On a Mission: Why go on a mission trip

It’s February. As I sit here writing this, I can see snow flurries blowing past my window making it seem like summer has quite a ways to go before it gets here. But believe it or not, summer is just four months away. For some of you summer means a break from the dreaded torture called school, for others of you it means a time for a vacation, and yet for others of it may not mean much because you can’t think of what you want to do with your summer.

Well, I have great news for all of you. How about taking a mission trip to Bolivia!
If you have ever thought about going on a mission trip, or said someday you would, or maybe you haven’t even given it much thought, this summer is a great time to do it!

Some really great reasons to go on a mission trip with Hospitals of Hope to Bolivia include

1. You gain a variety of medical experience in a hospital
2. You experience giving medical care in a foreign country
3. You have a part in giving underprivileged children free check ups
4. You get to help heal physical bodies, and also share the Gospel
5. You learn about a different culture
6. You get to put that Spanish to practice!
7. You get to share Christ’s love with the people of Bolivia
8. Your friends and family get to be blessed by partnering with you on this adventure
9. You get to have an awesome summer!
10. You get to take home a life changing experience you will never forget.

I know it may seem crazy to be thinking about summer plans already, but now is a great time to start planning. It will give you time to get your passport and visa paperwork in line, raise support, learn about Bolivia, and time for God to start preparing you to be used by Him. But, I also know that some of you still sure about the whole idea. I get that. That is why next week I am giving you plenty of reason of why not to go on a mission trip as Part 2 of our On a Mission series.

But if you are thinking this is something for you, check out more about our Bolivian missions here!

The Weight of the World

It’s easy to let pain crush you. We live in a broken world, and, both on and off the mission field, we see wounds that we can only bandage, not heal.

I’ve been reading Henri Nouwen’s Gracias: A Latin American Journal, which records the time he spent in Latin America in the early 1980s, a time of much violence and political and civil unrest. Part of that time he spent in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where our hospital is located. Although Bolivia is considerably more peaceful now than it was then, some of his reflections speak directly to the experience of ministering there – or pretty much anywhere else – even today.

He writes,

As I let all these pains in the lives of my family and friends enter into my heart, I wonder how I could offer true comfort. How could I ever enter into their pain and offer hope from that place? How could I enter into real solidarity with them? But then I slowly realized that I do not have to be like them or to carry their burdens, but that our Lord, my Lord and their Lord, has carried all human burdens and was crushed by them, so that we could receive his Spirit, the comforter.

This is a realization I’m slowly coming to, and that I’m praying to understand more and more. We cannot stand up under the weight of the world, but we don’t have to. Jesus can carry it.

In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Paul writes, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

While we do – and should – try to meet physical needs, ultimately our goal has to be to bring those needs to Jesus. Only he can heal the wounds we all bear, and only he can strengthen us to offer hope to those around us.

Dangerous Business

To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, "It's a dangerous business, going to work at Hospitals of Hope. You step into the office, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

In my case, that means being swept off to Bolivia for a couple of months. Tomas and Iris Ortiz, our guest house hosts, have taken a job in Canada, and their replacements won't be able to start for a few months. In the interim, I'll be filling in, taking care of our volunteers, speaking a lot of Spanish, and trying to learn how to cook at a high altitude (about 9,500 feet).

I'll be continuing to do parts of my job from Bolivia, as well as working with the hospital administration and coordinating volunteer work. I'm excited for the challenge and adventure of adjusting to Bolivian culture and getting to know some wonderful volunteers, as well as hospital staff, patients, and kids at the nearby orphanages.

But I'll have my work cut out for me, and I'll be leaving a fair amount of work behind me here at the office, as well. This is where you come in. :)

There are two things I'd like to ask of all of you. The first is that you pray. Pray for Tomas and Iris and their family as they adjust to life in Canada, as well as for me, for our volunteers in Bolivia, for our hospital staff, for all those we serve, and for our staff and volunteers here in Wichita.

The second is that you'd consider pitching in here at the office while I'm gone. There will be more sorting and inventorying to do in the warehouse, construction work on Clinics in Cans, general office work, and possibly event planning to do. I'll still be in the office for the next week and a half, so, if you're interested in helping out, I'd love to meet with you and discuss how you can get involved. You can call me at 316.262.0964 or email me at leta@hospitalsofhope.org.

I'll be updating the blog and our facebook page (facebook.com/hospitalsofhope) from Bolivia, so stay tuned to learn more about my adventures!

"Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"

Life, on the mission field or off, can be overwhelming at times. Coming home from a mission trip often leaves volunteers unsure how to live in a world that now seems much bigger than it did before. Often, they’re confronted with heartbreaking poverty and the reality that, even with all our relative wealth and privilege, there is only so much we can do.

