This year, I had the chance to lead a mission team to Moose Lake, Manitoba, Canada, and quickly realized how meticulous one needs to be with the responsibility for leading a team, especially when it includes family, friends, and fellow
church members. Planning for a mission trip involves coordinating flights for them and their gear, transportation, lodging, and communication in remote areas. My contingencies had contingencies, such as paper maps and satellite GPS, but despite all the planning, things can still go wrong in the mission field.
However, God has a way of working things out. Our faith may be tested by unexpected challenges like wildfires, flat tires, or last-minute changes to plans. In this fallen world, things are bound to go wrong. From a larger perspective, we are constantly bombarded with news about all that’s wrong in the world. So much time can be spent on analyzing the problems without focusing on what we can do to help make it right.
My family experienced a heartbreaking incident while serving the community. My wife, a deaconess in the church, had just finished a VBS craft with the kids when one little boy ran outside abruptly. Concerned, my wife went to check on him and found him at his mother’s gravesite in the adjacent cemetery. He wanted to hang his VBS craft on her grave marker. My wife was deeply moved and went out to pray with this child and his older brother who was also
standing beside his mom’s grave.
“How can we possibly make this right?” you might ask. Many children at such a young age already have a significant number of loved ones laid to rest.
Every day, I had the chance to teach them the meaning behind the colors of the beads in the cross necklaces we had given them at the beginning of the week. The white bead on the necklace symbolized the perfect world that God created, the black bead symbolized our rebellion that led to suffering and death, and the red bead represented the cross of Christ. But then, there was a gold bead. That was the bead that represented heaven.
I had the blessing to tell the children about the day that will come soon when everyone in that cemetery next door will be made alive again. Everyone who is baptized into the resurrection of Christ, and believes, will live with Jesus forever in heaven, including our loved ones who die in the faith. To close, I reminded the children of our VBS theme, which focused on the armor of God for protection and the Sword of the Spirit that God gives them to fight off the enemy.
Every hour spent volunteering with LAMP and every dollar donated for mission trips truly is an investment in making things right. This is all because Christ died and rose again to make things right again in the world. The children are forever grateful for how LAMP tries to make things right in their lives. They are thankful for hugs and piggyback rides, for giggles and joy, and most of all, for hope and purpose.
Photos courtesy of Steve Schave
