We're Going on a Mission Trip

We like to travel. Actually, most people on the planet like to travel and see new places. Home is awesome, but it’s a mess, things break and need repairing and we have to cook and clean all of the time which makes it boring and routine. One of the best things about traveling is the memories that we share as a family. Recently, we took the family to London and Paris. As exciting as those places are, many people have been to these places and seen these same sights. As a vacation the experiences you gather while out exploring the world are personal and though as badly as you want to share your stories and photos with those around you, most people are genuinely uninterested. Don’t get me wrong, I love looking at places that everyone has visited and the strange food that they serve, but by picture 347 I become a little bored with the slight differences of avocado toast that they serve in Paris as opposed to America (spoiler, they use French bread).

This year, we are planning on another family trip, this time with a purpose and a job to do. We will be traveling with our church and joining Pate Ministries helping spread the Gospel to children in Ecuador. If unfamiliar with Ecuador, just know that it is not a part of the USA.

One of the things that makes a mission trip different then a regular trip is funding. For a normal vacation, the place that we choose to visit is often determined by the amount of funds that can get us to a place, stay there in hotels, eat out a lot (and pay for laxatives or antidiarrheal meds depending) and other entertainment while we are away. This will often leave us visiting Grandma again where we will mainly be paying for entertainment and food (and laxatives or antidiarrheal meds depending). Mission trips can be expensive so we have to do some extra fundraising, work extra days, or cut back on spending in order to help pay for the trip. With a different focus in mind, we are not raising funds in order to see some sight that we have seen a thousand times in pictures, but the focus is on serving others, which makes the sacrifices a little easier to bear.

During the trip we will be having Bible clubs where we will share short lessons and do crafts and games with the kids. It’s going to be like having Vacation Bible School (VBS), but moving from place to place. Some of the lessons that we will be having will involve a skit that we will perform as a group with the help of translators.

Since we as a family are red, white, and blue blooded Americans, we don’t know how to speak any other language other than English. In Ecuador, these people do not speak English unlike the other places that we have visited in the past (such as England). We will have to share the Gospel with others while also not being able to speak to them directly. To help remedy this, we have been taking Spanish classes at our church from someone from Ecuador. In these classes we have learned many valuable phrases such as “¿Como estas?” which means “how are you?” The kids will then say something to us in Spanish very rapidly and we will stare at them with blank faces and ask them again, “¿Como estas?” Hopefully we pick up some other words during class so that we will also be able to ask them what their favorite color is (as long as it’s blue / azule).

We are all looking forward to the trip and have been preparing for months, practicing the skits, getting crafts together, and learning another language. We have definitely prepared more for this trip more than any other, seeing as how we usually look up things to do while we are pulling into the city or town that we are visiting. With intentionality in mind we should be able to help the ministry that is already there and help spread the Good News instead of only taking pictures that will later drown the sea of pictures on our phone never to be visited again.