Free Found in Translation by Roger Bruner Page A

we lowered ourselves to the ground. The blanket draped over my shoulders like a flag on the casket at a military funeral. “We’ll pray.”
    She didn’t ask if I wanted to. She took for granted that prayer was the only cure for my mood. I was going to learn a lot from this girl.
    So we cleared enough litter to kneel in the dirt and started talking to God. Although I don’t recall our prayer time completely, I remember begging God for peace and contentment. And thanking Him for His forgiveness.
    I felt like He and I were looking at each other—eyeball to eyeball—and I imagined Him saying,
People despised and rejected My Son, too. Let Him help you with your rejection.
    We prayed for the other team members the way Jesus prayed for His enemies. “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” But at least my enemies weren’t putting me to death. Not yet, anyhow.
    Amen.
    Once we got back to our sleepsite, Aleesha couldn’t stay awake long enough to help me unfold my blanket. I was just glad she spotted it. Watching that dark lump cuddled in a nearby Tweety-covered sleeping bag with her face turned heavenward and her mouth curled into a smile couldn’t have been more reassuring.

chapter thirteen
    W ith Aleesha asleep, I was stuck with my own company. Exhaustion tended to make me irrational and pessimistic, but I’d never experienced those problems so profoundly.
    My depression came back big-time. It was like Aleesha and I hadn’t prayed at all.
    While flapping my borrowed blanket to unfold it, I responded to each loud report of the material with an unspoken curse. The wool felt rough and stiff after years of confinement in some long-forgotten closet or drawer—that’s how I pictured it, anyhow—and the mothball stench was a noxious gas contaminating air that had been pure a moment earlier.
    Why hadn’t the donor used a sweet-smelling cedar chest instead?
    When I was about to conclude she’d sewed the blanket shut as a cruel joke, it billowed to its fullest, and I spread it out on the ground. While waiting to see if the mothball vapors would make me barf or pass out, I wondered if I dared to sleep on it.
    Although the stink would eventually dissipate in the open air, I didn’t expect it to happen tonight. What could possibly make my life more unbearable on the first day of a “life-changing” mission trip? Pastor Ron hadn’t warned me that “life-changing” might mean “life-giving.”
    Kim Hartlinger, what are you doing in Mexico? What really? Will this trip be the second ministry of your summer to go sour?
    I felt sorry for myself, and I detested that, but I couldn’t turn off the negative feelings. Where was that sense of peace God had given me half an hour earlier?
    I dropped to my knees on top of the blanket—not to pray this time, but to lie back and try to unwind.
    I landed faster and harder than I’d meant to. My right knee buckled under me, and I did a shoulder roll onto my back, jarring my head so hard on a rock hidden beneath the blanket that I thought my upper and lower teeth had jammed together permanently.
    I bolted upright so fast my equilibrium went haywire. I covered my mouth with both hands to keep from saying several of my choicest swear words more than once.
    Antagonizing the other girls more than I already had, especially in the middle of the night after such a long, exhausting day, wouldn’t win me any points. As much at fault as I’d been, I needed to act civil—no matter what they thought of me.
    Or I of them.
    These eighteen-year-olds weren’t like the kids back home. I’d been naive enough to expect them to be similar—despite our denominational differences. Well, so much for love and forgiveness within the Christian family.
    Christian unity? What’s that, Rob and Charlie?
    As I sat on the blanket nursing my injuries, I breathed a quick prayer of thanks that my un-Christlike language apparently hadn’t awakened anyone, and then I added three