"Mission Trip Experience"

Yesterday, our summer internship program (DSO) had dinner with another Christian summer internship program. It was really great to have our two groups together to be able to talk and share experiences of serving and working in the city of Detroit. We met in Southwest Detroit which has a lot of Latinos living there. A couple of children from the neighborhood joined us for dinner. They were so cute, and they were a lot of fun to talk to. It was also great to have some of our interns from Mexico and Costa Rica talk to them in Spanish and see all their faces light up while the rest of us were grasping here and there for words we might be able to understand.

After dinner, we decided to head to an empty lot/ grass field to play some soccer. There were already some boys playing with cones set up as boundaries and goals. There we were our group and a few of the other interns playing with all of these Latino children. Most of us weren't really dressed for soccer as I was wearing a skirt and flip flops, but we made it work. As the sun was going down and we were playing in this dried out field with a pile of glass in the corner, I felt like I was in the classic "third world mission trip" experience of playing soccer with the locals. It was a surreal moment. I wasn't familiar with the area of town or the people we were playing with, but it didn't really matter. Everyone was just happy to be playing, and we were having fun. The little kids were getting attention, and it was just a break from the chaos of the week just to enjoy the goodness of fellowship. We will probably never see them again, but it was worth it. Our life here is about making the little things count and seeing the Lord bless it.

By the way, I played goalie, and everyone said I did a good job (I'm not really a soccer player). It was crazy trying to guard the goal (we played boys vs girls and Alejandro) with all these little kids surrounding me because they were trying to "help" me. I was trying not to step on them or have them nailed in the head with a flying ball. Oh the adventures of my life!