I love to plan; I plan what I'm going to wear the night before, where I'm going to go and what I will do most days, how I want my room to look, and even what I am going to do in the future. I will also plan out an event in my mind and how I want it to go.
I really didn't have any idea of what was going to happen when I got to Yakutat, but I knew that we were there to touch lives by sharing God's love, and for that I was truly excited. We got our daily schedule on Monday (May 18), where we would start each day with Holy Hour, then daily Mass, then be divided up into groups to go out and do our work projects. I was paired up with Justine and Janae and we went over to Mr. Gene Reily's house to help him out with work around the home. His wife passed away from cancer back in 2000 and he just hasn't had any motivation to clean his house. He has three children; two daughters and one son, whom is named Dene and lives with his father. It was such an honor to work with Gene and learn about his past; where he grew up, how he met Carol his wife, and different stories he had from living in Yakutat. We would all stay on our work sites until lunch time, then we would go back to St. Annes, eat lunch, have some relaxation time, then we were going to split in half where one gropu would run a VBS for the young kids, and the other half would go on a hike with the high schoolers. I love working with high schoolers, so I jumped at the chance to go on the hike. My group was getting excited to go on the hike and do trail maintance, where we would clip back branches, clear the path, and pick up trash so other people could enjoy hiking as well.
As 3pm rolled around and all the kids got out of school, the young kids began to show up for VBS, but there were no high schoolers in sight. We waited around for a little, then had to finally leave because it was getting late, and we waned to be back in time for dinner. We still cleaned the trail, but it wasn't as fun or rewarding as it would have been had there been high schoolers there.
Later that night, at 7pm, is when we would have our community get togethers, where we would go to one of the many local beaches, have a bonfire, play some sports, and then just sit and chat with the town. This night, we went to Sandy Beach, one of the beaches that is on the Bay instead of the Pacific ocean, so there aren't any waves. We got there, made a great fire, set up the volleyball and got some games going, but no one showed up.
Currently, for my job as a Red Shirt with GroupMission Trips, my crew doesn't start our own camp until next week, so in the mean time we are helping another crew set up and volunteer at their camp until it's time for us to go to our own. It's tough because while I am here and helping them do little jobs here and there to make the camp run smoothly, I keep feeling like I'm not doing very much, which kills me since I am a person who loves to always be active, always helping, and always doing, but here for the last two days, I'm not feeling myself, I'm not feeling like much help. Then on top of all that, I found out this morning that I have an eye infection in my right eye, so I can't really open mine up all the way. THEN.....on top of all of that while the school has Wifi, I can't access all my photos from my Alaska trip to post on here.....
I'm sorry if all this is coming across as complaining, but it really isn't me complaining. This is all something that just didn't go according to plan, whether in Alaska or at work. It's good to plan, in fact we should make plans to do things otherwise not much would get done, but the key is to be open to God's plan, because God has a plan for each and every one of us, and while we don't know what it is right now, or we may never know what it is, His plan is
better for us, because He truly knows us, and knows what we need, and when we need it. I didn't get to go on that hike with high schoolers, but I got to know people on my mission better. We didn't have people a lot of people come to our community event, but the three people who came ended up coming back many more times. I may not have much to do here at this camp, but this isn't about me, and I let that slip my mind for a while.
God has a beautiful plan for each and every one of us, each one unique. We need to embrace His plan, embrace that there will be moments where we can't plan out what will happen, or how things will happen, so we put our full faith and trust in God.
"Not my will but yours be done" Luke 22:42
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