What to pack for your first mission trip, and what to expect

One bag. Most airlines will let you check fifty pounds, and you should be nowhere near it. The girls who over-pack are the ones dragging a suitcase up a gravel road at eleven at night while somebody else carries their pillow.

Pack for five days, no matter how long the trip is. You'll wash things in a sink or a bucket, and so will everybody else. That's normal. The whole team smells like sunscreen and bug spray by Wednesday.

Start with the packing list your leader gave you

Read it twice, then read it again the night before you pack. There's almost always something on it that seems random and turns out to be the most-used item on the trip. A flashlight. A twin sheet. A specific kind of shoe.

If the list says closed-toe shoes for the work site, that's not a suggestion. Sites have nails, rebar, broken concrete, hot roofing tar. A stubbed toe on day one means you sit in the shade for a week watching everyone else work, which is a genuinely miserable way to spend money you spent months raising.

If your church has a dress code for the trip, follow it without arguing. It usually exists because of the community you're visiting, not because of you. In a lot of places, what's completely normal at your school reads as disrespectful to the grandmother whose home you're standing in. You're a guest. Dress like one and nobody thinks about your clothes again all week, which is exactly what you want.

The clothes

Five shirts, two or three bottoms, one thing you'd wear to church, a sweatshirt, and a rain jacket. That's it. Pick fabrics that dry overnight. Cotton takes forever and stays damp and heavy in humidity.

Two pairs of shoes. Work shoes and one other pair. Sandals for the shower if you're in a dorm or a camp.

Pack one outfit and a toothbrush in your carry-on. Bags get delayed. I've watched a girl spend three days in borrowed clothes because her checked bag went to the wrong city, and she was cheerful about it, but she'd have traded a lot for clean socks.

The small stuff that saves your week

• A refillable water bottle, the wide-mouth kind you can actually scrub
• A headlamp or small flashlight, plus spare batteries
• Baby wipes. For hands, face, everything. Worth their weight.
• A roll of duct tape wrapped around a pencil, flat, in your bag
• Work gloves if you're doing construction, and they should fit your hands
• Ziplock bags in two sizes
• A cheap watch, because your phone may live in a locked drawer all week
• A notebook and a pen that works
• Sunscreen and bug spray, both, more than you think If you can, grab a mineral one (zinc oxide), which is gentler on sensitive skin, like Blue Lizard Sensitive Mineral SPF 30 or Thinksport SPF 50, and reapply every two hours.

Medication goes through your parents and your team leader before you leave. All of it, including the stuff you'd never think of, like allergy pills. It stays in the original bottle with your name on it. If you take something daily, tell the leader on day one so somebody besides you knows.

Leave the jewelry home. Not because anything bad will happen, just because losing your grandmother's ring in a river is a sadness you don't need.

Money and paperwork

Copy your passport photo page. One copy in your bag, one with your leader, one photo of it saved with your parents at home. Passports have a way of wandering off exactly once per trip.

Ask your leader how much spending money is appropriate before you pack a dollar. Some trips it's forty dollars for the whole week. Some trips it's nothing, because everything's covered and the team eats together. Showing up with three hundred dollars when nobody else has any is awkward for you and for them.

Small bills. Nobody in a village market can break a fifty.

The first two days are strange and that's fine

You will be tired in a way that feels like being sick. Time change, early wake-ups, heat, new food, sleeping in a room with seven other people who all snore differently. Around day two, a lot of people quietly want to go home.

That feeling passes. Don't make any decisions about how you feel about the trip until Thursday.

Eat what you're given. Drink water constantly, more than at home, and follow whatever the rule is about tap water even for brushing your teeth. Getting sick abroad is boring and it takes you off the field for days.

The work probably isn't what you pictured

You may have imagined something dramatic. What you'll often get is mixing concrete, sorting donations, painting the same wall twice, running the same game with the same kids for four hours until you know the words to a song in a language you don't speak.

That's the job. It's not less holy because it's repetitive. The family that gets a finished roof doesn't care whether the person who carried the shingles felt inspired.

Be useful without being asked. Find the person carrying the heaviest thing and take one end. Learn the names of the local staff on day one and use them. They live there. They were doing this work before your team flew in and they'll be doing it after you leave, and they know things you don't.

The camera question

Ask before you take anyone's photo, especially kids. Every time. If the answer's no, smile and put the phone away.

And think hard before you post a picture of a child you spent two hours with, captioned like you rescued them. Those kids have parents who love them. They're not props for your feed. A good rule from a leader I trust: if you wouldn't take the photo of a stranger's kid in your own neighborhood, don't take it there.

Your team will get on your nerves

Ten people, one bathroom, no air conditioning, nine days. Somebody will be loud at night. Somebody will complain about the food in front of the person who cooked it. You will also, at some point, be the annoying one.

Say the small thing early and kindly, directly to the person. Not to three other girls first. Group trips go sideways when everything gets routed through side conversations instead of one honest sentence.

Two things that aren't negotiable

Never go anywhere alone. Not the store two blocks away, not a walk to clear your head. Buddy system, always, including at home base.

And if anyone at any point makes you uncomfortable — a stranger, a host, a volunteer, someone on your own team — tell your team leader or a chaperone that same day. Not next week. You won't be in trouble, you won't be ruining anything, and you won't be overreacting. If for any reason you can't get to a leader, call your parents. That option never expires, no matter what country you're in or what time it is.

Coming home is the hard part

Nobody warns you about the flat feeling that hits about four days after you land. Everyone at home asks "how was it" and wants a sentence, and you've got a week you can't compress.

Write things down while you're still there. Ten minutes a night, in that notebook you packed. Names, what somebody said, what you hauled, what wrecked you. You'll forget more than you believe you will.

Then find something to do with it at home. The point was never the airport.