Traveling Out of My Comfort Zone

Why I Go On Mission Trips: A Personal Journey

This year will bring my 7th and 8th mission trips.  I’ve gotten to visit some amazing places and meet some even more amazing people.  Each place, each city, each people, each culture teaches me more about who God is and what my role is in this world.  But, I didn’t start out knowing much about God’s mission to the world.  Learning about it was a process, and it took time. This is my personal journey…

I love to travel. I’ve always loved getting on a plane, being stuck next to the window for hours with nothing to do but read a book.  Of course, getting to my destination is always the main attraction, but even just getting there can be a pleasure, that’s how much I love traveling.

After going on countless ski trips, beach vacations, and sight-seeing tours, I began to realize that something was missing from these trips. My faith was growing at this time, and I was beginning to question who exactly I was traveling for. I would go, explore, make the most my time and what the place had to offer me, then return home.  But, really, I went for what they had to offer me…never thinking about what maybe I could offer them. I traveled for selfish reasons: to see places I’d never been, to visit places my friends had already been to, and to be “exposed” to more of the world.  I went for my own pleasure.  I had never once thought or known that travel could be about much more. I was comfortable.

Between 1999 and 2004 when I lived in New York City, I began to attend Redeemer Presbyterian Church.  While I was there, I began to hear the gospel and see it lived out.  People weren’t concerned about traveling to the “right” places, but about being a part of God’s mission and vision for his world. They wanted to love God and others better (Matt 22:37-39) by serving in new and fresh ways, ways I had never been exposed to, like taking foreign mission trips or serving in a soup kitchen or at a homeless shelter.

During the same time period, I read a fun book called The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  It was about a missionary family in Africa.  Despite the family’s trials, and ultimately the dissolution of their family as a result of their time in the Congo, the book instilled in me a desire to go as a missionary of some sort to Africa.  I wasn’t sure where in Africa I wanted to go, but I knew that I wanted to be a part of God’s global plan for his people.  I wanted to share the good news with others, and this book had turned me on to Africa.

I began to explore ways that I could go on a mission trip to Africa. My church wasn’t going there, although they did go to many places, so I had to find an organization that would sponsor me and allow me to join up with one of their teams.  I quickly found a team from St. Louis, MO through Mission to the World that was going, so I signed up.  We were bound for Nairobi, Kenya to work in the world’s second largest slum, Kibera, in the summer of 2004.  (Maybe you saw the slum Kibera in the 2005 Academy Award nominated movie The Constant Gardener.)

As my Kenya trip was being arranged, I saw God’s purpose for me to enter into world missions enlarge when another mission trip opportunity arose.  I had just ended a long relationship and was moving home hoping to find friends there.  Meanwhile, my mom recruited another mission team leader to recruit me to go with them to Cuzco, Peru. The team was with my home church, Park Cities Presbyterian Church, and looked to be a great opportunity to reconnect and build friendships in the city I would soon be moving to.

So another door and another opportunity for missions opened up for that summer of 2004. On the docket now were: first Peru, then Kenya.  I was amazed and awed that I would be able to travel for reasons that were other than my own pleasure.  I had no idea what was in store for me, but I knew I wanted to serve God, and here were two exciting opportunities. God was changing my heart to want to travel out of my comfort zone, to be engaged with people in other cultures, not just their cities and sites and restaurants. And, oh, what an amazing summer.

Over the next few weeks, I want to write about missions: world missions.

• I want to walk through some passages of scripture that tell us more about what God’s mission is for the world.
• I want to tell some personal stories of what I learned on my trips, the experiences I had, and how God used them to grow and shape me.
• And, I want to share about my upcoming trips this summer to Peru and Indonesia.

I hope you’ll join me in this adventure, even if it feels a little out of your comfort zone. Won’t you?

Have you ever been on a mission trip?  What helped you to decide to go? How was it different from a vacation?

Read the next posts in this series: How One Man Blessed Us All, Answering the Call

Read a related post: A Vision of Beauty about who are God’s people