My Dominican Mission Trip Experience

My name is Quincy Egwu, and I’m a 16-year-old junior at Glenview Adventist Academy. I was born in Phoenix, Arizona, but Glendale is my home. I was also born into the Seventh-day Adventist church. I went on a trip like this to Ghana in May of 2007, so I knew what this was like. I wasn’t really planning to go on this trip to the Dominican Republic due to costs and expenses, even though I did want to go. Then one day the principal, Mr. Martin, came and requested that I go on this trip. If I went I would get $1500 of my school tuition paid off, which is insane. So I accepted this offer, and the next thing you know, I’m on my way to the Dominican Republic! It really seemed like God wanted me to go because, like I said, I wasn’t planning to go on this trip at all. Well, while I’ve been here, I have made lots of new friends with the students from Thunderbird and with people from the Dominican. I can also really enjoy myself here, too, since the Caribbean is my favorite place to be.

When I first got to my church, I felt like I was ready since I had some experience, but I was not prepared for what was about to happen. While I was preaching about Daniel 2, I wasn’t even half way done yet when my laptop suddenly turned off. The battery died, and I couldn’t find my charger. So now I had a choice to make. I could either walk off and let my translator finish the sermon for me, or I could wrap it up the best way I knew possible. So I prayed to God to help guide me and chose the second option and decided to stay and finish the sermon the best way possible. I actually did pretty good for preaching without notes for the first time and the people got the message. Thank God! After the meeting, I found my charger somewhere in my laptop case. I probably didn’t find it there before because I was panicking, but I think God hid it from me, so I could learn to depend on him. Before that I was feeling confident in myself because of the experience I had in Ghana, so I didn’t let God have as much control as he needed over the message. So, I learned a lesson. It was a small miracle, but since then, the meetings have been getting much better.

I’m depending on the Holy Spirit more, so the sermon is coming out more powerful than ever and we are over achieving. At first, we had a small congregation of 20, but now we have much closer to 40. So we have about doubled in numbers; God has continued to bless us. Then we had four baptisms the other day, so that’s even more reason praise to God. Like I said before, I had already been on a mission trip prior to this, so I am building on my experience and my knowledge of God. This is a life changing experience, so I would advise anyone that if they have a chance to go on a mission trip and preach, to do it. It will change your life for the better, it changed mine. I never used to talk in front of people at all. In fact, I was kind of quiet before. But now I am more social and more assertive, so I can speak in front of anyone. I also have a greater understanding of the Bible. I’m not even afraid to die anymore because I know the truth about death being just a sleep until Jesus comes. I now know what’s more important in life. So if you have the opportunity to go on these trips, then take it. I can guarantee you 100% that you will be thankful that you went.