The hot white stage lights blinded us as we looked forward toward the enormous crowd. Hundreds of people stood cheering, whistling, and clapping.
To See Your Kingdom Come – Brian Campbell
It was surreal.
Had we really made it? Had it really happened? Had I really lost soooo much and gained soooooo much more? Dezuwan Davila shouted out my name with several others. They screamed how proud they were of us, they praised God. For the people in the audience it was a simple moment but for us it was a celebration of so much more than anyone but the young missionaries and staff realized. The twelve of us stood brothers and sisters having made it through one of the most unique journeys on this Earth. It had been two years since we started our pilgrimage on this very same stage…
Last month all of us arrived from our time overseas and reunited this January for the Word of Life Missions Conference. It was an awesome time of seeing old friends, remembering glory days and getting in trouble. Well, good trouble. I felt so uplifted and encouraged by God’s work throughout the world and especially in the states. It was the culmination of two years for most. Three years for me.
Flashback to January 2011.
I stood at the Jack Wrytzen Assembly Center in Pottersville, New York before an incredible group of sold out christians who were on fire for Jesus. College kids and ministers, some famous and some who deserve to be famous. We were being commissioned as missionaries for a new program where one travels overseas for two years and works with Word of Life. Not knowing what the future would hold our small but strong group looked out toward the sea of faces. They slowly rose and gave a standing ovation, moved at seeing a group of young men and woman dedicated enough to give two years of life to the cause of missions.
January 2013.
Same stage.
We stood in front of many of the same people, many new faces as well. Close friends, family really. Yet unlike last time where we looked ahead to a hard future of work and labor. We looked back at success. At changed lives. At brokeness and mistakes, victory and healing. In the crowd was not just faces. It was people like Paul who decided to become a Christian in Taiwan. Kim who came from Asia to the cold wintery land to study the word of God. Nikki and Betsy who went to Korea and then America in order to deeply understand the bible. They looked back at us. The fruit of so many sleepless nights, tossing and turning, loneliness, suffering, and abandonment. Lives changed by the small people in front of them. Changed by the people who gave support in prayer and money to the missionaries on stage. It was surreal to know we had really made a difference. God had made a difference.
We are so little yet Christ used us so much.
The next night at the missions conference I would read Paul’s testimony of how he got saved at our school in Taiwan where I had the privilege of being his bible teacher. I would watch him walk up front and give his life to God in support of missions. I would watch years of my life have tangible, physical, living and breathing, human meaning.
I bawled like a small child.
I think in someways it was a taste of what heaven is like. The celebration. The looking back on the great things God has done. The whole weekend was this incredible moment of seeing community and the body of Christ function. So often heaven is this joykill thought of harps and clouds. Yet if heaven is a group of friends so close and so in love with God together like I experienced there. Heaven will already be so much better than anything on this Earth.
It’s so strange what we trade for Earth. I would never trade the look in Paul’s eyes as he said that he would serve God with his life, I would never trade it for the money and thrills of this present world. Yet so often we do that! It’s hard to keep our eye on the rewards of living for Christ. I was so blessed to be able to see what I saw that cold snowy weekend.
There are so many memories and moments.
Meeting Evan the Canadian. I’m starting to like Canada. That’s a big deal for me. Being reunited with Dale, the best of men. Cheering Charity on as she leaves the country and prepares for Taiwan. Talking to Dale, Kyle and Chris as we played Halo 4. It sounds so lazy, but we lived without TV for the last two years. Stopping at every dorm on the way home because it was cold, waking up students and saying “Hi!” Training with the new class about to be sent out. Catching up with the best people and friends I have ever known. Bumming a ride with Joe Trimble all the way to New York. Growing out a nasty mustache. Talking with Matt, Micah, and Ryan. Overall it was just an awesome time.
Some thoughts I learned about… Fear and shame dictate our sharing of the gospel, we need to change that. Anyone can complain. We need people who instead look for solutions rather than problems. I learned a ton. Too much to keep up with!
I love life and I love God. It was the end of my last trip. The debriefing, the finishing of things, the wrapping up. Now I am ready for the next phase of life as I prepare for The World Race!
