Flights, fun, and flights

Many of the fifty students who are accompanying me to Guatemala say that the first moment it really hit them that our long awaited trip was finally upon us was when they were packing, or when they woke up Thursday morning and realized they had just spent their last night in the states. For me, it wasn't until a rest stop in Madison Wisconsin, pouring $1 dollar bills into a vending machine for overpriced Doritos and Gatorade that I finally felt like my journey had begun. Any other day of the year, I wouldn't have been caught dead in front of that machine, paying absurd prices for snacks that would satisfy me for an hour if I was lucky. In that moment, faced with a choice between paying too much for food now, or paying too much for food at an airport in Chicago, I transitioned into mission trip mode. The frugality that will undoubtedly follow me around each and every one remaining 355 days of my year was put off. My life, money, and my health are now completely out of my hands; wholly entrusted to God, at least for the next ten days. That moment in front of the vending machine certainly won't be one of the defining moments of Guatemala, but it is at least the first. And for a day spent sitting on a bus, bumming around and burning the clock, it will have to do.  - Zach M.