With our commitment to the house project done and having already visited half the continent, you would have thought all that was left for us was to sit back and relax till it was time to go home. Well, you would be half right. The last event on our agenda that week was a day at the Pacific Ocean beach resort. While we there, we were free to play in the ocean, walk along the beach, take surfing lessons, or just sit back and relax in the hammocks and read our favorite book while enjoying in the tropical breeze.

But we before we left and did any of that, our trip organizers wanted us to have one last group reflection, to share what we felt during the week, to share our most memorable experiences, and how we planned to prevent throwback (an act of forgetting our experiences and to return to our daily lives unaltered). My lasting impressions for the week included a better awareness of how some charities can inadvertently be more hurtful that helpful, how fortunate that our country’s children are to be able to afford an good education, how fortunate I am to have a roof over my head even if I think it is small, and how much I can really accomplish in one day. My throwback prevention took the form of my daily journals that I have been sketching throughout the week. I explained to group that I was writing a book (which would later become a blog), and I was writing down all of my tasks, deeds, and feelings from that week. That way I could never forget what happened and everyone who reads my work can see what I saw and experienced what I’ve felt. Perhaps I could even inspire a new generation of mission trippers through my stories.