Country Roads Take Me Home

Scripture: Deuteronomy 31:8

Décor

Placed toy cars on the roadmaps as the centerpieces. Roadmaps can be found at AAA or print online from Google maps. If doing a place setting, use maps printed on 8.5×11 or legal-size paper as placemats.

Provide each woman with a travel journal to record their notes and tips. This can be an inexpensive notebook from the dollar store. Fun stickers, pens, and markers to personalize their journals are an excellent bonus. Through this program there will be opportunities for women to contribute to their travel journals in preparation for future trips.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Date of trip
• Location – where are you going
• Top three memories
• Favorite food, favorite restaurant
• Who I met
• A mishap

Snacks

Ask each woman to bring her favorite road trip snack to share. If looking for a more substantial meal, just switch it to favorite road trip meal. For example, our favorite road trip snack is meat and cheese. We make a mobile charcuterie board! For favorite meal, I love stopping at Cracker Barrel on road trips and I always get the chicken and dumplings. Consider providing a small charcuterie board or a crockpot of chicken and dumplings.

This is a great way of collecting snack ideas for your next road trip! Encourage the women to take notes in their “travel journals.”

Icebreaker #1

Take turns sharing about your most memorable road trip. This could be memorable for a good reason or memorable for all the wrong reasons. Women can note in their “travel journals” tips they learn from each other’s stories.

Icebreaker #2

Ask each person to share their dream road trip. Where would they go, what time of year, and who would it be with?

Icebreaker #3

Provide simple black and white maps of the state, the country, and the world along with colored pencils. Ask the women to color in places they visited on the map. On the state map, you might ask them to draw a small picture or write a couple words about what they did in each location. This will provide opportunity for your world travelers and your homebodies to share and participate equally.

Game

Road trips can go a lot quicker when you’re having fun! Check out this link for a great list of road trip games. Share the whole list or just a few games with your group. Then choose one game to try out together.

https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/family/relationships/couples-road-trip-games

Road Trip Tips

One of the best sources for road trip tips is each other. Using a giant notepad or whiteboard make categories and designate a scribe. For very large groups, break them into tabletop groups so more people have a chance to share.

Categories can include things like:

• Packing tips
• Favorite pit stops
• How to find the best bathrooms
• Best places to road trip through

Here’s one of my tips: For bathrooms, we try to plan stops at Starbucks or Target. These provide opportunity for a snack break and a leg stretch. When our kids were with us, we try to find rest stops that have playgrounds or big grassy areas where they can run around for a bit. If we had enough time, I’d try to plan pitstops in advance to include fun destinations and viewpoints so it provides something more to look forward to and break up the trip.

Craft

Design a dream road trip! Collect a variety of old magazines. Provide scissors, glue sticks, and card stocks. Each woman could cut out pictures that represent a dream road trip or destination to them. They should keep going until the entire page is full. Then the women can take turns sharing about their collage. These can be as fun and outlandish as they like, maybe even a road trip to outer space!

Scripture

Deuteronomy 31:8 “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” (NIV)

The Ultimate Road Trip

The Israelites had been on the ultimate road trip. After some not so good choices, some spiritual wrong turns, their trip had been expanded into a forty-year wandering. Now they were finally nearing their destination—the Promise Land.

It’s here in Deuteronomy 31 that they also learn of Moses’ successor. Moses has been their leader for so long; the only leader they’ve had besides Aaron, the high priest. It was Moses who brought them out of Egypt, but it will not be Moses who brings them into the Promise Land. That will be Joshua, Moses’ assistant.

Moses had assembled all the Israelites, brought Joshua to the front, and spoke these words over them. Deuteronomy 31:8 “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” (NIV). The road trip would look very different going forward. They were entering unknown territory into a land filled with an unknown people with a leader who was much less known to them than Moses had been. It could have been a terrifying time.

And yet they were called to be courageous because while much was changing, the mapmaker was the same. God had been with them in the desert. He had not abandoned them in their wandering, and He would not abandon them now. Joshua and the Israelites could be courageous because ultimately it was God going before them and alongside them. They were not alone.

Very few of us know what the future holds. Perhaps it seems your road trip has taken a turn into the unknown. Maybe God is calling you to move forward into places and spaces you haven’t ventured before. Or maybe it just seems like nothing is going the way you have planned. You do all the right things, but it just never works out in your favor. Don’t give up. Continue to be courageous, following the Lord, walking in His ways as He maps the course. We serve a God who is the ultimate mapmaker, and He loves us more than enough to not lead us astray. This is not a God who will forget you in the dessert or lead you down paths where He will not go with you. Not only is He the mapmaker, but He’s also the best road trip companion. So, take courage on this road trip of a lifetime and enjoy the ride.