Missionary Me

How it Feels to be Missionary Me

I could tell you that I have this all worked out but that wouldn’t be entirely true, so here’s the story…

When I was eight years old, my dad bought me a book called The Flight of the Yellow Woodbee. The book was based on a true story involving the lives of five young missionary men who were martyred on the beaches of Ecuador by a hostile, indigenous, Indian tribe. Before I had read the book, I’d heard stories about the people in my church who were going to foreign countries to feed the hungry and help the poor. It was something I vowed I would do one day when I was old enough.

Within the year I had read the book, one of the missionary’s sons along with one of the tribe members who had killed his father came to speak at my church. I was fascinated by their stories and later ecstatic when they signed my book.

I didn’t know it yet, but about five years later my life crossed paths with Ecuador once again. During the winter of 2005-06 when I was 14, my church’s youth pastor announced that our youth group would be taking a mission trip to Ecuador in June. I knew immediately I was going to be on that plane.

I stayed in Ecuador for two weeks, traveling, building churches, painting, helping at orphanages, and chopping down trees with machetes. It was a life changing experience and I knew missions work was now a true part of who I was and I’d be doing it throughout the rest of my life.

I returned to Ecuador the following summer for another two weeks and nearly frightened the team with my excitement. The tall, green mountains, the vibrant blue skies, and the waterfalls placed every mile or so made me feel at home.

Something I learned about my family during this time was that my great uncle started a mission’s school in Costa Rica along with his wife and kids. This was really cool to learn that I wasn’t the only one with a heart for missions. It turned out that he and his family as well as my grandmother actually knew a couple of the missionaries who were killed on that beach in Ecuador. While I was in Ecuador in 2007, I actually visited the house of one of the missionary families had lived and we stayed in that town. This was five miles from the beach where they were killed.

All of these strange and small connections with my life and these five missionaries really clarified my place in the mission’s field. This was a part of my life now.

Since then, I’ve gone on another mission’s trip to New Orleans, summer of 2008, to help aid Hurricane Katrina victims, slept on State Street in the rain for the Invisible Children of Uganda, written reports on mission’s, and given speeches about sponsoring children in Africa. I plan on going on another trip or two this summer to New Orleans, Haiti, or Uganda and this fall I’m attending a DTS (Discipleship Training School) through a program called YWAM (Youth with a Mission). We will be training then spending time in Southeast Asia and Africa helping children in need, I can’t wait.

In the words of one of the martyred missionaries, Jim Elliot, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” And this is true. I’ve made this a quote to live by. Helping others will always be more important than helping myself, and that is a part of who I am.