i promised a post on south africa... so here goes.
i don't know if my words will form a traditional mission trip testimony. i have found myself feeling almost guilty at times that i don't react to mission trips the way many others do. i read and hear stories from people recounting their trips with much more fervor than i produce in retrospect. BUT i still feel blessed and i still feel used. more on that in a moment...
you may recall that i was blessed to go to a rural area of kenya last summer where God reminded me of the simplicity of the Gospel and salvation. as i worked through interpreters to share Christ, the message was boiled down to its base elements: sinful man and a holy God. i've tried to keep that perspective since returning home and ministering stateside. anywho, when the opportunity came up this summer to go back, i jumped at it. because of the turmoil plaguing kenya, however, that trip was replaced by a new opportunity in south africa. our missions pastor and president of world hope ministries, dwight davis, had a contact in south africa that wanted to do some ministry at a coal mine in the northern area of the country. usually, world hope's work in south africa consists primarily of going into squatter camps, schools, and prisons to share Christ while working with a local church in johannesburg. this trip would be completely different. not even dwight knew what to expect... our main contact in south africa, pastor willie dengler, didn't even know what to expect.
theories of sleeping on the dirt floors of huts in villages floated around our group as we began to prepare for our trip. assuming the worst is a great way to keep expectations low and willingness high! talk of eating one meal pre-dawn and only getting another pre-bedtime was common. "you never know" is said a lot as a team prays and prepares to be flexible in another country. so we all put our grins on and readied for what God wanted to "put us through".
the "trials" began with check-in at the airport here in houston! our first flight was delayed, which messed up the other 2-3 legs of our trip and put us into joberg the morning after we originally planned. flexibility! the "fix" took 3 hours before we even went to the gate with new plans to split our team into two from amsterdam. yada yada yada... in amsterdam we learned that the "fix" in houston was actually more of a mess up and we spent another 2 hours or so at the ticket counter listening to the ticket agents chat about our situation in dutch (or netherlandish as i just read). flexibility! more swaps were made to our already divided team which took 2 of our graduated seniors out of my group... out of my sight... and into my worries as i thought of who their parents would turn to first if anything were to happen. flexibility!
when my group finally arrived in joberg early sunday morning, we still weren't sure if we were going to be ministering in local churches as we had planned. we had been traveling for nearly 2 days and the other half of our team hadn't arrived, yet. as we're waiting on the others and our luggage, we find out at that we've been given the morning "off" and can clean up and rest before meeting at the church for more instructions. flexibility? even though 3 of our team members didn't get their luggage, they were great about it... even the 2 that didn't get it until we returned back to joberg a week later. i'm not sure how i would have handled that. i like to think that i'd have been ok, just a little smellier.
that evening we met pastor bonini (i know i've seen his name spelled a few different ways and i sure as heck know i've heard it SEVERAL different ways), but that's what i'm going with. bonini, turns out, is from the region we're headed to. his heart is for reaching and ministering to his people. the venda people. bonini explains that one of his spiritual children, a man he led to and discipled in Christ, is the production manager at the tshikondeni coal mine. we're going to be sharing with all kinds of workers at the mine and some of the surrounding villagers.
after a 12 hour van ride (which included a few stops, one of which was for undawear) we arrived at the mine and all signed in as guests to the plant for the week. now for the moment of truth! we're driven to the "homes of the locals" that we've theorized so much about and, turns out, they're pretty much nicer than my apartment here in h-town. we have beds, kinda (my roomie and i alternated sleeping on the mattress and the box spring), electricty, and indoor plumbing. these are all things we were not banking on. flexibility?
so! the next few days consisted of ministering to a variety of people groups that all work for or live around the mine. it amazed me that we'd be sharing with management one hour, rough and tumble miners another, and impoverished villagers the next. different incomes, different skin colors, different languages, same need for a Savior. we got to sing songs (Texas Medley of gospel hymns, anyone?), act out mimes, share testimonies, give out stickers, play with puppets, and preach ALL IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST. one of the most moving aspects of the trip was seeing these hardened miners, with no pressure or penchant for following the crowd raise their hands as they admitted a need for salvation and believed in faith to receive it! amazing.
oh and we ate 3 square meals a day in the mine restaurant... and the mine decided not to charge us for any of them. more of that flexibility!
on our trip back to joberg, we stopped to minister at a prison. what made this stop so special to me was the fact that one of our team members from south africa, paul, who works with world hope, spent 3.5 years there for armed robbery. he placed his faith in Christ while at a police station after his arrest and entered prison as a believer. he was a living breathing testimony of the transforming power of Jesus behind bars to his fellow inmates and guards. after serving 3.5 years of a 20 something year sentence, he was out. paul refers to that miracle as one of many "blessings upon blessings" the Lord has showered on him. i was SO blessed by his passion for Christ. to meet him and talk God with him would lead you to believe he might even be a seminary student, rather than an ex-con. he's just been soaking in the knowledge of Christ and sharing it with others since he trusted in Him for salvation. paul helped us with whatever we needed around the coal mine, but he lit up when he got into that prison. it was cool to watch and be a part of.
i felt spoiled... but not guilty on this trip. i know EVERY member of our team was ready for the roughest, most grueling conditions we had imagined... we just weren't asked to go through them. sure the food was different and there were plenty of opportunities for adjustment and rolling with the punches... but by the grace of God, we didn't skip a beat. EVERY team member served in the unique ways God had enabled them and THAT'S where i find blessing on mission trips.
i don't go to foreign countries because of a love for other cultures, that's a bonus. i go because i love the Gospel and i love ministry. i love being with other believers and seeing them embrace the Gospel as they share Christ with a dying world. i love the fellowship and bond a team forms when they travel, live, eat, talk, cry, and minister together. i believe every Christian is called to share the Gospel. i believe every Christian should take any opportunity they can to go on mission, local and/or foreign. every trip i've been on, whether it be local or foreign, labor intensive or relational, has blessed the team that went as much as or more than the people being ministered to. Christ makes Himself better known to us as He makes Himself known to others through us! He blesses obedience in ways we don't usually define as "blessing". THAT'S prosperity! THAT'S abundant life!
i fear i haven't adequately explained our trip. there's just so much that happened during that week, moment by moment. i hope i've at least clearly communicated the joys of missions from my perspective. it's not in learning how to say "hello" in venda (which is ndaa, btw, unless you're female... then it's just aa... i think). it's not in my heart breaking for shoeless orphans... it's in walking in obedience to God's call for us to share His truth and joining others in His work as He lets us take part.