Serving on Mission Trips

People always spread this light on mission trips as a time when people need to be serious and cant joke around...I just never understood that. I love mission trips and really put my heart and soul into them, in fact that's what I plan on making my career. In the same breathe, I love having fun and sharing a good laugh. On my second mission trip, the summer going into my freshman year of high school I went to Mississippi. The trip was great we got a lot done, made some really great friendships and I believe truly had a lasting impact on the community. After we spent our time in the mission field we came back to New Jersey and had a two day debriefing period.
One thing that we learned about cultural differences between Mississippi and New Jersey is that fireworks are legal in Mississippi, so of course there was a need to bring back some of the culture we had been in contact with over the past month back home. In our two day debriefing period, days were much more bland then the past month we had experienced and with our prizes we had brought back from Mississippi, a couple of the guys from the team and I decided to add some flavor to the last night.
We waited til around 1 a.m. and snuck out of the room with our hands full of gun-powder filled goodies. We came up with a plan to surround the girls tents with the fireworks and an escape route into the woods so we wouldn't get caught. We after we carefully placed them around the tent site, we got into place and waited for the specific time we were going to set them off. The time came and in order to signal everyone to light the fuses I screamed, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" With that the night sky illuminated with red, green, and blue only to quickly be interrupted by the "pop, bang" of the explosions. Screams followed the explosions but we wasted no time and quickly ran into the woods. The team leaders could be heard running out of their tents and gathering to discuss what happened. We had to wait hours before they went back to their tents but were never discovered!