Vespers

3-26-10

I really enjoyed vespers tonight. I knew I would--the speaker was Dick Duerksen, the official storyteller of Maranatha, the organization that builds churches for Adventist congregations who can't pay for them throughout the world (see their website here). My first mission trip was a two-week Maranatha trip to Taraco, Peru, where I helped build a church and a school. (Though I think I was more of a hindrance than a help on that building site. At least, compared to the local church kids who always go on the trips. Plus, the altitude wasn't the best of friends.) Anyway, I got bitten there; then I went to India as part of a month-long evangelistic trip and also helped raise money to have churches built for those new congregations. Those mission trips are part of the reason I was a student missionary last year. I think having a mission-minded local church next to an academy is a definite blessing!

Anyway, Mr. Duerksen told stories about Africa and about India, and even showed a clip from an Indian village. I sat there, completely engaged, because the clip was just like how I remember it--the people, the clothes they wear, the village they were in--of the countless villages and people in India, even though I only went to a very small number of villages.

Afterward, I spoke with Mr. Duerksen and some of the other people who were here tonight--one of which was the coordinator in India during the time I was there with the Cicero Church--and he remembered the fact that we had visited their offices in New Delhi before our flight, and I remembered that they had bought us pizza and that it was very late at night. So, we sort of have met before. He also remembered P.K.'s name (makes sense, with all the Maranatha trips the Cicero church has/will taken/take).

Anyway, they've begun building and have started to open a school about two hours away from where we were in Khammam. While I was watching that clip, I kept thinking, I'm studying to become a teacher. They need teachers. I'm studying to be a teacher.

I've already had the thought/conviction that I will be eventually be going back out to the mission field--but I don't know when, I don't know where, I don't know what, and I don't know for how long, but that hardly is important, especially at the moment. I'm scheduled to graduate (hopefully in Spring of 2013). If I spent the time after graduation and before graduate school in India (or wherever), teaching, I have until 2015 before having to renew my passport, and until 2016 to renew my Indian visa (though I suspect I would need a different visa to work there).

What God would have to do before even that possibility is almost beyond my comprehension--getting everything into order, including (and especially) covering my current school bills and paying back my student loans. (I also do not necessarily want to go physically alone. Just sayin', God.) I cannot just shirk the obligation of paying, and I'm pretty sure God will have to work one of His crazy miracles in order to pull it off. But He's quite capable of it.

But I sincerely believe that, at some point, I will be going back to the mission field. When? Well, that's up to God. Just have to pray, train, and wait, then pray some more. Like a pastor once wisely said, "When God speaks, things happen." Sometimes it just takes a while for it to do so.

More later.