Being here at home isn’t necessarily easier. People disappoint us, work can be difficult—if we can even find it, in this economy--, and church doesn’t always help.

I was thinking earlier today about the story of the disciples in the boat with Jesus, when the storm seems about to capsize the boat and Jesus is just lying there, peacefully sleeping. The disciples wake him and ask, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

Sometimes, when life gets overwhelming, I think all of us feel like asking that question.

When the disciples wake Jesus, he calms the storm. Once it has died down, he asks the disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

It seems perfectly reasonable for the disciples to have been freaking out a little when it looked like they were all about to drown. But the reality is that they didn’t really have to wake Jesus up. He had things taken care of. He wasn’t going to let the boat sink.

It can be hard to remember, and even harder to believe, that the storms in our lives aren’t big enough to upset God’s boat. Sometimes they seem pretty huge.

Today, I’m praying that we will remember that we have no need to fear. We follow Jesus, and even the wind and the waves obey him.

What's the Matter with Missionaries?

In Sunday school one day, I was surprised to hear someone comment about how much they disliked “missionaries.” I never got the chance to hear exactly where they were coming from, but I have a few ideas. Missionaries are often dismissed as culturally insensitive, patronizing, and imperialist. (Check out the recent post on the God’s Politics Blog about this topic.)

Sometimes, unfortunately, that’s true.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are those who glorify missionaries. A missionary, many believe, is someone who has given up everything to follow Christ, sacrificing their chances at a normal life in order to win souls.

That’s also sometimes true.

I fall somewhere in the middle between these two positions. I don’t really think missionaries are in a special category, either for honor or for criticism. We’re all called to love our neighbors as ourselves, be sensitive to their cultures and experiences, and take up our cross daily. We are all going to face challenges, discouragements, and disillusionment. But we all also have the same opportunity to take part in the unfolding of God’s plan.

My perspective on this is undoubtedly shaped by my background. I’ve never really thought of myself as a “missionary,” although that’s sort of what I am, I guess. I work full-time for a “missions” organization, and I have spent significant amounts of time abroad, doing “missions.” But I’ve never really thought of myself as a missionary, and I’ve never seen myself as making any significant sacrifices.

I don’t by any means want to downplay the sacrifices made by some, but, at the same time, I think we run into a problem when we start counting up our sacrifices or overly exalting the sacrifices made by others. I think that that is often where we start running into problems with cultural insensitivity—acting like we have all the answers, and, since we’re making such sacrifices to tell them, they’d better listen.

I like the attitude of David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, much better. He once said, “For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa…. I never made a sacrifice.”

I don’t really know a whole lot about David Livingstone’s methods, and I’m sure he made a few errors. (Don’t we all?) But I do think he got this right: Following God’s call is never a sacrifice. God loves us, and where he leads is the path to joy.

Praying Big

A friend of mine told me a couple of months ago that she was going to give God a chance to say no.

You see, she’d been praying vague, unspecific prayers—the kind that it’s impossible to tell if God is answering. After talking with her, I realized that I do the same thing all the time. I bring up a situation to God and then say, basically, “Well, I don’t really know what you want to do here, so I’ll just let you take care of it.”

In some ways, that’s a good thing—being willing to surrender to God’s will, knowing that he’s in charge. But that’s not really what I was doing. Really, I wasn’t trusting God to take care of my concerns; I was afraid to tell him what I wanted for fear that he’d say no, or, worse, that he wouldn’t answer at all.

My friend’s solution to this problem was to start being honest with God—to tell him what she really wanted. The Psalmist tells us, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8). Saying, “Okay, God, your will be done” isn’t really pouring out our hearts. I think real prayer is pouring out our hearts and still being able to say, “Your will be done.”

It can be hard to pray specifically about all of the need we see. We’re a small organization, and what we can do is limited. But our God is not.

I was reading Compassion International’s blog earlier today, and the writer explains that many of the people at Compassion believe that extreme poverty can be eliminated during our lifetimes. It’s a big dream, and it requires big prayers.

I don’t know how God will answer those prayers. And I’m not sure if I’ve got the courage to ask for anything that big. But I’m praying for the courage to start praying big prayers.

Will you pray them with me? Pray that God will use our ministry—that lives will be transformed, that societies will be renewed, and that hope will overflow. The need is big, but our God is much, much bigger.

Loving the Half-hearted and the Corrupt

It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

--Graham Greene, in The Power and the Glory

I was reading the God’s Politics Blog earlier today, and, while I don’t agree with everything it says, I was challenged by a simple question posted by one of their bloggers: “Does my life look like Jesus on the cross?”

I think that this question is asking if we are living sacrificially, offering love to others whether or not they ‘deserve’ it. It seems like living sacrificially would be much easier if people were easier to love—but people are broken and fallen.

