It Made A Difference 2

Here are just a few excerpts about how trips in college made a difference for people:

In the summer in 1990, I went to Haiti with a group led by our CCO staff person. Also on that trip was Lynette, my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife of 16 years. The trip served us in an unexpected way.
A small residential college is something of a "relationship incubator." That is, when we met and started dating there, things always happened in the warm fuzzy confines of the campus. We got to know each other well, but only in that context. To know how a girl experiences the stress of finals is, though interesting, not that useful in the rest of life. The mission trip was one thing that broke us out of that. We were with a group, in a foreign country doing tasks that we NEVER did in the college setting. We got to see one another in a new context that was challenging and revealing. If I am ever tempted to disrespect my wife, there is always the knowledge that she can lay brick better than most men.
On other fronts, the impact of the trips are hard to measure. I can remind myself daily what poverty really looks like. I can know that I don't know what suffering is. My job now is about helping others and treating them with dignity while I do so. All things I learned on those trips. Ken '93

I went on two mission trips with Messiah – they all made a difference!
Not that I was very material-driven to begin with, but these experiences made me even less so. I became appreciative of hot water, cold milk, and lettuce – and basically all of the luxuries that we in America have. I’ve encouraged others to LEAVE THE COUNTRY AND VISIT A 3RD WORLD COUNTRY. I think EVERYONE should.
Now that I have 3 kids under age 4, I won’t travel, but I do support folks who are going on missions trips. I believe in it so strongly that I can’t so no to someone raising funds so that they can attend a trip. Stephanie '99

I attended the Haiti trip in 1991 via Issachar’s Loft. The trip made a profound impact on my life and I still to this day remember some of the commitments I made to serve Lord. During that time by God’s grace and the faithfulness of many Godly ministers the Lord gave me an opportunity to help in starting a Classical Christian School in New Jersey. This school has over 50% minority representation and we never intentionally planned that but we are very grateful for the ethnic diversity in Christ represented at the academy. Ralph, '95

Its funny that I just received this email from you. I was just commenting the other day how thankful I am for running water and hot water. I often think about the challeges people face where I served in Honduras with no portable or hot water. I am often reminded of the simple things that we take for granted like taking a hot shower every day or drinking water out of a sink. Nora '99

Did it make a difference?

Alumni,
Did your service & mission experience change your life? Or not?
It's important for us to hear both! Please leave a comment!
Tell us who you are, how you served, and what God did.
Did God use your experience to:
-make you more grateful?
-humble you?
-make you a more committed follower of Jesus?
-forge long-term relationships?
-give you passion to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God?
-open your heart to service?
-help you discover the richness of other cultures and nations?
-instill generosity in giving to service and missions organization?
-make you less materialistic?
-call you to some kind of life-long service?
-give you new perspective on poverty?
-give you courage to reach out to neighbors and friends?

The only wrong answer is no answer, and its never too late!
Reflect on your trip NOW and God may still use it.

grace and peace,
Matt Hunter

ps- check out other posts to read about alums in mission, student testimonies and this years plans.

An Oasis in Belize (with IPod Worship)

Guillermo (Billy - top left) spent 10 days in Belize and really saw God move in incredible and unexpected ways.

"I think the coolest thing I learned in Belize is that God is interested in every single part of our lives. Pastor Ron Braaten (PR) and his wife Linda, run the Oasis Ministry full-time. Oasis really shows love in an incredibly holistic way that reflects the overwhelming love the Lord has for all His children.

Oasis has a mobile library ministry that allows children to borrow from a trailer full of books they regularly bring to local schools to encourage reading. They also find people to sponsor Belizean children's education. In Belize, there is no free public education. So families must pay for all levels of their children’s schooling. Most families can afford the relatively inexpensive primary school tuition, but the large majority cannot attend secondary school or pursue higher education because it simply costs too much for them.

Apart from Oasis, PR founded a church for the local Belizeans that provides a lot for the people's spiritual and social needs. The church is like a little community spread throughout the nearby towns. PR and his workers use two school buses to pick up the entire church body before every function, which was just remarkably cool the first time I saw it in action. God moved powerfully through their Monday night worship services, where there are no live musicians and the people literally sing their hearts out with recordings off an iPod! Despite this major difference in the set-up of their service, it was awesome to see the Spirit invade our space and help to renew and restore all of his broken children, both Belizean and American.

I really cannot say enough about how impactful this mission was to my life and my faith. I learned an incredible amount about myself and about God’s heart for all of humankind around the world.

Benefitting from the Doubt

"Doubt" is a a popular movie and play right now. It is also popular for contemporary theologians to praise doubt as a necessary component of faith. What IS the "benefit of the doubt"?
Have you ever been wrong about someone? Both my wife and one of my best friends have often
been plagued with others prejudices. It's not a racial thing. They really ARE just misunderstood.
The crux of the problem is that they are both good-looking people who happen to be introverts.
Therefore, they are judged as aloof and arrogant. People rarely give them the benefit of the doubt. They are certainly not the only ones victimized by prejudices, nor are they the most severely victimized. Being human, they "no doubt" (?) often prejudge others as well.

