It may sound cliché, but for a long time, I had always wondered what it would be like to go for missions. The accounts I read about in books and heard from missionaries seemed so fascinating, so inspirational, and yet so much larger than life. I wanted to experience first-hand what a mission trip was like, yet a large part of me was very reluctant. It seemed to me as if missions was just for those 'on fire for Christ', and I never felt adequately 'on fire' on go for missions.
These thoughts, so familiar to me, once again assailed me in Bible school as we were presented with an opportunity to go for a short-term mission trip to Living Waters. As usual, I wanted to go, but it was just so much easier to choose not to, and let the 'better Christians' do God's work. This time round, a sharing from Pastor Ronny Heyboer convinced me to just give it a shot. As he shared with the class about what he had been doing in West Kalimantan, it struck me then that this man was, by himself, no 'superhero'. He faced many struggles too, but what made him different was that he was willing to let himself be a vessel for carrying God's love to the unreached people in Indonesia. I began to realise that at the heart of missions was in fact willingness – to love God's people as God has loved us, in whatever way we may be called to.
Well the mission trip itself was great, yet unexpected in some ways. I thought that we would be going there to deal mostly with children, but somehow I found myself spending quite a lot of time with the labourers who were employed to help with brickmaking. At first, it seemed odd to be amongst them. They were 'real men' with the capacity to do what we city guys were not able to do. Though we were welcomed warmly by them, I was secretly expecting them to soon grow tired with us. Yet I was proven wrong. Though their amusement at our ineptness waned over time, their friendliness never did. Though there were obvious language barriers, they shared freely about themselves and always tried to engage us, such as by trying to teach us Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Dayak.
Once, as we were taking a break, I was surprised by the familiar tunes of M2M coming from the handphone of one of the senior gentlemen with a well tattooed back. Little instances such as these seemed pretty funny to me as I encountered them, but as the days went by, I realised that these instances served to 'humanise' each of them. As I interacted more with them, they changed from being a collective group of 'labourers' to individuals who I could put a face to, who had different personalities, each with his own likes and dislikes, struggles and moments of joy.
By extension, I came to realise that it was the same for the many pre-believers in the world. Though numerous, each is treasured and known uniquely by God. On reflection, this was what was demonstrated by Pastor Ronny too. In treating each child in Living Waters as his own, he mirrored the Father's heart in that showing love personally for each and every child. Perhaps one of the keys to keeping missions alive in our hearts is to remember that each pre-believer in the world is more than just a statistic, that he or she is loved by God too, and that God wants each one to experience the fullness of His love too. =)
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