I was more than excited that my first Sunday at Prince of Peace coincided with a visit from our partner in ministry, Kevin Jacobson, a missionary in Suriname. Perhaps it’s because I majored in International Relations in college – or perhaps it’s because I’ve recently seen the new Bourne movie – but, I’ve always had a fascination with global “missions.”
In college, I had the privilege of studying overseas as part of my program. I spent fourteen months abroad: first in Frankfurt, Germany; then in London, England; and finally back in Germany in a city called Regensburg. It was the experience of a lifetime!
It is, perhaps, no wonder then, that a global mission experience played a key role in my discernment of a call to ministry.
I was sitting in church one Sunday morning when my pastor announced that there was going to be a synod-sponsored mission trip to Honduras that she was contemplating going on and that she was looking for people in the congregation to go with her. I didn’t hesitate: I walked right up to her after church and said “count me in!”
We spent a week in a small town named Chachagualla where we built outdoor sinks and bathrooms in the morning and provided a Vacation Bible School in the afternoon for the town’s children. The work was tiresome and the weather was intensely hot; but, I was amazed at the relationships I was able to form with both my fellow New Englanders as well as the people in Chachagualla. When I left Honduras, I knew I had done a good thing by building those sinks; but, I felt even more enriched that I had had the opportunity to meet so many amazing people in that little, hill-side town.
Towards the end of the week in Honduras, I began to feel like I was being tugged: like there was something that had reached out to me and was encouraging me to come along. I felt like I was being offered a mission, and not long after coming home, I chose to accept it.
Pastor Kevin said in his sermon: “The church does not have a mission; rather, the mission of God has a church.” Sometimes that mission calls us to foreign countries and sometimes it calls us to reach out to our neighbor across the street. We are all agents in that mission: we are all missionaries in some way, shape, or form. The Global Mission website writes: “Through our hands, heart, and feet, God creates and nurtures the relationships that are instruments for reconciliation in God’s creation.”
I’m very much looking forward to my year at Prince of Peace; and, I look forward to working with the congregation towards accomplishing God’s mission in our midst.