I vaguely remember a conversation I had with a Russian Orthodox Priest. He had two sage pieces of advice. First, and less relevantly spouses should not try to be accountability partners. Second, and more relevantly, he quoted an Orthodox Saint who had suggested that to truly forgive someone, the forgiver should try to come up with a humane excuse for why the offender behaved as they did. This is one way of giving the benefit of the doubt. It is assuming that there is some perfectly humane reason why someone behaves badly. At my church, we sometimes say, "Hurting people hurt people." A humorous essay on the male perspective offers this "rule" to women: "If we say something, and there are two ways you could take it, and one of them makes you mad, we meant the other way." That's a step in the right direction.

Taking self-doubt (and faith?) a bit further, we might become agnostic about the thing that leads to our judgement. This is to say, "I doubt that I know why this person is the way they are, but I take on faith that they are a person of immeasurable value and complexity. Certainly, there is a humane reason for their actions (however deplorable) and they are not innately worse than I." The benefit of the doubt does not suggest that we entrust ourselves to those that have hurt us, or even reduce guilt in many circumstances. It only asks that we don't assume the worst about them.
Dealing (as I do) in service, I sometimes have the opportunity to hear people trying to make sense of their service experiences. Since we often serve outside our own communities, we often find ourselves in contexts that we don't quite understand. Given our own experiences, Christian servants can get pulled into the American tendency of meritocracy that suggests that whatever needs are present in the life of any person or community, personal irresponsibility probably lies behind those needs. In this situation, the benefit of the doubt is to say, "I am not from here. I do not know the history of this community, or what it has been through. I do not know that they are any less responsible than I. I have a lot to learn." The old adage has it: "Do not judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes." Doubt should also be a call to learning. Even recognizing the permanent frailty of our knowledge does not suggest that we maintain cold ignorance! If you don't know about a person, get to know them better.

What about our relationships with God. Can they benefit from doubt? Indeed. C.S. Lewis and Fyodor Doestoyevsky have both written about scenarios in which God goes on trial. No doubt Job had the idea first. But doesn't faith demand that we give God the benefit of the doubt? I would suggest that if the God you claim doesn't deserve this benefit, then you should leave aside the worship of that "God" until you can imagine a God that does deserve it. That one is God.

Sufjan Stevens, writing "Vito's Ordination Song" in the vox Dei offers these lyrics:
"To what I did and said, rest in my arms, sleep in my bed. There's a design.
To what I did and said..."As incomprehensible as many apparent "acts of God" (or God's non- intervention in acts of incomprehensible tragedy) might be, if God is God, might the benefit of the doubt include these things?

For those of us who offer God the benefit of the doubt without reservation, and desire it for ourselves, it is time to offer it to those around us who are created in God's image.

Is this a Pollyanna ploy for naivete? I hope it is intentional wisdom for healthy living.
When can we move beyond doubt? When we know fully, even as we are fully known.

Service - Learning About Ourselves and Others

If I am not who you say I am, then you are not who you think you are - James Baldwin 1968

How do you know who you are? Probably in part because people told you things about yourself and the group of people that formed the "we" and "us" to whom you belong. In part, that identity was probably formed in contrasting relation to those who were not part of that group.

All experiential or contextual learning implies something "other" than the normal experience the classroom. In reality the classroom provides a context and experience but the creation of these "new" teaching approaches ("pedagogies") imply that something different can be done to expand learning. The idea is to create a context of difference; something that forces the learner to pay attention to different things. Often the goal is ultimately self-knowledge, a crucial part of development as a human being.

In adventure education, the "outdoors" or "wilderness" is a major part of the context. By encountering the created world more deeply, or alternately, by presenting "participants" with uniquely disorienting challenges and problems in an outdoor context, we teach them something about themselves individually and as a group of people. The isolation and unique subdivison of the groups as well as the unique problems that present themselves (or are presented) create a unique social environment (thanks Dave Tanis). We may learn about nature ("the environment") and survival skills, but for the most part, outdoor skills are for the educator. Minimal competence and experience is an advantage to the learning experience because the learning relies on UNfamiliarity. If a "participant" is familiar with a particular challenge, they are also familiar with how to overcome it and thus, their capacity to learn something "new" is diminished, though not eliminated. This reality (as well as a playful sadistic streak) is what drives the amazing creativity of outdoor educators.

What about service-learning? The context may be rural or urban, national or international. Since most student (in the college environment of Messiah at least) don't serve where they live any of these contexts may be sufficiently "other" to provoke new ideas. However, service-learning faces a unique problem in the way identity can form in service. "Service" always implies a "served" other. Rather than "participants" who are there to learn something by finding and pushing against their own limits, one is the designated "servant" and it is implied that there is a need out there that the servant can meet.

A dichotomy is set up:
On one side is the "servant" - competent, responsible, theoretically need-less.
On the other is the "served" - they are uniquely marked as possessing a need that they lack the capacity to meet themselves.

