REFLECTIONS from Ghana #3: Mission Minded Children

Now that I've been home from my very first mission trip for about a month, I've had the chance to spend some time reflecting and really digging into what I've learned from the experience.  These Reflections from Ghana are what I feel are the major themes I have taken from this trip and collectively may give insight to the Part 2 of my previous post Why Ghana? 


As I have stated several times, I have hoped and prayed that one of the ripple effects of my own decision to serve on a mission trip would be that it would create a change in my own children's perspective toward outreach. It wasn't that they have been adverse to outreach and missions, but I want to build-up a stronger attitude of service as a guiding principle within our family values.


I have already written about the First Ripple from my trip in a previous post when my son Caleb decided to go on his own mission trip this summer - a decision he made while I was preparing to leave for Ghana.  His decision to go was the first ripple, but the real impact of this decision will certainly show itself during and after his trip.

Noah & Joshua

Another ripple has been my kids simple awareness of others less fortunate than themselves.  When I returned home from Ghana, I shared with all the kids some highlights from our day in Ada Foah and how I met a couple boys, Noah and Joshua, that I really connected with.  Noah was quite the character and very outspoken - borderline rude at times - while Joshua was very quiet and just wanted to walk with me and hold my hand.  There were characteristics about both of these boys that reminded me of my own sons which is probably why I connected with them both so easily.  After sharing these stories with Caeden and Kyron though, Caeden had the idea of praying for Noah and Joshua.  That alone made me proud that he would think of doing that, but it was his idea to pray for Noah and Joshua every night before bedtime that was awesome. "Dad, let's pray for them every night until you go back and see them again!" So, each night since I've been back, Caeden and Kyron take turns praying that God would "Protect Noah and Joshua and bless their families in Ghana."  Pretty simple stuff, but it sure sounds powerful coming from your kids.


These are great first steps, but I am compelled to continue to find ways in which my kids can learn to be more mission minded or more service over self (to steal a phrase from a great organization).  International mission trips would be amazing experiences for each of them, but there are a lot of things we can do as a family in our own city that I want us to be open to as well.  I've recently stepped forward to take on more leadership opportunities with Kids Against Hunger and Northview's efforts to partner with KAH.  As a family we've done these packs in the past and had lots of fun serving in this way, but with more leadership responsibility I hope to help get my kids even more involved in an area of service they have already connected with.


Anyways, I look forward to continuing to share in the coming months how these ripples continues to spread out in our family and we work to become more mission minded on a daily basis.  

REFLECTIONS from Ghana #2: Blessings through Surrender

Now that I've been home from my very first mission trip for about a month, I've had the chance to spend some time reflecting and really digging into what I've learned from the experience.  These Reflections from Ghana are what I feel are the major themes I have taken from this trip and collectively may give insight to the Part 2 of my previous post Why Ghana? 


Without a clear sense of purpose in why I was going to Ghana, but absolute conviction that God wanted me to be part of the GO trip, I started the journey with a  commitment to being obedient through the experience and I prayed that God would give me the strength to say “Yes” to every door that was opened for me to serve.  It didn’t make sense that God would send me 6000 miles from home to say “No” to opportunities He presented.  If I was to experience everything He had in store for me, it was only going to come through surrendering to His will and plan.  What I didn’t realize in saying that prayer - but should have – was that God would answer by giving me many opportunities to say “Yes” in situations that pulled and stretched me personally and spiritually in ways I wasn’t expecting.

Playing with kids in Ada

I boarded the plane with anticipation of serving, serving, serving.  I did a lot of that, but through all the serving I found myself receiving even more.  God was blessing me because I was being obedient to His calling.  He blessed me with the opportunity to serve my fellow team members, to pray over the sick and needy, to assist in serving hundreds of people through medical clinics, to play with kids hungry for any attention, and he blessed me with the experience of praying with others as they made the decision to accept and follow Jesus Christ!  It was awesome! If that wasn’t enough, he also took skills and knowledge he has developed in me over my professional career and put it to use.  I was able to work with Northview’s Outreach Pastor, K Paul Maurer, and co-facilitate a Leadership Workshop for the Bible School students and pastors; met with administrators of the new College of Nursing at Manna Mission to advise on enrollment management issues; and God even used me to deliver the message during the Wednesday night church service – another first time experience in a long list from this trip.  Each of these experiences had a major impact on me personally and spiritually.  Had I not surrendered and said "Yes" each time I was offered the opportunity, I would have missed out on many life impacting moments.

God used the trip to demonstrate how great and mighty He is and can be on a daily basis in my life.  Each day abroad brought a new spiritual high and another example of how much my heavenly father loves me and wants to bless me, if I will continue to be obedient.  I believe whole heartedly that he returned me 6000 miles to my family and my home to continue to provide me opportunities to say ‘Yes’ to what He calls me to do and as a result continue to bless me. 

