Why I Want to Go

In just a few days I will (God willing) be in Hungary. For those of you who don’t know I will be going on a five week mission trip to Hungary with the organization SpeakOut. While I am there I will be volunteering at an American culture camp and tutoring Hungarian students in English. I have been planning on this trip for several months now, and it seems surreal that I will actually be there in a few short days.

The emotions leading up to this trip have been a complicated mixture of fear, excitement, joy, dread, peace, and sorrow. It has been a roller-coaster of not knowing if I was able to go, or if I even wanted to. So the question I have been asking myself is “Why do I want to go?” If it has been so stressful, so painful, why would I put myself through that? Why would I want to go? Now the question in and of itself is emotionally driven. Meaning the desire to go, that is an emotion. And to be honest there have been many times that I emotionally do not want to go. I can also look at this from a logical perspective and still see that it is a poor decision to go. It has been draining both emotionally and physically. I have had to make sacrifices in time and money to go, so why should I put forth all the effort to go. At this point there seem to be many more negative aspects to this trip than positive ones. And I’d have to agree, there are more negatives than positives to this trip. But there are three reasons for me that I want to go that out-weighs everything else. During my trip to Hungary I will share the gospel and that is the greatest hope we have. I will also be tutoring students in English, and teaching is a huge passion of mine. And lastly I will be able to fellowship with and mentor (perhaps not in an official capacity) other believers.

Now, the purpose of this post is not to toot my own horn or to have others pity me. I want to take the time to discuss the great and painful things of missions, both short and long term. Missions requires sacrifice. A missionary is not in their home country so they sacrifice that comfort of speaking the national language and learning a whole new culture. They are not able to see their friends and families, and perhaps they leave an amazing church. It is important for me to realize, and for the rest of the western church to realize, that missions and following Christ requires sacrifice. We have been comfortable for too long and we equate that comfort with our standing with God. If we have good health, money, a job, and a nice house, then God is pleased with us. That Prosperity Gospel is a lie that we have bought into too long. Think about it this way, if God shows His pleasure in giving us monetary and material blessings, what does that say about Christians in third world countries? Does God not love them? Is He not pleased with them because they do not have the things we do? No, of course not. The American church has been has been in love with comfort too long. We are now drunk with it, and we refuse to get out of our easy chairs to go and preach the hope of the gospel to others.

Now, we must be careful not idolize missionaries into thinking that they are super Christians and those who are called to stay are second class Christians. Because that is not true at all. For the longest time, I idolized those who would go. When I was in grade school, I was homeschooled by my mom and one of the things that we read as part of our curriculum were missionary biographies. I my mom reading aloud to us at breakfast about Mary Slessor, Eric Liddell, Gladys Aylward, Hudson Taylor, and William Cary. I admired their courage and their faith. They seemed so perfect, so out of reach. As the years went on, I still idolized these missionaries, but not enough to want to go, and definitely not enough to share the gospel.

It wasn’t until I went to college and went to the first Cross Conference in Louisville KY that I really felt the longing to go. I picked up a prayer card for an unreached people group, and came home to my family with a burning passion for the gospel and the lost around me. That summer I went to Utah to witness to Mormons. In Manti was the first time I really shared the gospel with anyone. But after a few hard and angry conversations, I contented myself to passing out tracks. I went again the following year and I knew that sharing the gospel on the streets of Salt Lake City was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, everything else seemed so pointless. I made plans to look into overseas missions and that December, I applied for the trip to Hungary and got accepted a few months later.

As the mundane awkwardness of missions planning, fundraising, and preparing set in, that excitement I felt in December faded. It seemed as though I met opposition at every turn, and I struggled to trust God that He was the One who would make it possible for me to go. Doubts and fears began to creep into my mind: fear of being overseas for the first time, worry that I was not going to be able to raise the funds, I am preparing for a full time teaching job in the fall so I have little time to prepare for that, add to that the unknown of the trip, the people, what will I be doing exactly, and what will life be like when I come back.

First, I want to say that those realities are true, and I should not be going if I do not understand all the difficulties of the trip. I don’t want to be blind-sided by all the work that goes into missions work. There are real sacrifices that missionaries need to make. It is not healthy to go somewhere, even for a short time on a high of excitement without understanding the hardships that they will experience. Second, I want to be sure that it isn’t good that I worry about these things. I need to trust God that if He wants me to go I will go, and if not, there is no way I will be able to.

Now getting back to the question: Why do I want to go? I mentioned three reasons that made the decision for me, the gospel, teaching, and fellowship. A proper understanding of the gospel and of what Christ has done for us, should motivate us to go, even if it is just to our coworkers or our neighbors. Once we know that the only way anyone is going to go to Heaven is if they hear and believe the gospel, we must share the gospel. If we stay silent we are letting unbelievers die of thirst in the desert because we have water, and we will not give it to them. Of course, it is Christ who saves, not us, and we cannot dress up the gospel so that others accept it, or take credit for the salvation of people. But we must truly be hateful people if we do not share the gospel with them, because without it, they are condemned to an eternity in Hell. That is why I must go. Yes, the whole process of trying to go overseas is work, everything is work. It is painful to leave behind a good church, friends, and family. You are leaving the comfort of your home and routine. All of these things are valid pains. I know and understand them, but I hope it is never said of me that I didn’t share the hope of eternal life with someone because I didn’t want to be uncomfortable, because Hell is not uncomfortable, it is eternal torment forever! That is why I want to go.

Another reason is I will be able to use my gifts and training to teach. No, I won’t be like a teacher, more like a conversation partner, but I love to teach. In my experience teaching, I have been broken by the fact that my students do not really need to know who Shakespeare is, or how to write a thesis statement, or how to decipher a poem.  Those things are not going to save them. What they really need is the gospel. To combine both passions, even if teaching is in such a small capacity, is amazing and I am so blessed to have the opportunity to do both, not many people do. So even though I will be rushed and stressed more than usual at the beginning of the school year, this chance is too good to through aside for a more comfortable summer.

Lastly, this trip allows me to do what all Christians love to do, and that is to fellowship with other believers. One of the worries that I was feeling was that I was going to be one of the older team members, at a college graduate. But I have been graciously reminded by many people that this will be an opportunity to learn from one another. I am not claiming to know more than the high school crew does, but I hope I can offer some life advice. I hope I am not at the same maturity level as them, considering I will be teaching that age group in the fall. To share what Christ has done in my life and to perhaps help others who have struggled through the same things that I have is one of the many joys of the church. This struggle has been one of the hardest for me, because yes by going I will make great friendships and connections that will last a long time, but that means leaving people behind. The distance between friends, even if it is just for a little while is very painful. I know this trip isn’t very long, but I still can feel some of the struggle that long term missionaries have. In this case I am trusting that God will lead me in a way that helps me help others and retain relationships back home.

But my biggest fear is not the trip itself, it is the coming home. That is what hurts the most. Because you cannot come back unchanged. Sure change is great, but is the coping with that change that is so hard. It is that feeling that while you have changed, the rest of the world is standing still. I am scared that when I come home I will be on fire for God and the gospel, but when life gets boring and mundane again, I will fall back into the same habits and I will regress back into the Christian I was before. That would be just as bad as going on an emotional high. We must be grounded in scripture and rational choices rather than emotional experiences.

I realize this is different than my posts before, it is far more personal, but I hope you can learn something from it. I pray that God will use me there in Hungary and change my heart, because I have no way to do so. If you are reading this, please pray for unity within our team, open hearts for the gospel, and the energy to do all that He asks.