Thus, "servants" are prone to approach the "service" context looking for problems that need the application of their existing competencies. Things that are not a problem (community assets), or not a problem that we the servants can remedy right now (systemic inequity), may be overlooked, but these MAY be the exact things that would provoke LEARNING. Those of us involved in service learning are obviously intent on the needs of the "servant," many of which correspond to and complement the needs of the "served." The dissolution of the dichotomy I described above and a growing sense of reciprocity and role-swapping is the key to learning.
We might begin by assessing our own deficits and critiquing our assumptions with questions like this:
Does MY community need service? Why or why not? What needs do I and my community have? Why do I think THIS community "needs" service? What could I learn from the community I serve? What strengths does it possess?

Christians are called to be disciples of Jesus. A disciple IS first and foremost, a LEARNER. One cannot be a disciple without the humility to admit that one has needs, even if they are only a deep-set and inarticulate sense of deficit in one's soul. Maybe we need to learn something about ourselves to figure out what that deficit is, and maybe we can't do it alone. God may intend to teach us these lessons through other "needy" people.
The irony of the whole arrangement of being a disciple is contained in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Jesus calls his disciples to serve the most "needy" and he tells them that when they serve the "least of these," they will be serving Him. Jesus also communicates that this is something we "need" to do to experience the salvation of the kingdom of God. So when we serve, we must be mindful that there in the one we serve is the one to whom we attach ourselves as LEARNERS. We need to become the disciples of the "least" of these, in order to understand who we really are.

Next: the benefit of the doubt

Loving God in Uganda

(Mary Kate traveled to Uganda with Global Expeditions)
God worked in so many ways this summer during my time in Uganda (Kampala and Gulu). We partnered with the local church called Makerere Community Church. This church amazed me! The services were 5 ½ hours long, and so on fire for God. The Pastor and various members went with us everywhere we went and became not only our translators but our good friends. Because of the AIDs epidemic in Uganda, one of the ways Makerere Community Church is trying to fight HIV, is through teaching about purity and abstinence. The majority of our ministry revolved around a God-centered abstinence program called “True Love Waits”. Before we left for Uganda, we learned and practiced the program in Texas during a few days of intense training. In Kampala and in Gulu, we presented the program at many secondary schools. I was amazed at how easily some of the girls opened up. They asked all sorts of questions about relationships, anger management, parents, friends, faith and so many other topics. There were times when I had no idea how to answer, but God gave me words of encouragement that these girls appreciated.

At one school we presented the program and our leader shared the Gospel. The girl who was sitting next to me said that she wanted to accept Christ. After the presentation, I was able to talk to her and pray with her. She is 17 years old and like many people in Gulu, she was affected by the war in Uganda. She had friends who were abducted by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). I was able to give her a Bible and welcome her into the Family of God. She is now my sister in Christ and the smile that lit up her face when I told her that was priceless!! I gave her my email address and hopefully I’ll be able to hear from her again sometime soon.

We also went to an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp in Gulu. It is a camp for war refugees. While some people were starting to return to their home village, many people were still in this camp. There were many elderly people. Some of the members of my team and I were able to help an elderly man clear his front yard of rocks and fill in a hole. It was a very unique experience, but very rewarding when the man told us, in his few words of English, that he loved God. Each day presented a new exciting challenge. It was awesome to see God at work!

Great Alumni

In this post I thought I would profile some great alumni that are making a difference in the service and mission world. Many Messiah alums are making a positive difference in their own ways, but these folks are carrying on the particular kind of work I do in this office beyond graduation.

Peter Greer - President of Hope International

Peter graduated with me from Messiah in 1997. After years of international development work in Cambodia, Rwanda and The Democratic Republic of Congo and an MPP from Harvard, he joined HOPE in 2004. HOPE is a Christian faith based non-profit dedicated to alleviating spiritual and physical suffering through microfinance.

Peter is also a co-author with Phil Smith of The Poor Will Be Glad:Joining the Revolution to Lift the World Out of Poverty, to be released in November by Zondervan. He's kind of like Bono in a dress shirt. And he might hate me for writing that.

Melissa Davis - President of Jesus Politik

Melissa graduated from Messiah in 2006. While here she led the International Justice Mission and Invisible Children chapters through the Agape Center. She also worked with several NGOs in Thailand and led stateside service trips for her fellow students through the Agape Center.
"JESUSpolitik works with local missionaries overseas in areas where there is a lot of need, and often, not a lot of resources. We connect them to larger human rights and missions groups that want to reach the same people in the same area and we get the word out about these collaborated projects in America."

Greg and Bethany Glidden - Priority One Ministries

Greg and Bethany graduated from Messiah in Before joining the P1 team, they taught English in China for three years, earned their Master's Degrees in Missions and Intercultural Studies, and taught in a public school.
"Priority 1 Ministries is a Christ-focused, Bible-based, interdenominational short-term missions ministry providing cross-cultural mission trips for Christian youth through adults who have a sincere desire to assist with the greatest "search and rescue" plan in history."

Come back next month to see 3 more service and mission alumni featured!