The Greatest Mystery of Mission Trips

It’s funny, really, the things we take for granted – the things we don’t realize are truly special.

I’ve had VBS every summer I can remember, and each time, there were plenty of kids and volunteers to help and participate in this event.

The church my team partnered with in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico wasn’t going to be able to have a VBS this year. They had 15 children who wanted to attend, but no volunteers to run it. So my team, joined with a team from Indiana, spent our ministry days running their VBS at la Iglesia de la Restauracion de Integral.

Everyone in the church was so excited to have us there. They kept thanking us over and over. I’ve helped run a VBS before, but I’ve never see a group so excited and grateful for its volunteers, from the kids to the pastor’s family. Everyone just kept saying, “Thank you.” They were humble; they were grateful. They even provided food for us when they heard we would just have PB&J for lunch!

Their hospitality was outstanding – and convicting.

This church gave so much more abundantly than I could ever imagine – more of their time, energy, and compassion than even we did as volunteers, not to mention providing food and drinks for us every day. But more than that, they loved us. And though we only worked with them for 4 days, it was as if we’d known each other our entire lives.

We felt like so much more than volunteers; we felt like family.

I would say I’m pretty close with a lot of people in my church. I know a lot of people and a lot about them. For many of those in my church I’d call friends, I’d give a lot for them.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought until this trip. The people at this church taught me that there are always more ways to love a person. There’s always something we don’t realize we take for granted. There’s always something we can do to bless someone, like hugs from sweet girls and boys you don’t even know. Like bringing donuts to a group of sweaty teenagers and adults, or making a craft out of foam crosses and markers, playing sharks and minnows or dodgeball. 

There’s so much I didn’t realize I didn’t know.

I didn’t realize that Christ’s love, humility, servant’s heart, kindness, and compassion could be found in something as simple as a silly kids song.

I see that now, how even the little things can shed a light on the big things. All this time I was reflecting His light to them and they were reflecting Christ’s same light back to me. They taught me as much as we taught them.

It’s the great mystery of every mission trip: this whole time I was supposed to be serving them, and I did, but the people of this church out-served me by daily, in big and in little things, showing me Christ’s love, humility, and compassion.

 

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Philippines 2: 1-7

 

And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us. 2 Corinthians 8:5