Out of Our Comfort Zone

Human nature typically makes us shoot directly for our comfort zone, and here that means always sitting with your friends. So of course, the first thing the adults noticed at breakfast was the table arrangements. It seemed that all kids were in their "home" groups. Kids from the same school, same age, same everything. So we made a new rule - each time you ride the bus or eat a meal you must mix it up and sit with different people. Only a few grumbles but they all know how important it is for a successful trip. For the first time we visited a new area on the island - Eight Mile Rock. It's about a 35 minute drive and for most of us, it's the farthest we've ever had to go on the island at one time, so it seemed to take forever. You see, Grand Bahama is only about 95 miles east to west and 7 miles north to south and everywhere we work is usually only about a 15 minute drive. So even for the veterans, the change in scenery was refreshing. We visited Community Holiness Church, and with the guidance of Jeff Hill, we definitely stepped out of our comfort zone. He asked us a group to separate and sit all over the sanctuary to meet the people of Eight Mile Rock. Not only that, but he stood at the entrance of the church to explain to the congregation members who we were and why we were all over the place. The experience was great. We met a lot of people and the kids did a great job of participating in the service. After church, we headed back to the Chart House, a renovated restaurant that the Raoul and Karen bought as the home base for Karazim Ministries. We spent the afternoon organizing all the donations (thanks Adventure Club), painted part of the building, and cleaned one of the school buses. We ended our day with our small group devotional time. For some members, it's the first time they've been in this type of environment, and opening up to a group of strangers can be a little bit daunting. But from what I've heard so far, the kids really stepped it up and had not problems sharing about their faith. Now that we've been here for a few days, we are all really looking forward to our next step on this trip - getting down and dirty at our project site back in Eight Mile Rock, hopefully stepping our of our comfort zones once again.