Expectations of My Mission Trip

Last Friday I had the pleasure of having lunch with a good friend I met on one of my mission trips to Acuña. Helen, a Spanish translator like me, entertained me with her many missionary stories and experiences. We were laughing so hard that people around us were looking at us. With envy?  Maybe. But hey, they could’ve joined in if they wanted! J

I appreciate Helen’s openness in sharing her missionary adventures.  As she was sharing, passion for the World Race began to grow in me. I hope to meet again soon with Helen in the very near future to learn more of her life story. Same with those I will be venturing off with on this World Race. I hope to cultivate long-lasting relationships with my team members (my spiritual family for the 11-month journey), with friends I make in other countries, and with co-laboring organizations “over there.”

Helen shared a story about a medical mission trip she took to a border town in Mexico that was organized differently than her previous ones. On this particular trip, schedules seemed flexible and the harvesters laid-back. BUT there was one structured assignment that her group had to complete:  permeate the neighborhood and tell people about the free medical clinic open for the next 2 days. SHAZAAM! Helen and her team split off, running apart from the other teams’ regions to cover their own piece of territory. Mind you, it was 7:00 p.m. when this task was assigned, and it was already getting dark, yet the teams were determined to go house to house to let people know. As one of only two translators on her team, Helen worried about her team’s safety because she remembered reading a tip sheet handed out by their mission trip coordinator: “Do NOT go to dimly lit areas!” And here was her team, wandering through dark alleys. Great. But in the distance, the team heard voices and laughter.  Following the voices, lo and behold they arrived at a house where a small group of believers were in the yard praying and singing in Spanish. ALLELUIA! Helen, ecstatic, recognized their Spanish words and she shared the blessing with her team. Helen’s team joined the small group gathered in the front yard of that house and prayed and praised the Lord together. What a glorious night! 

After hearing that amazing story, I can only hope to be open to the Holy Spirit’s leading, too, while on the World Race. I expect the World Race to instill in me and my team the importance of being flexible. Gracious. Merciful. What would represent Christ better, since we have no control over time or circumstances? Here is our chance to tune our ears to hear God’s gentle whisper and to tune our hearts to the Holy Spirit’s leading, in our obedience giving God His rightful throne. If we practice that attitude, we can only expect that blessing upon blessing be poured out on us from the windows of Heaven during our 11-month journey and beyond. What we sow we will also reap!

Helen used another mission trip story to remind me to expect uncomfortable living quarters. Ugh. My friend had to live in a painful variety of living quarters over the years, some tolerable but others unbearable. On one mission trip she took to Mexico, she stayed at a house with only one small bedroom (about 400 sq. feet) that had 9 bunk beds with her 12-member mission group. Cramp conditions. The house had no electricity and no running water. The outhouse was a hole in the ground a few feet from the house. The extreme temperatures showed no mercy on those who showed mercy. By the Lord’s mercy, however, after only a couple of days Helen lived the remainder of the trip as though she was native to that area.

I know first-hand, from my medical mission trip to San Blas, Panama, in October 2008, some of what Helen felt: uncomfortable living quarters, no running water, no electricity, outhouse fixtures, the whole deal. Our shower – a bowl to draw clean water from a monkey’s barrel in our outhouse.  Our outhouse – an outta sea experience – a hole in a 4X4 board that sat over the ocean water below.  I still remember the sticky, hot nights, no breeze coming into our crowded room, sharing tent space with another person. In everything give thanks, right? Thankfully such conditions didn’t distract me from the reason for being there: to help the Kuna people get the medical and dental care they needed as I translated for the doctors and the dentist. God is my Strength and my Song, my Salvation! In the same way, whatever living-quarters haunts me during the World Race, I desire that God use them to remind me why I chose to take this journey. To remind me why He called me out:  “… to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all I have commanded you.” May I finish the race strong, Lord Jesus!

Speaking of mission and calling. . .What I am about to say is major, so please hear me on this. Are you ready? Reading my World Race blogs may bring an epinephrine excitement to those going to the mission field – especially if it’s to a country you have never seen, to serve a people group you have never met, to operate in a society where norms are different. But isn’t there a dreadful fear that lurks in your mind, that clenches your heart? The dreadful fear of persecution? I may be bold to say this, but I sense an urgent need to prepare mentally and spiritually for the trip ahead. God doesn’t wear rose-colored glasses, and this world is on a downward spiral from the consequences of humankind’s sin. Yours, mine, and everyone in between. If Christ suffered for being perfect – for humility, for truthfulness, for loving the brokenhearted, for caring for the weak, for healing the sick, for rescuing the downtrodden, for being who He claimed to be (ahem, the Messiah) – are we, His disciples, His followers, His adopted ones, going to escape suffering and persecution? I hope not. Jesus said to His disciples, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.  If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (John 15:17-19). On the other hand, Jesus said, “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets” (Luke 6:22-23). Dear friends, I’m not a bearer of bad news.  Persecution is a hard fact of reality; it is inevitable. But, rather, I’m a bearer of good news: it is only temporal!  Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward for ETERNITY!

For those who are reading this blog, here’s what I ask that you do for me:

Please pray that I focus on Jesus’ eternal perspective, that His words strengthen me as they encouraged His disciples, and that I perpetually have on my lips the words rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven! When my team and I suffer persecution during our travels to other countries and our service to their citizens, my hope is that we would strengthen our bonds one believer to another and encourage each other with the words above, and as well as with these words: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12-13). Pray that God daily gives us the blessing of such an outlook. Thank you!