Jesus didn’t die for us because we’re such good people; he died for us because he loved us.

I’m often struck by how hard it is to show love to people. Missionaries—those sent by Hospitals of Hope and by other organizations, both in the US and in other countries—deal with physical danger, unfamiliar surroundings, and cultural misunderstandings as they try to share Christ’s love. It’s not always easier closer to home, either. Even loving our neighbors or our family members can sometimes feel impossible.

Yet, in all of this, to quote Paul,

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:5-8

As Easter approaches, we ponder the depth of Christ’s love for us. It is because of him that we do all that we do here. I pray that this week, and every week, we will grow more and more like him.

He Dwelled Among Us

“He dwelled among us”—this was the theme for Urbana 09, the nation’s largest missions conference. Urbana has been held every 3 years since 1946, and the week after Christmas the Hospitals of Hope USA staff traveled to St. Louis for the 22nd triennial conference.

Urbana always provides a lot of food for thought, as well as being a great way to connect with future volunteers. This year’s conference focused on the incarnation and what that means for the way we should conduct missions.

When Christ came to earth, the speakers pointed out, he “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Phil. 2:7). It’s far too easy for us to get caught up in preserving our own dignity when we do missions. We’re happy to perform surgery, but we’d really rather that someone else emptied the bed pans. It’s easy to think we’re being sacrificial when we get to do the glamorous work; it’s far harder to serve in the ins and outs of everyday life.

Another way we can learn from Jesus’ example is to maintain a long-term commitment to the people we serve. Too often, Western missionaries go to a developing country, make promises to help, and then go home, leaving their promises unfulfilled and people disillusioned. Jesus, on the other hand, came and lived with—and died for—the people he came to save; his was no short-term commitment.

This one is a little harder to apply for most of us. Most of us haven’t been called to spend our lives in a foreign country, among strangers. When we get involved in missions, it’s usually short-term. I still think that we can put this principle into practice, though. While we may not spend our lives on the mission field, we can maintain a long-term commitment, even from home.

Our hospital in Bolivia sees many short-term volunteers who come and go, but many continue to be involved with Hospitals of Hope, and, thereby, the community around our hospital, long after their time abroad has ended. We’re committed to making sure that we provide continuous, quality care at our hospital, and we employ a year-round Bolivian staff to do that, even after volunteers have gone home. Although most of us don’t live in Bolivia full-time, we have made a commitment to the community, and we aren’t going anywhere.

Many of the people who attended Urbana are students, and, as we talked to the ones stopping by our booth, we could tell that a lot of them were really thinking hard about how to apply the things they were learning to their lives. Should they go to medical school and become a missionary doctor? Should they avoid all the debt associated with medical school and become a nurse, so that they could go to the mission field sooner? Should they stay at home in the US and support missions financially?

We didn’t have a lot of answers for most of these students; God has a different plan for each of their lives. But there is one thing that they all have in common with all of us—we are being called to serve with humility and commitment.

Can We Change the World without God?

“Can we change the world without God?”

That’s the question posed on a recent blog post on urbana.org. To a certain extent, the answer is obvious. After all, even Hitler changed the world. The question of whether we can change the world for the better is trickier.

Communism in the USSR changed the face of the globe dramatically. The Communist leaders had incredible visions of what the world could be like—there would be equality, an end to injustice and poverty. Yet their visions of equality led to oppression, environmental devastation, and mass murder. “Men have forgotten God,” Solzhenitsyn explained. “That’s why all of this has happened.”

Of course, Communism in the USSR is a bit of a straw man. There have been many who have made positive contributions to humanity who have been atheists, agnostics, or followers of other religions. The Urbana blog post cites Einstein, Edison, and Benjamin Franklin as examples. Or how about the many leaders of NGOs providing relief in the developing world who don’t share our faith? Your faith, or lack thereof, makes very little difference to the starving person that you feed.

So what do we, as Christians, have to offer? The Urbana writer offers three unique benefits that Christians have: a real hope, communion with Christ, and the perseverance of faith.

While it’s possible to make many positive changes without these things, they have a transformational power that can’t be found outside of Christ. We have a real and lasting hope—and without that, we (and those we’re trying to help) too easily succumb to despair. Our personal connection with our Maker helps ensure that we don’t fall into all of the traps laid by the wayside—“the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” after all. We know that each individual has incredible value, that we cannot ignore “the least of these.” And our faith sustains us when the going gets tough and helps us to “not grow weary in doing good” (Galations 6:9).

At Hospitals of Hope, our faith is essential to our work—to our attempts to change the world. While we offer medical care to provide for physical needs, we also seek to provide for spiritual needs. We don’t force anyone to share our faith, but we hold out the hope that we have, and we offer it to them freely.

