Sitting in the largest
room in all of Gatlinburg, 45 minutes from my childhood home, with a group of Senior Adults I had brought
from my church to a senior adult convention, I felt convicted that I should
take a foreign mission trip.. As a matter of fact, a well-known author had invited/challenged
the whole room to have a foreign mission experience sometime in the next year.
I had responded to his invitation personally and looked forward to what
spiritual adventure God had in store for me.
When I returned home, I waited and listened
for an opportunity to go to some foreign land to serve people and tell them
about the love of Jesus that had changed my life. The days became weeks, and
weeks became months and still no word from God. No one I knew mentioned a trip.
There were no perfectly timed mission travel brochures to Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, or India that came
across my desk at the church. So, I
wondered if I had somehow missed God’s call. Maybe it was just the full stack
of flapjacks from the Pancake Cabin that had given me a sugar rush or perhaps I
had been hypnotised by the taffy pulling machine from the Smoky Mountain Candy
Kitchen and I misinterpreted it as a call to a short term mission trip across
the pond somewhere. Maybe my Sevier County prediabetic indulgence had affected
my ability to clearly hear God’s Great Foreign Commission on my life.
At the time I had four
children between the ages of 7 and 11, so obviously my wife was curious about
this call to abandon my post as taxi daddy, bicycle fixer, homework helper and home missionary for 10 days to 2 weeks and go somewhere else to minister to someone else’s kids
in need. She certainly would have been willing to accept all parental duties
for those days, if I could show her any real tangible plans that God had given
me about this Jesus journey to the African plain or Amazon Jungle.
So, eventually, I had
actually written this calling off as my mistaken interpretation of a call to
missions from a funnel cake hangover. That’s when God in His infinite sense of
humor, showed me that my foreign mission experience would not involve travel
more than a few miles from my home.
My son came home one day
in the middle of his 6th grade school year and said that a new kid had come to his school
and the teacher wanted him to help tutor the new student in math and whatever
other classes they had together. My son also said he had invited his new friend and his family to our church and the new student said he and his family would
be there the next Sunday.
As a pastor, I had heard promises to come to church before, by well-meaning potential guests I had
invited to join us for worship on a Sunday morning. So, I was guardedly
optimistic about this family coming. But sure enough a family of 7 showed up
that next Sunday. Their sparkling white teeth
blasted out beautiful smiles from their dark Sudanese faces, and their broken
english with thick accents with lots of laughter expressed a joy that was
infectious. The wore their Sunday best, but they didn’t look like anyone
in my largely homogeneous white suburban white church. We quickly found classes for 5 kids and two adults. We also learned they had another child on
the way.
My son and the oldest
boy were soon doing everything together. My son taught him American football.
We would take him to practice and make sure he had cleats and equipment for the
middle school football experience. They
threw the discus and “put the shot” together on the track team. After ballgames
and track meets they inhaled Hardee’s thickburgers and fries and soft drinks
together, but his tall thin Sudanese frame never got much thicker.
Since his family only
had one car, Anita frequently took him to
the doctor or came pick him up when no one from his house could make it to the
school. She occasionally had to pick him up at school when the principal's office called saying he had been in a fight. He stayed in our home often. He also frequently came to our house to
eat our after-church lunch meal, which we called “Stir Fry Sunday”. It was a
mix of stir fried rice and whatever leftover meats and vegetables we had
chopped up from the last week’s meals with a fried egg and soy sauce added in.
Most of it he enjoyed, but when shrimp was in the mix he always opted for
something else. He thought is was strange that we would eat such an ugly
creature on purpose. He said, "I don't eat bugs!"
We soon began to hear
his family’s story about their escape on foot from Sudan to Egypt to avoid
those who wanted to kill them. They had left family and friends in hopes of
safety and a new life. We learned about how his younger brother’s twin had died
from illness in the desert as they escaped and how they had to watch as their uncle was murdered in the street. They had to
learn Arabic in Egypt and then English when they got to the U.S.. But this
young man and his family were amazingly positive in spite of the misfortunes
they had endured.
He learned how to plant
a garden, drive a four wheel drive 1974 Scout, and shoot a rifle while at my
dad’s farm a couple of hours away. He and his younger brother played on our
church basketball team and they surprised the whole team when they clearly
articulated the Gospel of Jesus Christ and encouraged everyone to accept His
Salvation. They went to church camps and
mission trips and studied God’s Word in Bible study every week.
And when this family was
moving to Colorado, we offered to host the oldest boy so he could stay with his
friends, his church, and complete high school here. His family said they needed him to help raise
the youngest brothers and he knew he needed to go with them, though he wanted
to stay.
Needless to say my
family’s six year Foreign Missions experience with this young man and his
family was far more of an adventure than any 10-14 day mission trip I could
have taken somewhere by myself. God called us to a long term friendship with a
young man and his family. He called us
to share our home, food, transportation, love, our lives, and our Jesus with him and his
family. God taught me that when He calls, it doesn’t always look like we think
it should.
This young man went a Colorado college to play football. The thin young man with the million dollar smile worked hard to put 270 lbs. of muscle on his 6 foot 7 inch frame. He tragically lost his younger brother (the other twin) who was shot and killed on a bus in Denver, CO. As of this update, he has returned to Sudan to get married and be reunited with his father who serves as a pastor there.
When Jesus was giving his last instructions to His disciples before ascending into heaven. He tells them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””(Matthew 28:18–20 ESV) "GO"ing may mean, "as we go" about our lives we are to make disciples. I encourage you to say,
“yes” to God on any mission He invites you to be a part of. But keep your mind and heart open to the
unique ways he may use you and your family in His service on mission right where you are.