REFLECTIONS from Ghana #1: It's all about LOVE!

Now that I've been home from my very first mission trip for about a month, I've had the chance to spend some time reflecting and really digging into what I've learned from the experience.  These Reflections from Ghana are what I feel are the major themes I have taken from this trip and collectively may give insight to the Part 2 of my previous post Why Ghana? 


When I boarded the plane at Indianapolis International, I really didn’t know WHAT I would be doing in Ghana.  I had no doubt that God wanted to use me on this trip, but HOW God would choose to do that was beyond my understanding at that point.  Simply boarding the plane was another step of obedience I was taking and I prayed that I would continue to be obedient during the trip.

I could write for several pages about the experiences I had in Ghana and try to explain the profound impact each day had on me personally.  If I described the entire trip as a mountain top experience for me personally and certainly spiritually, each day was simply a journey from peak to peak within that mountain range.

When we returned home, one of the common questions I kept getting asked by friends and family was something to the effect of “What did you do?”  At first I was processing this question as though people were looking for some justification for why I went.  I wasn’t shy about sharing that I really didn’t know the answer to the question ‘Why Ghana?’ prior to leaving (see my previous post). So I think there was some anticipation from friends and family for what I discovered through the trip about indeed, ‘Why Ghana?’

So I started answering this question my first couple weeks back in a justification mode, explaining the trip as a series of activities and the impact I believed came from those activities. 

Then while reading my bible one night, I read I Corinthians 13.  Most of us are probably most familiar with verses 4-7 (Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous….) Verses 1-3, however, have been key in my processing and discovering the answer to the question: Why Ghana?


1 Corinthians 13 (NLT)

¹ If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. ³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

Everywhere we went, the kids flocked to my friend Sam.
She was a great example of showing LOVE to others.

After I read and reread this chapter (and specifically those three verses), I realized that I had been answering the question in the wrong context.  It wasn’t the stuff we did that was important, or the results of our actions and activity that really mattered.  It was the LOVE we shared with the people we met.  It was our willingness to let Christ’s LOVE shine through us that I needed to be telling people about. As I continued to process this information, God supported this truth through my own favorite moments.  It wasn’t the acts of service that stood out to me as my strongest memories but the time playing with the children in Ada, or sitting in the dirt talking with John in Ada, or building relationships with the bible school students, or praying for the miracle of a child with Linda in Swedru.  These were the moments and many others that were not about a special skill set I brought to the team, but about just spending time LOVING these amazing people.  My teammates have confirmed this as most of their special memories are about those LOVE moments. God blessed me – the entire team - through these moments.

So, as I continue to process the life impact of only my first GO trip, 1 Corinthians 13 is helping me see more clearly WHY GHANA.  It’s also serving as encouragement and justification for why I need to continue to participate in GO trips and why we should ALL step forward and answer the call to serve with great confidence.

I held myself back from experiencing these blessings years earlier because I doubted my biblical knowledge to be effective on a mission trip. Or I told myself I didn’t have the skill set to work in a medical clinic or help build something for someone else as part of an outreach.  What I continue to learn from I Corinthians 13 though is that none of that stuff matters.  LOVE, my ability to LOVE others and share Christ’s LOVE is all that matters.  God wants to use all of us in this way so much that he hard wired us with the ability the LOVE.  So I hope that we can all find encouragement and motivation to be willing to GO again or for others to GO for the first time - We all already possess the single most valuable skill set needed for a mission trip – the ability to LOVE!

Serving on a Saturday

7am on a Saturday morning is early! When the alarm went off last Saturday morning, there was some grumbling in our house about getting up that early on a weekend, but after some initial resistance the three older kids and I were up and out the door to  go participate in a service project in the Brookside community.  Caleb even managed to convince one of his friends to come join us!

Urban Outreach project with a clean-up day in the Brookside neighborhood

We all quickly got past the early start time and the wet weather and had a great morning working together  to help pick-up trash in a community needing some help.  Serving alongside my kids provided a venue for conversation that our own busy schedules during the week make difficult to happen on a routine basis.  We talked about the differences between our neighborhood and Brookside, what good we were actually doing that morning, and a variety of other topics just related to life.  I'm not sure how my kids felt, but as we worked together to show love to our neighbors in a different community, the entire experience was a love moment for our family as we spent some quality time together talking and sharing.

I was/am so proud of my kids and their willingness to be a part of this project and to serve without any complaining about the time, weather, dirt, or anything else that could be viewed as an inconvenience.   Hopefully we were able to bless this community, but we certainly were blessed ourselves through the work and time together.  I look forward to more of these moments to serve together.