NovelSisters

watching, reading, and writing stories

Jul 24

Mission Trips

by lydiamhill

It’s summer time and many people are going on short term mission trips. Often it’s students, sometimes it’s adults, but there always seems to be some sort of mission trip going on. In the past year I’ve seen more and more articles about why people should not go on short term mission trips. When I first read them, I thought a lot of their reasoning seemed valid. It costs a lot of money to travel and if that money was sent to the local missionaries instead of paying for a plane ticket it could really help them out.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I feel like I disagree. Mission trips, even short ones can be very good and useful in God’s Kingdom. I agree with a lot of what is said in these articles. I can definitely see how these trips can turn into tourist vacations, and hurt rather than help a local community of Christians. But I think the articles are overlooking something important.

Why do we even go on mission trips? What is the purpose? If the purpose is only to make yourself feel good about helping others, I can definitely see their point of being able to do that in your own community and not needing to raise a lot of support money to travel. But what we do as Christians is a lot bigger than just human plans, and helping people. We’re following Jesus’s plan and building His Kingdom. I don’t know why He chooses to do things the way He does, but I don’t doubt that His is the best plan.

Before I’ve gone on any mission trip, I’ve done a lot of praying, asking Jesus if He wants me to go. Because at the end of the day, people’s opinions about your trip whether they think it’s great, or a waste of money, doesn’t matter. What matters is if you are obeying Jesus. Money is no problem for Him, it all belongs to Him anyway. If He wants to take you half way around the world, He will provide a way, and if He wants you to stay where you are and reach out to the people around you, He can help you be bold and live differently. So ultimately, it’s not about us and what we think, it’s about Jesus and what He wants. This is His kingdom after all, not ours.

But I can also see a few advantages to mission trips, that are harder to recreate if you simply stay at home. One is your level of comfort. You can definitely find ways of being uncomfortable in your own city, but leaving your country is a big step. And God does some of His best work when we have to rely on Him. It’s easy to try to handle all the little problems of life yourself, when you’re at home, but when you’re in a foreign country, can’t speak much of the language, and don’t have all of the things and people you normally rely on, it forces you to seek God more consistently and desperately.

Also, there’s something special about traveling with a group of people. Because you spend all of your time together, on planes, buses, and walking through foreign streets, you really develop close relationships which is harder to do at home. Because you’ve all committed to go together, you learn to rely on each other, open up to each other and disciple each other. You can do the same things at home, but it really helps when you’re cut off from your normal routines and forced to actually spend time with people. Traveling also tends to limit your use of certain technologies like text messages and phone calls, so that you can focus more on where you are and what you’re doing at that moment with the people around you.

And lastly, going on a mission trip opens up the opportunity for you to meet people you otherwise would have never met and develop lasting relationships and a deeper interest and care in their ministry. It’s one thing to read a newsletter from a missionary you support, it’s a whole other thing to spend the day with them; seeing what they do on a day to day basis, who they interact with, what situations they face, and how you can better support, encourage, and pray for them. I have developed several close relationships with missionaries and I care more about what they’re doing because I’ve seen them doing it. I might never have supported them and continued to care for them, if I hadn’t gone on a mission trip to where they are serving.

So, I guess what I want to say is, even if you have reservations about a mission trip, or someone else’s mission trip, remember that it’s easy to judge, it’s harder to obey, then pray and ask God what He’s doing and ask if He wants you to be a part of it.

Christian Life

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Feb 25

The Lego Movie and “The Special”

by lydiamhill

the-lego-movie-poster

This past weekend I finally made it out to the theaters and got to see one of the films I was looking forward to: The Lego Movie. I played with these as a kid, although my brothers were more invested in the toy than I was. But I thought the film looked interesting, not to mention hilarious. I love Chris Pratt’s comedy and couldn’t wait to see the movie.

