This Feels Real Now

"This feels real now!" was Cynthia Conner's comment at the end of our last regular Monday Peru Mission Team meeting last evening. Tomorrow is personal packing day; we leave on Wednesday.

Trudy Millsaps and her daughters Kylie Millsaps, and Ashley McDermitt prepared a delicious meal of lasagna and all that goes with it for the team. (Word is that David and Walker helped, but the high quality of the food and the coordination of the decor bring doubt on their claims to any significant contribution.) This might be the last American (well, Italian) meal as a team before we become immersed in Peruvian fare, and it was a wonderful treat; but I say, bring on the Peruvian food! Perhaps I just love to eat or my palate is broad, but on the last trip I refused nothing that was offered, and I look forward to it all again. Still, a big word of thanks goes to these ladies who set the atmosphere for our meeting and contributed to our excitement over the prospects of our adventure in the Lord.

After fellowship around the meal, we gathered in the Millsaps living room, finding places to stand among empty suitcases and boxes and bags full of items needed for the ministry. We started with prayer. Lindsay prayed for the ministry to the young people and for her mom's health during the trip. Judy prayed for the medical aspects; I prayed for administrative issues; and David Millsaps prayed for our team. Nothing of eternal consequence can be accomplished without the Lord, but we all needed to acknowledge that on the eve of the eve of our departure.

Next, we each grabbed his or her suitcase and began packing those items: vitamins, children's Advil, witnessing dolls, wordless flying disks, quilts, balloons for making animals, reading glasses, sunglasses, puppets. The idea is to distribute these items through the luggage so that if one or two suitcases or duffle bags is lost or delayed the ministry can go on.

At the beginning it seemed that the items were far too many for the space, but in short order we each had a partly filled suitcase or duffle bag, and the boxes and bags were empty. It was like the Lord's loaves and fishes miracle happened with suitcase space. Each time we put and item in our suitcases the space seemed to just get bigger. As we were taking our suitcases to our cars, Cynthia said, "This feels real now!" and it does.