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!