The Urbana writer examines this question much more thoroughly than I do here, so check out the original post. Also, Hospitals of Hope will be attending Urbana ’09 in St. Louis December 27-31 this year, so, if you come, be sure to come by our booth (#1231) and say hello. We would love to see you!

Music and Missions at the Concert of Hope

We're really excited about the benefit concert tomorrow night, featuring Waterdeep, Justin McRoberts, and SHEL. They're all amazingly talented, and we're thrilled to have them partnering with us to help bring health care to the poor around the world.

I've just been reading a bit more about Justin McRoberts on his website and blog, and I'm really excited to get to hear him in person. Justin is deeply committed to supporting mission work, especially groups like Compassion International, the International Justice Mission, and the Blood Water Mission (and now us!). In regards to working on behalf of the poor, Justin writes, "I believe these are the defining characteristics of our likeness to God. The need and desire to care for the poor and oppressed is something we share in common with all humanity, not simply the religious."

Here's an excerpt from a recent post from his blog, talking about his song "Man Like Me":

Regarding the songs theme: I had just finished reading Jonathan Kozol..s book Savage Inequalities and was struck by the situation many poor find themselves in; the cycle of having nothing to stand on to help them climb out of their dilemma. For many poor, their desire is to not to be carried or receive a lifetime of free handouts, but to receive the initial help they need to get their foot on the first rung.. as Jeffery Sachs writes in The End Of Poverty. I realize full well that I say this in direct defiance of many who look upon the poor collectively as lazy and ill-intentioned. This social perspective is part of the dehumanization that the spirit of Poverty is most bent upon instilling in those who have. It begins with a sense of entitlement; that we have been something other than fortunate or blessed, but have in fact received our due. Those who are poor, in turn, receive what they deserve according to their efforts. In the long run, this perspective leads us to equate value with wealth and that kind of blindness is something far more than ignorant, it is destructive and shameful.

So come out tomorrow night and join us at Maranatha Worship Center (888 S. Webb Road in Wichita) for a great evening of music and missions. We hope to see you there!

Operation Bolivia

I was just reading the Bolivia page on the Operation World website, a site dedicated to helping Christians know how to pray for mission work around the world. Even though I've been involved in mission work to Bolivia for over a year now, there are some facts that continue to shock me and remind me of the need for prayer.

Some things that stood out to me:

-Even though the literacy rate is 77%, the "functional literacy" rate is less than 50%.

-The drug trade is a growing problem in Bolivia, and, due to diplomatic tensions between Bolivia and the US, the DEA was expelled about a year ago. And, while I completely agree that the drug trade needs to be eradicated, it's easy to see why there is so much resistance. When you are a poor farmer, it is hard to see how growing bananas is going to support your family as well as growing coca would.

-Over 80% of children live in extreme poverty, and over 80,000 are known to be addicted to drugs.

Not all of the facts are depressing, though. The evangelical church has a growing presence in Bolivia, despite the challenges it faces. In fact, the Bolivian church is even sending missionaries to places like the Middle East (see the blog post I wrote a few months ago about how Hospitals of Hope is helping with this). God is at work in Bolivia, and he is using his people to carry out that work.

If you get a chance, check out the Operation World site and take some time to pray about what you read there, as well as for our staff, volunteers, and patients in Bolivia.

Missions and the Economy

I recently read this post from John Piper's blog, in which he argues that "the worst of all times is the best of all times for missions." This is so, he says, for four reasons:
1) because tough economic times force us to be more dependent on God,
2) because our impact is increased when people see that we have sacrificed to serve them,
3) because people are more receptive when they see how uncertain life is, and
4) because difficult economic circumstances can make us more aware that material possessions don't possess true value, inspiring us to be more generous with what we have.

There is a lot of truth in what Piper says here. While the state of the economy is scary for just about all of us, frequently the most difficult circumstances are the ones that God uses to make the biggest impact. When we trust in Him, rather than ourselves, we frequently find that the results are beyond what we could have dreamed. He is, after all, "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine" (Ephesians 3:20).

Actually, it seems that frequently our possessions get in the way of our generosity. Studies have shown that lower-income Americans consistently give a greater percentage of their income that those with higher incomes. When we have less, we know that we're trusting God for everything anyway, and we're less inclined to rest in the security of our possessions. We're more inclined to be like the widow in Mark 12:41-44, who gave all that she had to live on, trusting that God would provide.

Not only do difficult economic circumstances change our attitude and actions, but, like Piper says, they open doors for ministry that would otherwise remain closed. While stepping out in faith to do missions is frightening, we can rest assured that God will use our sacrifices.

I certainly hope that the economic climate improves soon, but, in the meantime, I don't want to waste the opportunities that we are being presented with. Whether or not the worst of times economically are really the best of times for missions, they are the circumstances we have been given. And God is faithful, in the worst of times and the best of times.