I have had a complete heart change toward missions. As a child I always said that I would be a pastor or a missionary when I grew up. It took me to age forty to become a pastor and I was 61 years old when I went on my first mission trip. I had spent my entire life telling myself that I wasn't called to missions! Oh, how wrong I was. Thus the change that I am talking about. Since 2008 I have been to Peru four times and Haiti twice. I have fallen in love with the people in both locations.
My point for writing this blog is this! We are past the mission season (June to August) and everyone interested has let down on their interest for the rest of the year. At the same time, it is too early for those who might be going next year to even work up a thought about going on a mission trip. We are in a time of non-mission awareness! Except for this! In the mission fields, there are people dying every day without knowing about Jesus Christ!
I could write volumns about the good our mission trips have made in the lives of the people we go see. But I really don't need to do that now. I am suggesting that we simply raise our awareness that while our lives go on day after day with the comfort and peace that we live in, there are people in Haiti that have lived in stick houses covered in Walmart bags since the earthquake in 2010.
Be aware that in the Amazon jungle in Peru there are kids who are living with parasites in their bodies because they have no fresh water to drink. The next time you draw a cold glass of water out the tap at your sink, think about the young mother that is carrying water in a five gallon pail (sometimes one in both hands at the same time) for long distances for something to cook with and something to drink. Think about the purity of your water as you drink, but also think about the sewage that has run into that jungle mother's water from the village above the river, the parasites that are in that water and the chemicals that might be in that water from a factory somewhere up river.
At the moment of our non-awareness of missions, let's just up the thoughts and prayers for those people around the world that are not as well blessed as we are. Then you might consider what you can do to help them somehow, now and in the future, and begin to pray for wisdom with what you consider!
Working together in giving, in service and in prayer we can make a huge difference in a dark world. You can have and do have a purpose to fulfill in missions! Think about it!
He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses. Proverbs 28:27 (NIV)
Oh, by the way! Now that I have finished todays posting guess what I just found? Yesterday's draft. Oh well! I got to say what I felt twice if you only get to read it once:)!
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