Royal Servants International

My baby sister, Christina, is 14 this year and left on Saturday for her first Royal Servants summer missions trip. She will be at training camp for a week and then will travel around Europe for 7 more, which is the exact same trip that I did (also at age 14) back in 1998. I cannot believe she is old enough to do this, and keep imagining her on the familiar Illinois hay field, also known as training camp. I cannot help but reminisce about many summers past with Royal Servants...

It was while on RS that I learned how to pitch a tent, cook for 60, and be vulnerable. I learned the finer points of eyebrow plucking, that it IS possible for 30 girls to make it through 4 showers in 20 minutes, and that burned rice is bad rice but still edible. I met some life long friends while brushing my teeth at the trough, learned the importance of discipline, and discovered that an hour with the Lord in the morning is never enough. I will never think of malt-o-meal in the same way again, and I was hungry enough to be content eating noodle boodle (pasta with tuna and mayo) several times in a week. Many RS quirks have become my own. On RS we were rudely awakened at 5:30am, and now I pop out of bed quite happily almost every morning by 5. I still pack in ziploc bags in case it rains and I systematically memorize the numbers on all important documents. The beauty of RS was that everyone laughed and loved on one another while doing all of these strange and wonderful things. Yes, life changes after Royal Servants.

There are two things which stand out the most in my mind as having had long term impact. The first is a love of the nations! After my initial summer traveling through Europe, I then moved on to Nepal and only Nepal... three times over. On RS I was exposed to worlds outside of North America, and I have not yet recovered from what God has shown me here. It's a deep love, pure and simple. The second treasure was the comradery I discovered on RS. I began to get glimpses of the woundrous diversity of the body of Christ. Teams were not merely such, but actually family. To this day I struggle with making small talk... longing instead to see what is truly inside and wanting to feel the freedom to be equally authentic. I am excited for my sister. Of course I do not expect her experiences to be just like mine, but I do expect God to so something wonderful. He works that way:)...