Last week, I went with 20 students and 5 adults on a ministry trip to New York and Maryland. It was a neat week, full of cool experiences. Here is the first of two posts on Top Ten Lessons Learned during Spring Break 2014:

10. Be ready for anything. The high temperature in Louisville on March 30, the day we left, was 60 degrees. On that same day, we had to drive through a snowstorm in Pennsylvania.

9. Don’t get in the wrong lane when trying to drive through Manhattan. I did. At rush hour. And got stuck in the bus lane, trying to get through the Lincoln Tunnel. It was 20 minutes of life I will never get back, sitting in the wrong lane like I was some kind of tourist or something.

8. You can do some really cool things with yarn. We “yarn-bombed” a chain-line fence at the place where my sister’s church meets in New York City. It gave life to a small piece of Manhattan, got people curious, and hopefully pointed people to a place where life happens. Because shouldn’t life happen at church, no matter where that church meets?

7. No big cities have enough parking. Ever. While in New York, we spent a lot of time driving or avoiding potholes (wait, that’s essentially the same thing). And then, when we would get to our destination, we’d have to look for parking. On one of those occasions, we returned at the end of the day to pick up our vans, only to find out that the parking garage was closed. But how can they close a parking garage in the City That Never Sleeps?

6. Teenagers love their phones. They love their phones. I think, if given the choice between losing a few digits and losing their phones, they would let go of the fingers first. As long as they could keep their thumbs for texting.

5. We are a country with some amazing cities, and God is doing some pretty cool stuff in them. Our group rode the Staten Island Ferry, strolled along Fifth Avenue, and enjoyed some New York style bagels. We walked the National Mall in DC, got a personalized tour at the Naval Academy, and enjoyed time in the Federal Hill district of Baltimore. Even cooler, though, was getting to sample the ways God’s kingdom is at work in the city. At Community Christian Church in NYC, Hispanics worship alongside Filipinos, and white folk share communion with black folk. The Foundry is a new church plant rooted in service in the heart of Baltimore. And Revolution Church is reaching folks in Annapolis. God hasn’t given up on our cities; neither should we!

These are five lessons from my spring break trip. I’ll plan to share the next five in an upcoming post.