This Ain't Mission "Lite"!

Our week-long mission adventure has been many things.  It was, indeed, a great “first mission” trip.  It was definitely a chance to see God at work in faraway places.  With Kirsten’s amazing storytelling we all shared in our mission to “go and spread the Gospel to all nations.”  And it blessed us more than we could imagine.

But there’s one thing it was NOT!   It was not Mission”Lite”.   Nothing about this was “lite”.

• Our team worked harder than any Masungas (White people) the Acholis had ever seen.
• We outlasted any previous mission team--by about 4 days.  Our 2 hour bone rattling bus ride on dirt roads each way to the village had deterred others who had come before us.
• Our ebullient leader, Austin, inspired us to amazing achievements – like fixing roads and clearing fields with some distressingly short lived hoes and shovels.  
• While most teams lose their young people about midweek, our kids ran the good race, full out, all week.  Awesome!
• It’s HOT at the equator.  But not hot enough to stop Janelle, the oldest member of our team and a true “roadie”. 
• We completely underestimated the dire living conditions of these people, some barely clothed, all of them undernourished, two miles from safe water.
• We greatly overestimated their ability to do a simple craft, or even color.
• The last 15 years of camp living has created a culture of begging and grabbing that made every activity a potential riot and an opportunity for learning new social skills.

Despite all of these challenges, we gave our all and saw God show up over and over.  Several dozen children and adults raised their hands to accept Jesus.  Every day our numbers grew as word spread.  

In addition to that, 10 people at Canyon Springs now know how to build a genuine Acholi dwelling hut. And we have proved without any doubt that Love and “Pharaoh, Pharaoh” are the universal language.

Mary