If you’re cheap like me many of your apps have the designation “lite” in them. Why pay for the full version of something they are giving away? I get bored with most games before I exhaust the free levels and the productivity apps are too dependent on the internet to be of much use. The business model of give the consumer a taste and they’ll come back for more has proven as successful with Angry Birds as it has with narcotics as it has with missions. This month we had a group from the YWAM Tyler base come out and give Foreign Missions Lite a try.
Youth With A Mission has been pioneering short-term missions since the sixties. The idea that a bunch of inexperienced youth could train for three months and then just go and share the good news with people was radical 50 years ago and is still polarizing today. Our family and those that serve like us are out and don’t intend to come back anytime soon. These short-term teams are out just long enough to see the need, smell non-conditioned air, taste the difference of something foreign, and most importantly feel the stretch of doing hard things.
This group of young people spent a month in Uganda and finished out their tour here at Hopeland. In Kampala they worked in inner city areas and reached out to street kids. In Iganga they worked in a village with the locals and witnessed to many Muslims. Out on Buvuma Island they showed the Jesus Film and performed dramas. Here in Jinja they worked the maize field, refurbished mosquito screens on our staff house, and visited a children’s home. They ate a lot of posho, got a lot of bug bites, rode in very cramped vehicles, took nothing but cold showers and according to them had a great experience.
And what are our lives but the collection of our experiences and interactions with those around us?
Will they all go on to become full-time foreign missionary workers? Maybe. Did their ministry make a difference in a Ugandan’s walk with God? Maybe. Will their presence here have lasting impact on the nation of Uganda? Maybe. Did they ruin themselves for the ordinary and change their perspective of the world around them? Definitely. That change extends to the friends and family that sent them, the youth groups they go back and share with, and the innumerable social media connections that “like” their internet posts. Add that to all the “maybe”s of permanent influence and we’ll take a team of mzungus any day. These future leaders of our nation spent what could have been spent on a vacation, saw a new part of the world, lived in challenging conditions, and survived. What else could you hope for the young people of this generation or the countless young people who have ventured forth since 1963?
The bait and switch of YWAM is we get you to come to a discipleship program with the premise of training you to be a missionary and then turn the focus from changing the world to changing the participant. We are glad to be a part in these kid’s process to being more available to God and learning to hear his voice. If you’d also like to experience and serve in a majority world culture let us know, we’ll make a space for you.
In children news Liesel lost the first of her front teeth. The Tooth Fairy unfortunately left her Tanzanian shillings and she got shorted in the exchange rate.
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