A Very Exciting, Sorta Scary, Selfishly Benevolent Trip

I’m getting excited and nervous about an opportunity for our family.  It’s on my “bucket list” but it seems surreal that it’s actually happening.  Soon, we will be going on a family mission trip to Honduras!  I always hoped that, once the kids got old enough, we would be able to do a family mission trip, but it really wasn’t on my radar since the twins are still pretty young.  But God loves surprises.  (I’m not always happy about God’s surprises, but in this case, I felt peaceful saying “yes.”)

Several months ago, Dad and I were discussing their 2018 trips and he was telling me about all the places he would be going for the last time (of course, for the past few years, every mission trip is the “last one” – I’m convinced he will keep going as long as he is still breathing).  There were a few details about their trip to Honduras that grabbed my attention:  Mom was going (she doesn’t go on all the trips), and they were going with Live Again Ministries (I’ve known the founder, Ronny Russell, for most of my life – I believe in his ministry and I totally trust him).  We checked out the details, discussed it with Ronny, and prayed about it for awhile (I’ve read a lot of negative articles “voluntourism” and I definitely didn’t want to be one of “those”), but felt like God had already eliminated a lot of possible excuses (for this “worst case scenario” girl), so we decided to take a leap of faith.

It seems a little crazy to spend the money to take the family to another country, when we could contribute that money and probably make more of an impact (believe me, we weighed all this out), but you really can’t put monetary value on personal experience.  As parents, giving our kids opportunities to discover and grow in faith is at the top of the list of things we want to get right, but it’s also the most ambiguous.  It’s not like other things in life that have a relatively clear path.  We can’t just “check the boxes” by taking our kids to church, reading Bible stories with them, praying before dinner, etc., and expect that they’ll grow up to be faithful Christians.  Those things are all good foundational practices, but faith is not just about information and spiritual practices – it’s supposed to translate to life.  It’s about life-long transformation.  I don’t know what our kids’ “grown up faith” will look like (heck, I don’t even know what my own “grown up faith” looks like!), so Keith and I will just live what we believe and pray that our lives point them to God.

Taking the kids to another country doesn’t ensure that they’ll grow up to be compassionate or generous, but it does get them out of their American bubble.  It does expose them to a different culture and gives them an opportunity to observe and experience new people, new places, new food, new language, etc.

So to be totally honest, this trip is selfish, when I consider the following: (I hesitate to even call it a mission trip — we’ve been calling it a “vacation with a purpose”).

• We will be staying in a nice tourist hotel and will get a chance to take in the beauty of the island of Roatan (and it will be SO nice to get out of New England for a week in March, where it will likely still be snowy and cold).
• We will have an opportunity to pay it forward by purchasing school supplies, water filters, and (just for fun) soccer balls. And paying it forward always feels really good (that whole selfish benevolence / altruistic egoism thing).
• It’s a sappy, sentimental, full-circle trip for me because I went with my Dad on my first mission trip to Colombia, when I was 10-years-old. Now, 35 years later, to see my own kids participating in ministry with their Grandpa and Grandma (Papa and Gaga) means so much to me.  I love that they are finally getting a glimpse of how their grandparents have spent their lives.
  

  This is me at age 10 in the mountains of Colombia where Dad and I stayed for a month.  Dad taught music at a camp and other people taught dance, ty kwon doe, roller skating (thus the skates in this picture), etc.

• We get to share this experience as a family. I have been on a number of mission trips and it’s always hard to come home because you can’t really explain the impact, and you end up processing all these wonderful memories and lessons alone. This time, we will all have a shared experience which is invaluable.
• Keith and I are praying that a trip like this helps all of us see the Big Mystery on the small stage (as Richard Rohr would say). Yes, that can and should happen every single day in our mundane lives, but when you take someone out of the familiar, the odds increase dramatically.  And (I’ve heard this comment many times in the past), I understand that there are tons of needs right here – we don’t have to travel to Honduras to teach our kids that they can make a difference. But people in other countries are people too – just as important and just as loved by God –  and often they are more open and receptive in a way that helps us catch a vision for what we can do at home.  Seems counterintuitive, but as I’ve said before, God loves to work in ways that don’t always make sense.

And most selfish of all, we have much to learn.  I’d love to tell you that we have a lot to offer, but the truth is that we are expecting to take away more than we leave.  We can share monetary resources, we can share the love of God that we have experienced in our own lives, but when it comes to being present, being generous, being vulnerable, Americans like us have SO much to learn.  I’ve seen Americans go into countries all fired up to “share the gospel” only to minimize it because of their certitude about their ideas and beliefs about God.  God works in vast and amazing ways and, to paraphrase something Christena Cleveland said at The Liturgists Gathering in Boston, “If we’re ever going to change the way we think about God, it has to start by being led by folks on the margins, who day after day after day are struggling.  They’re not sitting around contemplating who God is; they’re practicing the presence of God and trying to find God in the trash and the ashes . . . a God who understands their pain.”

As an example of the quote above, I’ll wrap this up with a story my Dad recently told the kids about an experience in Haiti.  Haiti is probably one of the poorest countries my parents have ever visited.  Dad took my Grandpa (a carpenter) to Haiti, when Grandpa was 75, to help build an orphanage, and at night, when they would come back to the hotel, Grandpa would weep. He had lived through the Great Depression and had seen dire circumstances, but they could not compare to what he saw in Haiti.

My Grandpa Riddle in Haiti

With one of the children from the orphanage

On one of my Dad’s trips to Haiti, he was visiting a family in a remote village (with no electricity or running water, etc.).  The family had a little boy and Dad happened to have a piece of candy in his pocket, so he gave it to the boy who quickly took the candy and disappeared.  After the visit, Dad looked around for the boy and found him out back, sitting in a circle with about 10 of his friends, taking turns sucking on the candy and then passing it to the next person.

My Dad was stunned and humbled by this boy’s generosity.  He could have enjoyed this rare treasure for himself, but instead he shared it with all his friends.

That is God.  That is love.  That is the gospel.

We have much to give, but even more to learn, so we would appreciate your prayers (good vibes or positive thoughts, for my not-so-religious friends) as we take this very exciting, sorta scary, and selfishly benevolent trip!

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