Thursday, March 29, 2012

Short term Mission trip to the Philippines

     Short Term Mission trip to the Philippines
Jollibee, the Mcdonald's of the
Philippines. Would you like rice
your order? 
     
      Not 5 years ago if someone had told me I would be traveling the world, I would have said they were crazy, but since high school when I read "Through gates of Splendor" by Elisabeth Elliot the desire to spend my life sharing the gospel has grown into a reality. Elisabeth quotes her husband, Jim as saying "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep that which he cannot lose"  before he and his fellow missionaries were Martyred  As far as world travel goes, somehow in my mind, I did not necessarily connect the two ideas, in fact after being married for a few years then applying as a family to become missionaries and being denied, the idea that I(we) would become a missionary had more or less vanished. Lora and I were very disappointed but just figured it was not God's will. So we prayed the Lord would one day use some of our children. Little did we know in the Spring of 2009 that in 2012 we would have traveled through 2/3's of the states and Puerto Rico, and been on mission trips to Mexico, St. Lucia, and me personally, now adding Hawaii, Guam, and mission work in the Philippines. In my last blog post I gave a very quick glimpse into my mission trip to the Philippines. Now I would like to share a more detailed post. I went on this trip without the family. This is only the third time I have left Lora and the family in nearly 18 years and it was by far the most worthy of the three. I would like to share the purposes of my mission trip, some of the difficulties, but mostly to share the blessings and surprises.
On the road from Cagayan De Oro 
to the city of Malaybalay
      Family Missions Company, besides training full-time missionaries also have numerous short-term mission trips, with focus on Evangelism, Service to the Poor, and also  Medical Mission trips. Joseph Summers, the Director of FMC, was leading this trip to the Philippines, installing the new team in Malaybably and leading a Spring Break trip from Benedictine College in Kansas.(Originally scheduled to be a Medical Mission trip) Since we are stateside right now and seeking the Lord for where he would have us go next, we prayed and decided this would be a good opportunity to scope out the Philippines as a possible mission post. We also hoped that I would be an asset for the mission trip. These are fine reasons but not the most important reason, which is we believed God wanted me to go. This last reason is always the hardest, Why? because when we really believe God wants us to do something it can be hard to explain, hard to understand, and things never transpire the way we think they should. His reasons can only be seen by praying, watching and waiting and usually we don't understand until it is over. 
A few quotes from "Abandonment to Divine Providence" by Fr. de Caussade



"The divine action continues to write in the hearts of men the work begun by the holy Scriptures, but the characters made use of in this writing will not be visible till the day of judgment. --The Holy Spirit continues to carry on the work of our Savior. While helping the
Church to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, He writes His own Gospel in the hearts of the just. All their actions, every moment of their lives, are the Gospel of the Holy Spirit. The souls of the saints are the paper, the sufferings and actions the ink. The Holy Spirit with the pen of His power writes a living Gospel, but a Gospel that cannot be read until it has left the press of this life, and has been published on the day of eternity. Oh! great history! grand book written by the Holy Spirit in this present time! It is still in the press. There is never a day when the type is not arranged, when the ink is not applied, or the pages are not primed. We are still in the dark night of faith. The
paper is blacker than the ink, and there is great confusion in the type. It is written in characters of another world and there is no understanding it except in Heaven. If we could see the life of God, and behold all creatures, not as they are in themselves, but as they exist in their first cause; and if again we could see the life of God in all His creatures, and could understand how the divine action animates them, and impels them all to press forward by different ways to the same goal, we should realize that all has a meaning, a measure, a connection in this divine work."  This taken from a section called " The action of Jesus Christ in the Souls of Men."


God is so good and it was amazing to watch the Holy Spirit work in our trip. We basically had the group from Kansas for six days. Joseph kept saying "What can God do in Six Days?, alot!"  


Praise the Lord Always!








No comments:

Post a Comment