My First Mission Trip

 

I said it on Sunday, and I'll say it again. It's an honor to be a part of a church that is getting its hands dirty doing the work of the ministry. Last week, we had our second annual Missions Week, where we invited all of our ministry partners to our Missions Sunday service, an after-church lunch, and our Missions Gala on Sunday night. If you missed the Sunday Service, click here to see the sermon titled Here I Am.

Then on Wednesday, we gathered during our regular weekly prayer meeting and spent the evening laying hands on and praying for each of our ministry partners.  Afterward, we headed to our Adopt-a-Mission night, which consisted of another dinner whipped up by one of the two professional chefs who attend this church. 

Click the picture above to see a video of one of our mission partners, Bishop Chola, teaching a room full of Americans how to show honor the Kenyan way. Or you can click here for the same video. 

Also above is a picture from the prayer night. You'll see Ray and Diana DeBord, receiving prayer for Kairos Prison Ministry. They were not able to attend the Sunday morning services during missions week because they were actually in a maximum security prison ministering to 42 inmates last Sunday. 

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In my sermon from Sunday, I mentioned that missions ministry has the power to change a person. In the course of my Christian life, that has definitely been the case. I recently found a picture of my two younger brothers, my grandpa, and me on our first mission trip back in what was probably 1999 or 2000. We traveled by half-broken-down bus with no AC to a border town that I have forgotten the name of. My grandpa went as a translator, since he spoke Spanish. The photo is bittersweet to see at the moment, since my grandpa passed away only two weeks ago. 

On this trip, we visited an orphanage and ministered to the kids there. I wasn't much of a minister at the time, but I knew the basics: "Jesús te ama, y murió en la cruz por tus pecados." 

The first thing this trip taught me was that the world is bigger than I thought it was. It taught me that people live very differently in other parts of the world. The food is different. The cultures are different. The toilet facilities are different! But as different as the world is from place to place, it's clear that people are the same when it comes down to it. Everyone is trying to carve out an existence, and God is the one who makes that existence into something worthwhile.

From left: Daniel, (some Mexican kid), Dustin, Gilbert, Nathan Aguilar

On this trip, I mostly just remember staying at an orphanage for two days and basically just hanging around with the kids. I ate with them. I slept in their bunk room (I was a kid myself at the time), and I helped with their daily chores. I remember having a horrifying experience using the restroom in the middle of the night and finding the entire room filled with cockroaches! Not one of my favorite moments. I remember one of the leaders sharing the gospel, and my grandpa translating. The guy sharing the gospel was a bit long-winded, and I remember my poor grandpa struggling to translate for what seemed like a solid hour and a half. I remember giving the kids a bunch of cheap kites that we had probably picked up from a dollar store in the USA. The kites broke instantly, but I remember the kids playing with the mangled kite remains, dragging them around by the string. 

I remember a woman from a neighborhood coming to the group in tears, asking for a "man of God" to come to her house to pray for her bed-ridden son to be healed. My church was all about felt boards and vacation bible schools, but we didn't talk about healing at all. I had never even heard that healing was a thing, but when that lady came up to the group and dragged the men to her house, I thought, "This makes sense. God is God after all. I wonder why we don't pray for sick people back in the USA."