How a short-term mission trip changed the course of my life
My first experience with missions was when I was 14. The summer before, I’d felt that God had told me to go on a missions trip the next year. That summer I went to Scotland with a group of teenage girls that I met for the first time one week before we left. We did a lot of painting, ran a VBS, and helped run a summer camp.
After about a year and a half, I began thinking about missions again. This time, I wanted to go somewhere in Eastern Europe. (I’d wanted to before, but didn’t meet the minimum age requirements that most organizations had for that region at that time.) Before I made up my mind whether or not to pursue it, my youth pastor gave me a call telling me that they were looking into a summer mission trip to the Czech Republic with a group called Christian Outreach International, and would I like to go? I figured that that counted as God giving me the OK to go on a mission trip and went with a group of teenagers from my youth group to Czech Republic.
This trip was the beginning of a big change for me. At the time I didn’t realize it. I was going into 11th grade and I knew that college was coming up soon. I was a serious student, and figured that any more mission trips would have to wait until after I finished college. I didn’t dream of doing missions full-time. God had different plans. As I took my SATs, looked at different schools, and began checking out scholarships, God began to work something new in my heart. It started with just remembering a conversation I’d had with one of the missionaries in Czech Republic. There was a mission training school there at the time, and I had asked a bunch of questions about it, and talked with her quite a bit. The idea of this mission training school continued to play at the back of my mind – I just couldn’t get rid of the idea – and so I began to pray about it. After several months, I had my answer. After I graduated I went to COI’s mission training school, which was in the Bahamas at the time. While there, my directors and I both began praying about me returning to Czech Republic, and after a couple of months we, separately at first, began to pray about me going to Ukraine instead. (It was a miracle that God even got me to think about going to Ukraine – at the time I knew absolutely nothing about the place!) In the end, we all came to the realization that Ukraine was where God was leading.
I’ve been ministering in Ukraine for over 3 years now. I teach English as a second language and help out with the orphanage ministry here. Though my experiences in missions have not always been easy, I have never regretted them. I am where God has placed me, and that is the best place to be. If you’re a youth minister and you’re considering taking your group on a missions trip, but you don’t know if it’s worth the time, expense, and effort, let me encourage you with this: I will forever be grateful to my youth pastor that he took us on that trip to the Czech Republic.
I was talking to him not long ago, and he told me that the trip was attacked by the adversary from the beginning. Just with different circumstances within the church the trip was almost cancelled twice. But praise the Lord that it wasn’t cancelled, because it played a large role in my finding God’s plan for me!
God uses short-term trips to change not only the people in the country that we’re ministering, but also to those of us who go to serve. If you’re considering a short term mission trip, take the plunge! You won’t regret it!
