In one day, I and my 24 classmates, 2 SLCs, and various IMPACT 360 staff and friends will be leaving for Brasilia, Brazil. One month of missions work, leading camps for college students, playing with children at an orphanage, or acting as counselors at a kids' week-long camp. Looking at the schedule, I know it's going to be draining, exhausting work, and at times, there will be friction between our team members that will have to be resolved in a gracious way that we might not feel. But those are temporary states.
Kennedy asked me to lead a morning devotion last autumn and I, feeling down, determined to speak a little bit about the joy and hope of the Lord. When Paul talks about joy, he speaks of joy in spite of dire circumstances. He wrote his letter to the Philippians from prison, yet joy is one of the prevailing themes of that book. How could he, who had been tortured, stoned near to death, shipwrecked, and otherwise brought to suffering, speak so authoritatively about joy? I would suggest that joy is not possible without some hope, and the Christian hope is not a vague, flighty sense of future something that is present only as a cushy buffer for spiritual unrest. The hope of a Christian is for God's kingdom and its complete manifestation in the new Jerusalem. That is not an evanescent hope by any means. Rather it is a solid reality because it is rooted in Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection and on the promises of God.
For this reason then we do not shy away from the fleeting persecutions of spiritual warfare and physical distress. Because our hope sees beyond to better days and simultaneously recognizes the present needs. We are not in Brazil for ourselves. We are there with the desire to reach out to people who are searching for hope, people whose souls are at stake. And isn't the eternal state of one person's soul worth far more than my trifling complaints?
Not that it'll be all bad for us. I anticipate some awesome times with Team Brasilia and with Team Porto Alegre (possibly involving bubbles... I love bubbles...). And playing with kids for days? That doesn't sound too bad either, although as someone who does not know what to do with children, I hope they have some other things for us to do as well. :)
Anyway, hearty thanks to everyone who supported me for this trip and I would ask that you not stop with money, but also continue your support in prayer over the course of the next month. Specific requests include for rest, grace, openness to God's work both in us and those we are working with, and for our host missionaries who will surely be taxed to have such a large group on their hands. See you in a month!
