missions is where?

What is
it about going overseas, or even just not being home, that makes door-to-door
evangelism feasible? For the most part,
my attitude towards this method of sharing the gospel has been ambivalent
because:

a)      
I
don’t know them, so I’ve nothing to lose; there’s no reputation at stake.

b)      
If
I get rejected, then my first impression is the only impression that they
get. And if the impression they get is
that I’m some sort of stupid crazy Jesus fan, mission accomplished.

God’s
grace has covered me each time we’ve set out for the flats. When people would decline our offer to just
talk about Jesus, it didn’t bother me; like Jay-Z once said, I’d just “brush
the dirt off [my] shoulder” and move on to the next door. The conversations that would follow when
someone did invite us in were not awkward at all. I had no trouble spending half-an-hour just
asking questions and listening and sharing.

Sometimes,
I was able to lead people to Jesus, which is nifty, to say the least. I remember knocking on one door and not being
invited inside but having their attention outside the door. Our audience was a couple of teenage girls
and as I talked, their four year old brother chimed in the conversation. Wow, a little kid that wasn’t afraid to greet
me, hooray!

It seemed
like the girls’ interest was fading, so I began to focus my attention to the
little fella. He was rapt with
attention. Jesus said we need to enter
the kingdom like a little child and I bet this guy is what He had in mind.

And
wouldn’t you know it, as I led him to Christ through prayer I found that his
older sisters also repeated after me. There are other neat encounters I’ve had as I’ve gone from one apartment
to another. Each time we’ve wrapped up
our morning outreach, I feel more energized than when I first began.

This
isn’t very hard after all, I’d think. I’ve
started wondering why I don’t do this back home.

While I
was living in northern Virginia, I’d think about meeting and getting to know my
neighbors but I didn’t make the slightest effort to do so. I’d lived in the same apartment for two years
and not once did I knock on someone’s door just to say hello. Yet here in Africa, without blinking, I’d boldly
ask for a few minutes of a complete stranger’s day so I can introduce them to
Jesus.

Then I
ask myself, “Why don’t I do some door-to-door evangelism when I go back home?”

There’s a
lot of stuff I’ve been doing here that I could be doing when I go back home. .
. visiting the sick and the orphans, feeding the hungry. . . That leads me to conclude that. . . I didn’t
really need to leave in order to do those things, did I?

I think I
already knew the answer to that question. Yet something compelled me to come out here, outside of the comfortable
and familiar. And just now, though I’ve
heard and known this intellectually, I realize that I didn’t go on missions
just to do things.

I left
home to go on a strange kind of holy honeymoon with God. He’s taking me all around the world to love
people, men and women – young and old – and children whom God designated ahead
of time, before I had even heard of the World Race.  Some smarty-pants on our squad said something
along the lines of: to encounter daily
the Divine then become the divine encounter for others is my mission.