Idon’t own a pair of Toms or Chacos. Can I still be considered a Harding short-term missionary?
I am from Rome, Italy, and my country is a mission field. While at Harding, I have been able to go on two different mission trips: a three-week campaign with the Harding Chorus in Eastern Europe and a Spring Break mission trip to Panama. Living in a mission field and going on mission trips, I’ve been able to experience being the one who leaves and the one who gets left behind. When I was in middle school, a Christian group from Mississippi State came to Rome and while they were there, I decided to get baptized. This group of college students had the chance to see the seed that somebody else planted grow. Of course they left after a few days, and even if I was really upset about not seeing these college students anymore, other people nurtured my faith and helped me grow as a Christian.
During one of our nights in Panama, Raul Alvarado, the preacher of the Church of Christ in Panama City, said if the word of God is a seed, we will sometimes be the sower, sometimes the sun, sometimes the water, and sometimes the harvester. God’s word is not popcorn. For every job well done, it takes time to grow, slowly but constantly. The water cannot do the sower’s job.
The interesting thing about short-term mission trips is that we might do 100 percent of what we can, but the people that we will touch take just the 5 percent of that they need.
The healthy refreshment of ideas, points of view and ways to serve others are what keep the kingdom moving. If I had to listen to the same preacher or be around the same missionary family all of my life, I would not be as touched and nurtured as much as I am when I meet brothers and sisters from around the world and learn from their own way of doing the Lord’s mission.
We are starting early to go out and make disciples and even if we are rough and without experience, we are doing our best. If it’s never about us, but instead about the people that we touch, our goal at the end of the day is to hear “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” We are all part of a mechanism that keeps moving and changing. Wherever we are, if we are working for the kingdom, we are part of the same team. In Panama, we planted seeds in the hearts of people we met, we watered some others and hopefully we pulled some weeds from other ones. We left, but somebody else will take care of those seeds, and the mechanism will keep moving. Short-term missions taught me to be elastic and ready to change my approach because of the different, new situations I have to face. One day I’ll be the water, one day the sun, whatever it takes, to make that seed grow. Today, tomorrow, what will you be for the Lord’s mission?
