Traveling with over 40 other people to a foreign country is many things, but I never pictured it to be an amazing part of ministering and loving on others. I thought that’s what the World Race is for- the orphanages, the church plants, the impoverished villages- they’re the ones who I am going on this trip for.
Or so I thought until God gave me an amazing opportunity at thousands of feet in the air.
Most of my squad traveled together to our first country- Ecuador- by first going from launch in Atlanta on a flight to Miami. You know the drill; check-in lines, hoping my pack doesn’t exceed the weight limit at the weigh station (it didn’t!), stuffy security lines, and seemingly losing everything important such as your ID right before someone official needs to check it. After a short lay-over we got on our international flight to Quito and I was sandwiched between a girl on my squad and a man who I didn’t know who seemed to be quiet. I was exhausted from not sleeping as we had spent the night in the airport and I just wanted to nap the whole time since I had no idea what the rest of the day was going to look like in Ecuador. It all started to hit me on this flight too- that I really am leaving for a year and that I have no idea what is going to happen; where I am going to live, what I will be doing, where I will be, or even where we were headed that very day once we arrived in Ecuador. I was pretty much caught in a funk of sleep-deprived stupidity and filled with butterflies.
But yet this is the time that God chose to use me.
Nothing all that exciting happened for the first couple of hours; I tried and failed at sleeping and talked to Melissa my squadmate. Then, when we were eating dinner, the man next to me spoke for the first time to say something about the ridiculous sodium content in his juice and somehow this opened the door up for further small talk. I hate small talk. It is a necessary evil, but I am terrible at it and it just sucks the life out of me, but Melissa was wonderful and was able to ask competent and normal questions.
Turns out this man was on his way to a retreat in the Andes outside of Quito that was supposed to give some sort of spiritual experience through ‘finding yourself’ and finding peace through meditation and drugs. He had to prepare himself for the retreat with a certain diet and was desperately searching for peace and to make something of his life. He had a daughter at home that he wanted to be a better father for and spoke of trying to find something better and be a better version of himself. He had sought out peace and joy through traveling as a truck driver to see new places and told of his regrets and bitterness for not attending college.
These things had all failed him and he was desperately searching for help.
I wanted so badly to share with this man the hope, peace, and joy I had found in God and that his searching could be over if only he would turn to Jesus. I prayed- I was nervous and didn’t know what to say or when the right time was. I wasn’t even on foreign soil yet- to me it felt as if the race hadn’t started and I certainly didn’t feel like a missionary. Through all of this doubt and a bit of internal panic I asked God what His plan was for this man.
And God revealed it.
Oddly enough the moment God asked me to share with this man is when my squadmate was gone for a bit- no one there to carry on the small talk. The door to an incredibly deep conversations was opened by him asked what my major was in college. I was so nervous about what to say now that I was alone, but instead he asked the first question. When I answered Psychology he completely opened up about his past and hopelessness and how he is just grasping for anything that will help make him want to live again. I was then able to share about a personal part of my story about depression and being suicidal and how God was the only thing that gave me hope and the will to live again even though I never thought I would be the ‘religious’ type. He said that’s exactly what he wanted and I continued to share about how I had to come to accept Jesus as my savior an about the Bible and its history and beauty since he had expressed an interest in history earlier.
He was excited and looked me in the eye for the first time for more than a second and told me that he would have to look into it when he got home.
So much was happening in about the span of 10 minutes that I didn’t even know what to do. I didn’t have a tract, I didn’t have a survey to get the conversation started, in fact I didn’t even think through a transition to the Gospel at all- it just happened. I asked God what His plan was for this particular man and He allowed me to be a part of it even though I wasn’t a bit prepared.
He may not have accepted Christ then and there and became a Christian, but often we are only one small step down an entire path of things that draw someone to God- sometime we are the first inch and sometimes we are the last.
When the plane landed, Melissa and I asked if we could pray for him then and there and he agreed. He said that he could use all the help he could get and when we had finished told us that it was beautiful and thanked us. As we went our different ways I realized that I may never see this man again or know what path his life did take or be able to help him understand the bible, but I do know that God spoke clearly to the both of us through this experience.
The World Race is actually pretty easy to go through without sharing the Gospel all that often- we are usually helping with things such as construction work, programs, and caring for people. Some ministries are specifically based on evangelism, but you don’t have control of who you are placed with. God showed me that you truly need to be aware of everyone around you and be ready to respond in love- that woman on the street selling goods, the child you are playing soccer with, or even that man next to you on the plane. Ministry doesn’t start when you walk into a certain building just as you aren’t only a Christian at certain times. There are always people around you in need of love and God is always with you to guide you as how to do that best.
Before I even got to my very first country, God reminded me that this year is all about Him; every place, every person, and every moment.
