Foreign to Familiar

Well, I’m
back. Almost 5 months of squad leading
over in a flash. It seems like just last
week that I was saying goodbye to everyone and heading out on a new adventure
to bring kingdom around the world.

I didn’t
realize that “the world” that I was bringing kingdom to was much more familiar
than I anticipated.

On the
surface, this was a familiar world because four (the Dominican Republic, Haiti,
Thailand, and Cambodia) out of the five (Malaysia was the exception) countries
I visited I had been to before. I got to
revisit several of my contacts and ministries from my own race, which was an
incredible, unexpected blessing. 

Revisiting some of the children I
worked with in the Dominican Republic

I even had
the chance to experience for a second time some of the most beautiful places
this world has to offer.

But what
really made this second time around so familiar, and yet so different at the
same time, was the fact that I spent most of my time focusing on and
ministering to people who speak my same language and eat the same foods and
look the same as I do. 

I guess when
people hear that I’m involved in missions or that I am traveling around the
world doing ministry, the normal assumption would be that I would be facing
things like cultural and language barriers. That I would meet desperate, hurting people living in horrible
conditions. That I would be exposed to
the deep spiritual darkness that often accompanies pain and poverty. And believe me, I did see and experience
those things everywhere that I traveled these last several months, but it
wasn’t just because I was in a Third World country on the other side of the
world.

This time
around, I don’t have as many pictures of me doing the “typical” missions things
like holding babies or feeding orphans. I don’t have as many stories of playing with children who live at the dump or
call the streets their home. 

The stories I
do have are still stories of hurting people who struggle with darkness, pain,
and poverty of spirit. But they are also
stories of hope and redemption and love. They are the individual stories of sixty people who made a choice to
sacrifice their everyday lives to bring kingdom to the world, and in the
process are learning that they need to power of Christ’s love to move just as
powerfully in their own lives. 

That is what
I have been doing for the last few months. The incredible group of men and women on J Squad invited me into their
lives and their stories and allowed me the privilege of being a mentor and a
friend to them. In the process, I was
able to speak truth, sometimes difficult but always beautiful, into their
hearts. I was able to call out their
identity in Christ, that for many of them has been hidden or distorted by lies
for so long, and call them into greater things. I loved them unconditionally, in the midst of their struggles and
despite their rough edges. In order for
them to truly love the women in the brothels in Thailand or the orphans on the
street in Haiti, they have to have experienced that love themselves. They have to know that they are fully loved
by the Father and that he loves the people they are ministering to just as
deeply. But for so many of them, that
has always been some far off “churchy” phrase rather than a truth experienced
and lived out.

And as God
used me as a messenger of truth and love to these men and women, they began to
walk in new found freedom and have become even more effective ministers of
God’s love, truth, grace, and freedom. 

My life for
the last few months has been story after story of having one-on-ones with
people or just sitting with someone as they process or cry or listening to
their questions. I got to visit teams
and sit down with individuals just like you and me and help them find freedom
in their stories (their very personal stories that aren’t mine to write about,
but many of them have shared on their own blogs, and I would encourage you to
check them out.)

And I loved
every minute of it. Squad leading was
probably one of the most difficult, challenging things I have ever done. Everything about it involved people and
relationships and real life problems and issues, none of which had easy answers
or clean solutions to tidy up the loose ends. But it was also one of the most enjoyable, satisfying things I have ever
done. To be able to really invest in so
many people, to call them up to be better people, and to watch them grow
tremendously right before my eyes-well, it’s a blessing and a privilege that I
will always be thankful for.

Their journey
hasn’t stopped just because I’ve left. My co-leaders, Chelsea, Phillip, and I passed our mantle of
responsibility and leadership on to three amazing people who are going to lead
this squad into even greater things than we did. 

Becky, me, Claire, Chelsea, Robert