My First Short Term Mission Trip

Franz S.W. Lao

The Crosspoint's short term mission (STM) trip to Panama also happened to be my first short term mission (well, not counting a long weekend visitation at Mexicali a few years back). While there were many memorable moments on the trip, there are four aspects of the Panama short term mission experience that I would like to share at a greater depth: visitations, team work, vacation bible school (VBS), and encouragement.

Visitations

Some of our visitation experiences almost resemble scenes from "The Little Prince" as we went from store to store and encountered different sorts of people. A few of the store owners we visited were busily serving a steady queue of customers, just like the number-obsessed businessman in "The Little Prince" (Chapter 13)   Only in between customers they could squeeze in a few moments to chat with us. We also visited a store owner who's half intoxicated during day time-and he, just like the tippler in "The Little Prince" (Chapter 12), confessed that he was drinking because he wanted to "forget", and "forget that I am ashamed".  Over the days, I began to cherish more and more each opportunity to meet and talk to people during our visitations. Some of the non-believers were interested in knowing about Jesus, while some clearly showed indifference. We experienced the reality of spiritual warfare, as often interruptions or distractions would suddenly pop up just when we were about to get into the crux of the gospel message. The broad spectrum of people we met in our visitations and their varied responses to the Gospel certainly mirror those described in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-8); but one thing they all had in common is that they all need Jesus-whether or not they were aware of and would acknowledge the need.

The visitations trips also helped us gain insight into daily lives of the Chinese community in Panama. In particular it was valuable for us to meet the local Christians in their work and family life context (i.e. life outside of church), to understand how they dealt with the same temptations and challenges in the world as faced by non-Christians.  It was very memorable to see some of local Christians witness God through their life transformation. One example was the visitation to Brother Leen and his family at their store. This family radiated the joy of content and thankful Christians, witnessing how God grace worked through their family: brother Leen's faith in Jesus had saved him and his family, and turned his life around from a gambling addict a couple of years ago into now a committed Christian.

The visitations experience gave us a glimpse into the challenges faced by the local missionaries and church coworkers in their ongoing and tireless efforts to reach out to the lost. Our hosts were very considerate of our safety; hence they had deliberately steered our visitation itinerary away from the high crime neighborhoods. Nevertheless, we could imagine and appreciate the physical danger that the local Christians are exposed to, for the sake of the Gospel, on their visitations to the less friendly neighborhoods.

Team Work

As Reverend Andrew Leung (of Ling Fung Tong in Panama City) reminded us at our training workshop, team work is most crucial when it comes to building up God's kingdom. On the Panama STM trip, we experienced team work in multiple ways: team work among our hosts from both Obarrio and Cerro Viento (Ling Fung Tong) churches, team work with our hosts, and team work among the Crosspoint brothers and sisters.

We witnessed the great team work in our host churches in the coordination and execution of their disaster relief efforts for the disastrous flooding in Changuinola that had left thousands of Panama natives homeless. Within a time frame of just a few days, our host churches were able to commit to an action plan and mobilize brothers and sisters to actively engage in the relief effort. The wonderful team work of our hosts was also reflected in the unity of their caring heart and their humility through their hospitality. Whether they were helping us in the form of offering us rides, making sure that we had bottled drinking water at the hotel, or in the form of cooking delicious homemade dishes, I could see a contagiously joyful servant leader's spirit in every one of our hosts that knitted their hearts together as one team.

Our hosts invited us to partner with them with some of their ongoing programs, such as leading singspiration, sharing, games, devotion, and bible studies at their regular fellowship meetings. Our hosts were always sincerely supportive of our efforts and understanding of our limitations, thus always encouraging us to feel at ease to serve among them as one team.

As for the Crosspoint brothers and sisters, the STM experience was possible only through team work among us in many neat ways. During the preparation phase, Tony Woo and other brothers and sisters worked closely together in the logistics and program preparations. I got some timely help in our skit preparations from brothers and sisters who offered help with background slides and props. A brother lent me his cute mini travel umbrella, without which I would have been soaked multiple times in Panama by the heavy rain.  I cannot overstate the importance of the ongoing prayer support from our prayer partners, prayer angels and small group members. Without the team work of their prayer support, the spiritual battles would be much tougher to face. I still remember that the heart warming feeling when I saw their prayer support email on the day when half of the STM members were sick.  The financial support from our congregation to sponsor the STM is another concrete example of how Crosspoint brothers and sisters were engaging themselves in evangelism as mission partners.

