YNIA 2017 Tucson Trip Blog

                 The trip to Tucson, Arizona for the 2017 YNIA trip is my second YNIA Mission trip, and it has lived up to all expectations, and then some. Every part of the trip is great, making every second of the day the best it can possibly be. My site this week is at the Yaqui Reservation in Tucson, and my group's job is to repaint a Religious Education Center located on the Reservation. Most of us in the group probably thought that the task would be worthless and just a time filler, when we first read the email the week prior. Little did we know that we would be indirectly impacting a lot of both adult and children's lives. We directly worked with three wonderful people; Veronica, Maria, and Francisco. All three work at the Religious Ed. Center, and all have made the job enjoyable and fun to be around. I never thought that I would have so much fun sweating through shirts while endlessly rolling paint on a seemingly never-ending wall. I have learned a lot from the surrounding people at the site, whether it is my group, Veronica, Maria, Francisco, or even the people walking by leaving compliments. The main thing I have learned from these surrounding people is to leave judgement behind, and try to see the best in every person you meet. There is no need to judge people by the way they look, talk, or the way they live their lives, as it only prevents relationships like the ones that we have made this week. We were sent to Tucson for a reason, and that reason is to spread the message that there is no place in this world for misleading judgment, but there is always room for new relationships, like the ones that we made with everyone we encountered. Who would have thought that painting a building in the sweltering one hundred ten degree heat would have joined us YNIA members closer to both the people of Tucson and God? I have a feeling there were not a lot of people thinking that as we were grouped around in the parking lot at 2:45 in the morning last on Sunday. As we now approach coming full circle in a few days, I believe many people, including myself, now know that God does work in special ways, as we experienced in Tucson this week.