Ready for adventure

How old were your kids when you brought them on their first great adventure?  I remember stories from my Dad about his life as a kid - he's something like the 13th child in the family or thereabouts (who's counting eh?) and the stories were about rowing sampans out to fish, shooting flying lizards with catapults and "borrowing" a neighbour's sugarcane.  I recall the sampan story in particular, where my Dad used to take himself out to sea all by himself, at the age of 6!  Today, it seems to me that many of us don't even consider bringing our children out anywhere till we think they're good and ready!

Perhaps being inspired by my Dad, I brought my kids on our first mission trip in 2005 when they were 1 and 3 years old respectively.  Admittedly, this was a city-based mission to Tokyo, because yes, I was afraid a "rougher" trip would be too much for the kids.  But I still remember it being cold in that Japanese dormitory, and having to bathe pretty fast!  Having survived that trip, I brought the kids on their next trip to the more challenging environs of Yunnan in 2006, and once more in 2007.  I have very distinct memories of Daniel in particular, playing football with the village kids amidst the cows, happily rolling in the cowdung, and coming back to the inn so filthy that we just decided to dump his sweater :)

So after a hiatus of 6 years, it was with some great anticipation that we went back to Yunnan again this year, with the children now much grown up at 9 and 11!  I still have friends being surprised when I tell them I am bringing my pre-teen kids to do mission work, but their surprise is usually muted by the time I explain to them that the kids started when they were 1 and 3 respectively, so they are pretty much veterans as far as these things are concerned!

You might ask why I bring my kids to these trips in the first place.  Well the main thing is this.  It's common to hear from the news or from friends or from the church bulletin how people have done various sorts of work to bless others.  You know - giving out free food, distributing masks during the haze, ministering to the sick, and especially blessing the unreached with the good news of Jesus' great love for them.  It's one thing to tend to earthly needs, which certainly are hugely important, and yet another to pluck up the courage and compassion and wisdom to share the best gift of God's undeserved mercy for his children.

When I first started understanding that being a Christian was more than turning up on Sunday and wearing a cross, I saw some Christians going for these trips and doing these works.  We are often reminded that every part of the church has its role - some provide funds, some pray, some administer, some actually go.  But unfortunately most of us like to take on roles other than actually going.  Can it be true that so few of us are destined to be go-ers?  Isn't it more likely that too few of us choose to go?  Even Jesus recognised this, saying "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest." Luke 10:2

I felt the same trepidation for many years.  There were many opportunities for me to go, but there were always reasons not to go - I was too young a Christian, I was too busy with exams, I was then too busy at work, I did not have the skills to cope, I did not speak the language, I did not have the gifting of an evangelist.  Give me time and I'll think of more reasons to say "no", or even comfortingly to the conscience, "not yet".

This changed when I had my kids.  I looked at them and I thought - what do I want my kids to think being a Christian means?  How do they know what being a Christian means unless they see it in me?  If they can't see it in me, then everything the pastor says on Sunday must seem simply to be platitudes.  Nice to hear, but no need to act on them.  So that prompted our first trip in 2005.  I wanted my kids to see that normal Christians go on mission trips.  Moving out of your comfort zone, blessing others, speaking the good news.  That's normal.  If we don't do that, that's not normal.  I try each day, and I don't succeed all the time, but I need to try, so that my kids can see that when the pastor says something on the pulpit, they know that it's real.  They know that courageous prayers really get answered, they see the joy light up in the eyes of a new believer, they know that out of God's love, trippers brave messy toilets, weird food and the inevitable stomach ailments, because they see it with their very own eyes out in the field, and their own parents join in the muck.  They know that it is difficult, but normal, fallible people like they themselves, CAN DO IT.  In short, being a worker in the harvest field is normal, and not only reserved for the super-Christians.

There are additional benefits: we go to places where it's difficult to worship Jesus, the facilities aren't as great (or mostly don't exist), and we are grateful for our air-conditioned churches and comfortable seats.  We see kids living in homes without roofs or even floors, shivering in the cold, schools with classes of 60+ with ragged textbooks, other kids living on the school premises far away from their families.  And these things make my kids grateful for what they have.

But really, being grateful isn't much help to anyone, unless we act on it.  OK, so now you feel grateful for what you have.  What are you going to do about it?  I don't know when my next trip with the kids will be.  I hope it will be soon - the normal Christian life is exciting, challenging and fulfilling.  I still feel completely unready, unskilled and nervous.  But I can't wait.

More on this trip in the next instalment - heading off to celebrate a friend's wedding now!!

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