'The Call' - Part 1 of 4

“Who will go on a mission trip next year,” Pastor Aaron asked in the summer of 2012.  He had just returned from a mission trip to Kenya.  Anne and I found ourselves standing along with 22 other people.  We were all willing to go wherever God called our church the following year.

I want you to remember that Pastor Aaron had been to Kenya; he was compelled by that trip to take our church, Life Point, to another level of serving our community, country, or to the ends of the earth as God directed.

Most of those 22 people went to Jamaica the following year, and others to City Reach in the U.S., in 2013.  Anne and I were included in the Jamaica team, along with other members of Life Point, my cousin, and the Keith family from New Jersey.  Our group was large enough from one single call of, ‘who will go?’, that we became a booked crew sent out by 516 Missions – a short-term mission organization out of Pauline Baptist Church in Arkansas.

One of the most important aspects of ‘getting ready to go’ is understanding why God is calling you to go.  His will will be done; we only long, as He does for us, to be a part of it.  As Anne and I prayed, we believed God was sending us to adopt a child.  We have three children, Noah, Annabelle, and Rianne; but we have seen the impact adoption makes on people.  My cousin who went with us: adopted.  As I write this, the Keiths have since adopted a son.  My nephew: adopted from Latvia.  The Bible calls us out as Christians to take a stand for widows and orphans – we were fairly certain God would put a child in our path while serving at a local church through VBS or during our time at the orphanage in Jamaica to adopt a child.

We prayed for this – prayed for clarity – prayed to be willing to accept the cost.

We did not adopt a child after our trip to Jamaica.

Why?  While we were there we felt an absolute peace that we were not the people to answer that call – God wanted us to expand our attitude about world missions.  Within a few days in this foreign country we were laughing about how God had surprised us.  We shared our vision with Pastor Aaron: Anne would go abroad and I would serve in another city in America the following year (those will be post 3 & 4 of this series).

So, what happened in Jamaica that allowed us to hear God through all the static?  People.

The first day we arrived at the local church to set-up for VBS, our bus nearly got stuck – the banana trees had grown over the road and our bus was crawling through the limbs.  A man, with some locals, came out with machetes and began hacking off the limbs to free our way.  After we had made all the preparations for VBS – we arrived very early so we could assess the location and get our learning areas prepared (our church members are very flexible and can adapt to change) – we had an hour to spare.  I walked down the road where the men were still clearing brush.

I approached the man who had led the locals out to help us and asked, “you need any help?”  I have since learned; what better question can you ask?  Ask your wife, husband, children, pastor, friend…anybody – ‘you need help?’  It is amazing how a human responds.  The man smiled and handed me a handful of limbs.  I followed him between two houses to where they had a pile of limbs already burning.  We stopped there to introduce ourselves.  His name was Ali.

Ali told me about the area; how it was slipping into Montego Bay (which I knew to some extent, because one of our jobs was to also secure a footer in the back of the church to prevent the erosion); how he owned a shop at the end of the road; how he didn’t know much about ‘church’, but the people who came to their street were nice.  We talked about other general topics and got to know each other.

Over the course of the week all of our children, including the Jamaicans, enjoyed ice-cream from Ali’s store – a store smaller than my kitchen.

I could tell you a thousand stories of what all transpired in Jamaica that week; two of my children were baptized, nearly 70 children came to VBS each day, the local church paid out of their pocket to feed each child lunch, bonds were formed, people called us missionaries…which also made me pause – but the last day God revealed two small displays that changed my life.

1.       Pastor Aaron and Pastor Devon (Elgin Town New Testament Church’s pastor) allowed me to speak on behalf of our mission team during the worship service and ask the local church any questions I wanted.  Here was the last question, and I always ask this question to any church when I visit them, “What would you like our church, Life Point, to pray for you?”  Marsha, an amazing servant who each day walked the streets of the community to bring children to VBS said, “that God would bring more people into the church so they can hear the Gospel.”

2.      Ali came to that worship service.  I had only seen him at or outside his store, nowhere near the church all week even though he had helped make room for our bus to come and go.  I don’t think he went to church often.  But, he came that night, and he gave my kids a stuffed animal that had ‘JAMAICA’ stitched on them.

Why are those important?

1.       I learned that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone – I’ve read it in the Bible, hoped for it for my friends, but there in another country I learned that not only is it for everyone, but they, too, want everyone to experience it.  That church cooked our food on coals; pumped water from a well; needed so many material things: but they wanted to share the gospel above all else.

2.      You never know who God will put in your path.  Cultures cannot break the bond we share in God our Creator – Ali is my brother.  He helped because he loved something about us; he didn’t know who we were or what we wanted, but he knew we brought peace.  The peace we brought was not ourselves, but the peace only Christ can offer through salvation.

We left Jamaica confident in one thing: God said ‘go’.  Go out and serve more, not just locally but beyond.  There isn’t anything wrong with local missions, it is essential.  We simply heard the call to serve other cities in America and even Kenya.

We said, “yes, God, we will go.”  It’s amazing what happened next.  I have three more stories to share with you that give an overview for our call to survey Kenya as our missionary call – I can’t wait to share them with you, but it would be too long in one post.

Here’s a picture of Ali as we talked about the land (TOP) and then a picture of Matt Loftin (our worship leader at the time), the ‘Commish’ (he didn’t even bother talking, only using hand signals to direct our work while installing the footer behind the church – he knew how to do everything!), me, Patrick Lynch (affectionatley dubbed 'Prayer Minister Patrick' by the locals), and Pastor Devon (BOTTOM).