I don’t want to say I was disappointed, I really did love the movie. But I wasn’t overly impressed either. I guess the film met my expectations and that’s about it. A lot of the jokes that I’d seen in the trailers were there, and they were still funny. And I liked how the film dealt with not only Lego characters, but also the people who play with them. It seemed to categorize the types of people who play with Legos into two groups: those who follow instructions, and those who invent as they see fit to make their own creations. The film did a good job of showing the pros and cons of both. The characters who invented as they wished were often fighting with the other characters, trying to say their creation was the best, while the characters who only followed instructions were able to work together and accomplish bigger things as a team. But sometimes creativity was really needed, and being able to improvise instead of following specific instructions was especially useful.

If there was one thing I would complain about, it was the action shots. I had trouble keeping up with what was happening in these scenes. Maybe the camera angles were too wide and there was too much information, so I didn’t know what to focus on. Or maybe the “blockyness” of Legos made it harder for my eyes to understand what was what. In any case, several of the action scenes seemed to blow past me in a blur of motion.

But the biggest thing I liked from the movie was showing how much each person, even a blocky Lego character, wants to be special. The whole premiss of the movie is that “The Special” will save the Lego world. I think all of us long to be significant, and hope that our lives mean something. Not only our hero in the movie, but even side characters, longed to be special. And ultimately, this is how our hero, Emmit, saves the day. He realizes his own “specialness” and tells the villain that he is important too, that he is special.

This reminds me of what I have been learning in church recently; that God created each person uniquely with a specific way of reflecting His glory and a purpose that goes beyond themselves to affect others. I think this is something we all need to remember and be able to tell others around us. We all have a purpose, we all are “special” and we shouldn’t look down on others or ourselves as unimportant. We should encourage and remind each other that we all have value, we all are important, because we are all made in the image of God.

Christian Movies

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Aug 26

Lessons from Haiti: The Body of Christ at Work

by lydiamhill

Hello blog readers, I’m still reviewing my trip to Haiti, and all the lessons God taught me while I was there. We’ve made it through the first few days of the trip and are currently on Monday, the first workday of the trip. Hope you enjoy!

Day 4: The Body of Christ at Work

Haiti Soccer 1150335_10201667348269373_1188384740_n

So far on my journey, I’d felt that I was mostly receiving things. I was given delicious food, time with people, joy, even several valuable lessons from God about prayer and the unity of His church. And, I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but our team had spent the previous afternoon at the beach. But it was a Sunday, a day of rest, and we were recovering from all the traveling. Still it didn’t feel quite right.

Thus Monday morning started with a new kind of energy; finally we would be able to work, to do something productive or beneficial, to give something back. In a sense, this is what you go into a mission trip expecting to do, and it felt odd that it wasn’t until Day 4 of our adventure, that the “real work” was starting.

Eagerly we awoke at 5:30am to begin helping with the soccer ministry in the village. We all carried bags stuffed full of soccer balls, cleats, and uniforms to the wide field outside the church. However, once we had handed out the equipment, most of us ended up standing around with not much to do. I’ve never played soccer, so I felt a bit useless as I watched the training begin. I ended up trying to interact with a few of the children from the village along with a few other girls from our group. We couldn’t say much, but we were still able to laugh with the kids.

Soon the training ended and we packed everything back up and headed back to the camp, which is called Jacob’s Well. (I’m tired of calling it the camp, so we’ll refer to it as Jacob’s Well from now on). We ate some breakfast and then began on a fencing project. I didn’t feel like I was doing a lot of work. I mean I carried a few cement blocks, or passed some buckets full of cement down the line, but mostly I was standing around, not knowing what to do, or taking a water break. The most beneficial thing I did was remind other people to drink water so no one got overheated.

So far I had felt pretty inadequate, like I wasn’t very useful for any of the projects going on in Haiti. But as we took a break for lunch, I looked at what the team as a whole had accomplished and realized just how much God can do with very little. I didn’t feel like I had contributed much to the fence, but there it was getting longer and put together. It was a lesson in God’s provision. Even if I didn’t know the first thing about building a fence, God had provided other team members that did, and he used the whole team’s effort to accomplish something I couldn’t have done alone.

Thankfully after lunch, I was able to start work on a painting project that is more in my field of expertise. But I’ll never forget that God uses a body, of different people, with different skills to accomplish His work. We all have purpose, we all have value, and we all can be used by God.

Haiti Stories

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