‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
Matthew 25:37b
Because of The United Methodist Church, I am thankful for my love of mission trips.
When I was in youth, I can still remember my youth minister, Lucinda Scheldorf, calling me to ask me if I would consider going on the youth mission trip. We were going out of state to the Appalachia Service Project.
I can remember thinking at the time, that I had a job and not only would I have to lose money the week I wouldn’t be working but I would actually have to pay money to go work for someone else!
An overall Christian ethic was just not breaking through my personal sense of economics. The idea of the mission trip makes no sense from a strictly capitalistic standpoint.
My other reluctance was that I was not handy. My brother Bob seemed to have pulled all of this DNA and didn’t leave any for me! I didn’t want to embarrass myself on the job site.
So I politely declined and missed out on the opportunity.
It wasn’t until college that I went on my first mission trip. It was during Spring Break with the Wesley Foundation and we worked around Oklahoma City on a Habitat for Humanity project. I didn’t do anything too pitiful and even learned some things while I was at it!
When I served as a summer intern at First United Methodist Church of Stillwater, we took the senior high down to San Marcos, Texas for kind of a mission camp experience. We met with all kinds of other United Methodist youth groups and divided into work groups that were mixed with all the other youth and adults. We all stayed together in the local high school gyms, sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags and showering in the locker rooms. As hectic as that sounds, it was really quite fun! Once again, I learned some new skills and continued to take youth to this location after I became a youth minister at New Haven UMC in Tulsa.
Some of the skills I learned were roofing (not the coolest activity in south Texas during July) and sheet rocking. I discovered that on these trips, there were more people who knew less than I did! Fortunately, for the home owners, we had excellent skilled teachers at every site.
These trips helped to teach me about God’s economy. I learned to sweat on behalf of others with no expectation of monetary compensation. You actually learn that it is a privilege to do so. This is a spiritual truth that has to be lived out to be understood.
Sometimes this truth takes a while to set in. In most mission trips, you may encounter people that don't seem grateful for the help. You may feel that some are taking advantage of the help offered. Or they may not lend a hand to help in the project when you feel like they could. Sometimes when we are helping others, we may experience compassion fatigue.
Fortunately, one of the great things about mission trips is that we gather in the evenings after the work day for devotional time. We talk about the difficulties and read scripture and pray and remind ourselves that we are not doing this alone.
What kind of mission activities have you experienced through the church?
It is likely that these experiences have helped us recognize that with God's help, we can begin to see differently. Now that's a trip!
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| It was like this when I got here, I promise! |
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