My Week in Joplin

It feels good to finally have some time to sit down and write again, which sounds like a super nerdy thing to say but I guess I'm just super nerdy. My last week was pretty great though, I spent it in Joplin Missouri working on yard work and a building/demolition project. Needless to say we did quite a bit of hard work but the trip was extremely rewarding. We spent most of the week knocking down a 100 year old house all the way to the studs, and putting up internal supports and siding. All 30 of us never stopped working, and we accomplished a lot, and I feel like we all grew closer together at the same time. But I definitely think I realized a little bit about myself and the way I interact with others.

Now I consider myself a relatively friendly person, in the sense that I'm happy to talk to most people, although the issue is usually that most people don't necessarily want to talk to me. But what I'm really trying to say is that even though I am generally nice and polite, I have a particular kind of humor that isn't always nice and polite (Also it isn't always funny, but that's beside the point). My point is that this week I realized how caught up I can get in this humor that I can come across as rude and jerky to those around me, and I definitely need to work on this. Personally, there aren't many thing people could say to me to truly upset me. I can take just about any joking attack and roll with it, but usually Ill throw one right back, and that's what I need to work on. My group of friends has developed a sort of back-and-forth, and we all can be extremely rude, and even within that we sometimes upset each other. So I've always known that my humor can be a but rude, but this last week in Joplin I decided that what I need to do is work on my interactions with people, and try my hardest to ratchet back the sarcasm, and be the kinda guy that I really want to be.

This Sunday I visited a church in Galveston that my sister is attending and the message really struck me. The main point of the message was to not only know what it is to live Christ's life in your own, but to actually do it. We were asked to think about at least one specific place in our lives where we do not fully live out Christ's mission, and my mind came back to this place, and the way I treat others, especially those close to me. The pastor used the well known quote from Mahatma Gandhi - 

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

This resonates with me, and is something I need to work on tremendously. I feel as though I make an effort to do the things that might label me as a Christian, but that does not always mean I am doing the things Christ would do. I have already taken steps to make an intentional effort to change the way I interact with those around me, and hopefully I can successfully make this lifestyle change, as I have almost a fresh start, stepping out into college life.

The other thing I was reminded of last week, is my real passion for hard work. I'm an extremely lazy person, but when it comes to labor like I did this last week, I truly enjoy it. I've been on several mission trips in my high school years, and the ones I've enjoyed more than anything have been the work trips. I may not be the best at it, but The summer after my freshman year, we roofed a house in New Mexico and it was ridiculously hard, but absolutely amazing, and I loved ever second of the work. I do not know how I would respond to working like this all day every day, but in short doses I find it quite enjoyable. And because of this, I think I want to make efforts to continue doing this kind of labor to help others. ACU has a great Spring Break Campaign program, where student-led groups travel around the country and even the world, doing all sorts of mission work, and over the next four years I hope to get plugged in to this, in the form of good solid work.

So it took me quite a while to get this all written out, even though it isn't all that long. I was reminded of how hard it can be to make yourself do something like write, when there's so many other things going on. The biggest thing I kept thinking of over the last few weeks is how I don't do everything right, and I don't have all the answers. In fact I don't do many things right, and I hardly have any of the answers. The problem with putting things into writing is that there is so much room for different interpretation and little room for response, so I want to clearly state that I know I don't know much, and my opinions are often flawed, and I hope I don't seem too pompous or arrogant. All I can do is pray and think, and listen to The Lord, and hope to come to the wisest conclusions. And maybe one day I'll prove Gandhi wrong, and be more like Christ.

God Bless,

Joel Childers