What happens to you after a mission trip

I’m back from another mission trip.

I’m a mess. For one thing, I came home sick, but that’s not unexpected.

I’m a mess in all the ways. I hurt. I’m distracted. I’m disenchanted. I’m convicted. I’m restless.

I’m a soul displaced.

I just spent a week (with a team) preaching and ministering to pastors and pastoras in a Latin American country that suffers under the grip of persecution and gross poverty. The pastors there are watched by the government (hence, the reason for my ambiguity of locale). Pastors are allowed to preach and run churches (yay), but post-Covid, they are not allowed to earn any income outside of what their people can give (which they honestly cannot afford to do).

Hence, pastors earn about $10/month.

That’s not nearly enough for any of them, not for anyone, anywhere. So these amazing people pray every day for their food to show up. They pray for medicine. For healing. For gas. For safety. For endurance. For their children’s futures. For souls.

Can you imagine how hard it is to live like this, day in and day out?

They live in another world that’s only quick plane ride from ours.

So what happens to you when you pray and serve in cement one-room churches to people who are desperate for God’s encouragement? What happens when you eat dinners lovingly prepared by people who have spent weeks trying to find the food to feed you?

Something snaps inside your soul.

1. You feel overwhelmed by all of it–all the emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental suffering that accompanies poverty and oppression.
2. You feel angry that people in power can restrict their fellow-countrymen from enjoying basic necessities.
3. You feel compelled to help but ill-equipped to do so.
4. You feel conflicted about your wealth and guilty that you complain so much about so many unimportant things in your life.
5. You feel urgency to return and serve again, next time better equipped with suitcases full of the things other people need and want.
6. You determine to pray for them, and you miss them. You even miss the people you couldn’t actually communicate with.

You are wrecked for living like you did before.

Once again, you’ve torn off a piece of your heart and left it somewhere else, sowing it like a seed and hoping that the little bit of love you showed while you were there will bloom into something sustainable and helpful for the people there.

You realize just how selfish you are, even while you were serving other people. How you spent time thinking about what you were eating or when you might find a bathroom again or how your talk would translate. You thought about being hot or cold or thirsty or tired. You thought about getting sick and figured between the hugging and close-talking, you were bound to get sick.

And you did.

And now you feel bad about that, because at least you have cold medicine and a soft mattress and a Panera where you can order soup.

Mission trips always wreck me.

That’s why I go. I need the wrecking.

And in some small way, I know my going helps them. I don’t see how–I’m really not that helpful. But that’s the faith part for me. I believe that my gifts will be multiplied by giving, and they believe that God will give them what they need. In an intricate web of faith, God weaves all of us together and grows us closer to himself. And somehow, he accomplishes his real goal–drawing people to himself. Revealing his great love to the world.

You see God’s love in poor, under-resourced places. You see the glimmer of hope, the smiles of gratitude, the joy of community. You see what really matters in life. That’s what happens on every mission trip.

That’s why I keep going.