This is a long-anticipated week for my family. My husband spearheaded a mission trip to North Carolina to repair a house damaged during Hurricane Florence last fall. Nine other church members and friends, including my daughter, will be working together to repair this house.
My daughter really wanted to go on this trip. She missed out on Jamestown Presbyterian’s youth trip to Alaska last summer. She joined the group in November -- too late to go on the trip. This is her chance to serve God in a tangible way. She’s grown up making pies for the Crawford County Fair through our church, and she understands the importance of having a servant’s heart, but she hasn’t had a chance to work like this before. I’m sure it’ll have a lasting impact.
My church has hosted many mission trips through the years. I’m not sure how many, but it’s a lot. People at Fallowfield are willing to get their hands dirty working for the Lord, be it in demolition, construction, or shelling elderberries. (Remember: You have to scrub your nails with lemon juice afterward, or they’ll be purple for a week.)
I admire people who go on short or long-term mission trips. I’ve never felt called to hands-on mission work. You know I help bake pies and monitor the ovens during Crawford County Fair week, but I’ve never gone on a mission trip. I’ve never felt God nudge me to go. I’m relieved, to be honest. I have absolutely no carpentry skills. Using a screwdriver is challenging for me.
But I think there are different mission fields. There are the obvious, hands-on service arenas. A woman in our church served as a missionary in Hungary for decades.
Other active service arenas include short-term mission trips, such as the one my husband and daughter are taking this week, or serving in soup kitchens and food pantries. A lady in our church helps regularly at Stone United Methodist Church’s soup kitchen in Meadville. My mother-in-law has volunteered at a food pantry in Alabama when she travels south for the winter.
But there are other, less obvious mission fields. I know people who send get well or thinking of you cards on a regular basis. They include heartfelt notes and Bible verses. I’m sure they have no idea how much their time and thoughtfulness blesses the recipients. These cards inspire hope. And people keep greeting cards. They pitch junk mail, file bills, recycle magazines and newspapers, but they keep their cards. It’s a special ministry.
Others visit people in assisted living communities. They stop by once a week and spend an hour talking to someone who’s lonely or sick or both. A lady in our church brings her guitar and sings to residents at St. Paul’s in Greenville. I’ll bet those folks look forward to these visits the way I look forward to walking in springtime.
Some people have long prayer lists. I know two ladies in our church who pray for 20 to 30 minutes each day, interceding for many people. God hears our prayers, every single one. We never know the good we’re doing when we lift a person’s name to God. In her last years, when she could no longer drive or get to church regularly, my late Grandma Louden prayed for many people throughout the day. It was her mission work.
Giving regularly to charities, serving in prison ministry, teaching Sunday school or Vacation Bible School classes, cooking or serving food at fundraising dinners, and donating blood to the Red Cross or Community Blood Bank, are all ways of serving God in a missionary capacity.
So what’s your mission field? Or maybe I should ask, what do you do well? I believe our talents are God’s way of leading us toward our mission field. A few of the men going on the mission trip to North Carolina have extensive backgrounds in carpentry and other skilled building trades. So hands-on mission work suits them.
We have many talented bakers and cooks at Fallowfield. So making pies and cooking for spaghetti dinners is no big deal.
God gifts some as teachers. Others are naturally generous with money, and some are called to be life-long missionaries. Perhaps God didn’t urge me to go on a home repair mission trip because I’m not gifted that way.
But I can write words that I hope encourage you. Whether you live in East or West Fallowfield Township, in Pittsburgh, Phoenix, or the Napa Valley, I hope my words remind you that there are good people in this world, there is always hope, and we serve a loving God who cares about every detail of your life.
Have a wonderful week. Blessings!