church (LSC) in Katy. At first, I was slightly nervous about going because that was the first time I had ever gone on a trip like that. I heard from many people that student life mission trips are bad and that they are not real mission trips. Nonetheless, I went there anyways because I felt God telling me I should go and I could not ignore Him. That was one of the best decisions I’ve made to this day.
On the mission trip, we did not necessarily do evangelism, however, by going to different nursing homes and retirement homes, we were still spreading the love and kindness that Jesus has for us.
During the time that we were there, I had such an amazing time. I grew closer with the other youth and volunteers. We worshipped, had bible studies, played around, all while maintaining the goal, which was to show the love of Jesus to the elderly.
Something that really stuck with me while I was there was a conversation I had with my youth pastor at the time. As we were talking, he asked how I was, and I replied with a simple, “I’m alright.” Usually, when people ask this in a conversation it’s more of a habitual thing to ask or they’ll ask and then the conversation will move on. However, instead of the conversation stopping or moving on from that, he suddenly asked me why. It caught me off guard and even left me a little speechless for a brief moment. After we talked a little longer, he said that he challenged all of the guys of the youth to be intentional, and that he chose to lead by example. The challenge was to not just ask someone “how are you” on a surface level, but to further ask them why they say that they’re feeling good, bad, or alright.
Most people will say they are good or okay out of habit, even if those people aren’t, and not expect the conversation to go any further especially if they are only passing by. I know it may seem small or it may not seem like it would do anything, however for me, asking the question of why I was alright caught me off guard in a good way, making me feel genuinely cared about. It even changed my outlook of the day and how I now interact with people on a day-to-day basis. Even if I don’t ask why all the time, I still try to ask often because not only does it make you feel like the person you’re talking with cares about you, it could also give someone a chance to talk about their day and what happened regardless if it was good or bad.
At the ending of each of the last two days, all of the junior high and high school students would gather around outside and form a group. The reason for this was to share our “God moments” with the entire group. The youth pastor on the trip explained that these were moments in the past week that when we were there, God was working or that He was there, or just moments that really impacted each of us. Unfortunately, social anxiety got the best of me so I wasn’t able to share my God moments with all of them and I still regret not sharing with them today.
I went to LSC for a long time while I lived in Katy and I can honestly say that the people of that church are absolutely amazing and I could tell that every person there has the Holy Spirit overflowing in them. All of them were very accepting and would include others, new or not, in conversations and activities.
