Mike’s Sea2sea Blog

Dalton

On the first weekend of August, I took some time off work, jumped into my Cavalier and made the trip from my current home in Markham to my old home in Ottawa to visit my mom. My nephew Kevin now lives with her and sleeps in my old room.  Most of my clothes have been replaced with his, but my bookshelf is still intact.  On the shelves, you’ll find old yearbooks, non-fiction novels that I have yet to read and random stuff I never fully dealt with (keychains, rulers, even an old alarm clock that’s shaped like a drum set).

I decided it was time to do some cleaning for Kevin’s sake.  As I was going through the shelves, I found a green binder.  I opened it up to find a community profile of Moose Factory, Ontario.

13 years ago, my youth group, alongside another youth group from Cobourg, Ontario went up to Moose Factory, Ontario on a missions trip for two weeks.  I skimmed through the rest of the binder, which included chapters of books we had to read pre-trip, native customs sheets and my pre high school testimony.

I spent some time sitting on Kevin’s bed just remembering those two weeks: The team who went up, the families who welcomed us into their homes, the faces of the kids who we met.  I was also reminded of a great lesson I learned while in the James Bay region that has stuck with me until this day.

It was the first day we were in Moosonee as the full team (the Cobourg group was there a few days earlier).  We were in Moosonee Baptist Church for a service.  I believe it was an evening service.  After the service, we had a debriefing.

Dave Enns, the youth pastor from Cobourg, stood up in front of the group of teens, and shared how he felt we did on our first day together: not well at all.  His grievance was with our sitting arrangements.  During the service, we all sat together in one section, while the locals sat by themselves.  Our group size did rival the overall congregation of the Baptist church, but we were not looking outward with our seating.

‘Who did you meet tonight?’  he asked.

*silence*

‘What kind of message are we sending by huddling together?’

*silence*

‘Why are you here?  To enjoy each other’s company, or to serve the people of Moosonee?’

*silence*

It might seem harsh to lay down all these thoughts on the first day, but we did prepare and pray long before we boarded the Polar Bear Express.  On that night, we failed.

Dave’s words hit me hard.  He was completely right.  We fulfilled the Great Commission by going to Moosonee, but we failed it by not being in Moosonee.

I asked Mike, my youth pastor at the time, to chat.  I remember feeling like a complete failure, forsaking everything we prepared for to find comfort with my team, turtling instead of engaging.  After that night, our team found focus.  Our basketball and VBS camps went great.  Not without hiccups of course, but had Dave not spoken up, the trip would have been much different than it turned out.

I’ve been on several missions trips since that summer of 1999.  But ever since that trip, I have a high sensitivity to those we go to serve.  I am intentional with meeting those who I don’t know, in putting myself out on a limb to show why I’m here and whom I serve.  I’ve eaten unusual foods and  butchered foreign languages all in the hope that my life in Christ would be displayed through, not only my words, but in my actions.

These short-term missions trips that are happening daily are opportunities not only to share the gospel of Jesus Christ (our primary objective), but also to engage the people who we are sharing the gospel with.  My church just sent a team to Mozambique a few months back.  One member of the team is a part of my small group.  We decided as a small group (without her knowledge) to each give her a letter, a verse or an encouragement for each day she was in Africa.  My note went something like this: Go and show Christ to them, but be open for Christ to reveal himself through them.

We bring our agenda, thoughts and hopes on these sort of trips, yet often, God flips our ideas and reveals something much deeper that we could not have anticipated