Part of me felt going to the missions field would lead to some glorious adventure. I felt for some reason that crossing borders means God is suddenly more powerful. Life on the mission field is not some hyped up vacation where God moves more. It’s simply living out the Gospel in a new way.
Trust me there is nothing holy or glorious about puking your guts out your first day in a new country. Luckily God doesn’t need us to be perfect and holy people, he just needs us to be open to following him. For the most part life here is really simple. In fact life in Peru is far simpler than in the states.
It typically looks like doing daily things in love. God has continually laid 1 Corinthians 13 on my spirit.
“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”
There is so much to unpack there. I realize that I haven’t prayed miracle healing over someone. I can’t preach eloquent sermons, in fact I can’t hardly speak to these people. I haven’t seen a mountain fall flat, however I’ve gotten numerous chances to love.
It’s amazing what God does through that. The way I love is somehow changing the lives of people. Sure I haven’t seen lame people walk yet. I haven’t sat in a packed out church, but I’ve seen people come to Christ.
It’s the perfect love of God that is changing the world. Don’t ever feel that what you’re doing doesn’t have an impact. Don’t feel that because you’re not capable of preaching fancy sermons or praying up a storm that you can’t change the world. God took me away from everything I’ve known, and placed me in a spot where I sometimes feel incapable just to show me how simple it is.
Following God isn’t easy, but it’s simple.
Below I included some pictures to show you what day to day life looks like, and so you can understand a little bit more of what ministry looks like.
