Posted in Bolivia: High School trip by Jordan McGuffin on 6/19/2011
 

"Its the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."-Crash-

My friend Kelly Chadwick (If you don’t know who she is yet, you will one day, because she is leaving a huge mark on this world) Anyway Kelly introduced me to some new terminology recently. She came up with the phrase skin craving, “A psychological term to describe the body’s need for physical touch. When the need becomes great enough, we fill it by subconsciously brushing against other people in order to fill the craving.”

I have the privilege and HONOR, to go to Bolivia with a group of 12 high school students tomorrow. We have been at a training camp for almost a week now, and what I am seeing in myself, in my co-leaders, and in my 12 students are "skin cravings" physical and spiritual. There has been a huge lack of physical touch, spiritual touch, physical love, and spiritual love in this group of students.

I get the opportunity to be that touch in so many of their lives over the next three weeks. Where people have left them, where people have avoided them, where peers have made fun of them, I am coming in to run to them and stay, intentionally “bump” into them, and build them up with the words their Heavenly Father speaks over them. Each of my students has a huge calling on their life. Each one has a destiny. Each one is needed.Each one is God’s Plan A! Each one has something to offer this world. I believe in them, but more importantly they are going to discover just how much God believes in them!

I have only known this group for about three days, and already something has come ALIVE in me that I didn’t even know was dead. There is apart of me that is more ALIVE than ever before. There has not been a better season in my life, than right now! These students have A LOT to do with that. I think in the deepest part of me I had a craving. On the surface it was a skin craving, but on the deepest part of my soul I had a spiritual craving for something more, to feel something more. These next three weeks are going to launch us into the depths of God’s love. I know that we are about to CRASH into what our souls are CRAVING.