My First Missions Love

Hugs were given, teary goodbyes were choked out.  Welcome home signs are put away, church reports are available on iTunes, team Mexico futbol jersey is washed and hung up.  Now is the time to reflect, to remember, to consider what God has done.  This trip was important.  Like all short-term mission trips, it was different than the last.  God revealed new things about himself and about me.  This one though, had two overarching themes: disciple making and the sufficiency of Christ. 

My mind traces through past trips, relationships built, love shared, and spiritual growth.  Mexico is my first missions love.  In the dusty streets of Chihuahua, God moved me from stranger to fellow citizen with saints from another culture.  Forming Christ in me, the Holy Spirit brought me, “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,”(Eph 4:5) by humbling me with language barriers and small pox scares.  It was in Mexico that I became a missions grown-up.

As we prepare for the Philippines, and with Mexico beginning to feel far away, I want to take a minute and celebrate some of the ways God has used Mexico to transform me, renewing my mind and piercing my heart.

·       It was in Mexico that I first realized that Jesus is not American.  It seems silly now, but it was a profound change to my thinking at a time when the American Dream was Jesus’ goal for me; I just knew it!

·       God taught me that language is culture and that it won’t kill me to look the fool messing it up, or trying new foods or different ways of doing things.

·       Stick-on fake mustaches trump any language barrier or cultural divide.  Truth.

·       Mexico introduced me to unreached people.  Not just in a book or an article, but in real life.  I got to live life a little with people who had no access to the Gospel in their culture.

·       In Mexico, I got to serve cross-culturally with Heidi and Isaac, together as a family. 

·       I learned that my Tarahumara and Mexican friends are just like my American friends; they really want to see Isaac and can’t hide their disappointment when I tell them I came by myself.

·       God birthed a new church in front of me in Mexico.  On this last trip, I got to see a Tarahumara man teach Tarahumara youth from the Bible.  Oh yeah,  they had their first missions trip this year where Christian Tarahumara youth painted churches and visited neglected elderly Mexican in another place to the glory of God.  Isn’t God amazing?!

·       In Mexico, I first listened to the Holy Spirit speak to me – and I obeyed.

·       God used a Tarahumara girl in a Mexican slum to show me that Jesus makes the dead alive.

·       God used Mexico to change my prayer life.  More of Jesus and less of me.

·       Jesus makes a family, not skin color, or culture, or biology.  I tasted the Church in Mexico.

·       God taught us hospitality through Mexican people when my family lived in their homes and their families lived in ours.

·       God gave me a daughter from Mexico that doesn’t look like me or Heidi, but is our family forever, none-the-less.

·       In Mexico, I gave my first seminar on stewardship and preached my first sermon, poorly.  God taught me that the power unto salvation is in the Word, not my voice or preparation.

·       In Mexico, I saw the open, transparent lives of missionary husbands and wives, parents and kids, teammates and co-workers for the Gospel in all of their joys and struggles.  I felt their need for prayer and financial support.  I felt their longing for family back home and a love for the people God had given. 

·       In Mexico I was discipled, first made disciples and was able to say “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,.” (1 Cor 11:1)

 I cry for Mexico, because I love her.  I love her people and her mountains.  I love her culture, her language, and her food.   I love the firsts that I had in Mexico and the lessons God taught me there.  But my satisfaction is not in her. 

As I pray and remember my heart is not heavy, but full of thanks.  I look forward to the work that Jesus has ahead of our family.  I look forward to new firsts, new revelations, and new lessons in Manila.  I’m ready for God to use this cracked vessel again to show his strength in my weakness.  Though to me, both in my flesh and spirit, Mexico has been a great gain; “whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Phil 3:7-8)