In the field, I think the STM members a great time serving together as a team. At our home church, most of us we had been accustomed to carrying out our ministry by first doing very detailed planning and then just focused on execution. The dynamic nature of STM environment challenged us to be more adaptive and creative in meeting changing needs in the field. Although it might appear that the last minute improvisations might have caused us some anxiety, in hindsight they actually drew us closer as a team. Furthermore, the dynamic challenges helped humble ourselves to depend on God more as we ought to (after all, He is our strongest partner in all our ministries!). Finally, I must mention that the STM team's daily morning devotion sharing, and our late evening debriefing session were both very crucial in building up the bonding among us. I had never had the experience of sharing with brother and sisters on a recurring basis for so many consecutive days in a row!

Smallest kid group VBS students and teachers

Vacation Bible School (VBS)

VBS was definitely one of most memorable parts of our Panama STM trip. Why?  It is because of the challenges and the joy.

Teaching a large group (about twenty) of youths (ages 12-16) between the two of us (Robert and me) was definitely a great challenge physically, mentally, emotionally and psychologically. With such a large class, we soon found it quite draining to maintain the entire class' attention span for even just one minute.  By late morning of the first day, we felt frustrated that we could not conduct the class as planned. During Saturday lunch break we were already feeling quite exhausted, that both Robert and I needed some quiet time to pray for help. Later on we had the class assigned into several small groups, and assigned one student from each group as the group captain to maintain some order. That seemed to help a little bit for the rest of the program, especially when we engaged them in team based activities like group sharing and praying, and directing their own "parable" skit. We also adjusted our class room style to incorporate more sharing by the youths. We tried to encourage them to share their challenges and then guide them on how to apply the bible to their daily life.

One logistical challenge we faced was that Spanish was the language preferred by the majority of our VBS class, while the rest of the student were fluent in English and not in Spanish. Thankfully Robert could help with all the English/Spanish translation. Such cross cultural experience had a humbling impact on myself, as I had never served before in a foreign language environment where I had to be totally dependent on another person for even basic communication needs.

My joy with VBS came in ways totally unexpected: the sight of a Spanish speaking young boy staying behind during break time and diligently copying an English bible verse from the white board, even when the rest of class had already dashed out to the playground for play time; the sincere fellowship and prayers these youths shared with each other, when we asked them to break into their small groups to pray for strength and courage from God to overcome the challenges that they faced and feared; the reassured confidence on a young sister's face after we encouraged her not to give up on herself just because she had not done too well in school, etc.  Some of these kids might not have a happy school life or even a happy family life during the week. Therefore being able to play with them, encourage them and see them wear a carefree smile on their face in the playground made all the aforementioned "hardships" of being a VBS teacher more than worthwhile.

Encouragement

Prior to the STM, one of my personal wishes was that we could be a small source of encouragement to the local missionaries and Christians in Panama. Whether that happened I would probably need to find out from our hosts; however, what I do know for sure is that I myself received encouragement in my faith through the life testimonies of God's servants we met in Panama.

Their joyful devotion to ministering to the spiritually poor over the years, and their selfless loving of lives that the "worldly" would consider "unlovely" are great examples of Christians being an effective channel for God's love and grace. The passion shared by our host churches for outreaching and ministering to the native people in Changuinola raises my awareness that as Christians we ought to value the opportunities to minister to all peoples--i.e. we should not limit our vision to just serving people of our own ethnicity and local geography.  I am also very encouraged by the vision shared by our host churches for their facility and community programs expansion-it's exciting to see God's hand working through their churches for the healing and nurturing of a community in which many have suffered over the years due to various social ills.

I was also encouraged, in a touching way, by seeing how God care for His faithful servants in very personal ways. One such example is when Reverend Mah's wife shared how much she would miss the family gathering every Christmas with her grandchildren back in the Bay Area, I felt incredibly overwhelmed by God's grace. The reason is because at that moment I remembered that during previous week's Sunday school, one of the youths in the class shared that she was deeply thankful because Reverend Mah and his wife were just like grandparents to them (the kids) in the way they loved and cared for them. I was deeply moved as I realized that even though Reverend Mah and his wife might not be able to spend time with their own grandchildren all year round (because of the ministry commitments), God has comforted them and blessed them with a big spiritual family in Panama--a playground full of spiritual children and grandchildren!