My First Mission and How It Influenced Me by Alicia Marshall
On June 17th, 2006 the summer before I started high school, I went on my first mission trip to Mexico to serve with Cris Garcia through SOAR. It was my first time riding on an airplane, and my first time leaving the country. A lot of firsts happened for me on that trip that changed my life and my faith forever. On our trip we visited the church at Rascon, and it was the first time I had ever seen anyone worship God in a different language. They didn’t have PowerPoint or fancy bulletins, but they had stronger, more passionate faith than I had ever seen. One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to spend so much time with the children there especially through the camps and VBS programs we helped with. Their English and my Spanish were about on the same level, so it was the easiest to communicate with them. Everything about them was so genuine and pure. They didn’t have much, but they were so full of joy. I tried cactus for the first time on this trip and so many other delicious meals. We went to a nursing home that was part of Cris’ ministry and sang songs and did devotions with the 15 residents that lived there. It was the first time I had been exposed to the idea of caring for all of a person’s needs, not just their spiritual ones, and that really stood out to me. As we walked around the cities and took in the architecture and culture, I learned for the first time about the corruption of the Catholic church there and how people needed a renewed view of what a relationship with Jesus could look like. SOAR did an incredible job guiding our group through the whole experience. From fundraising and packing, to travel, to touring us around the city and allowing us to be a part of what God was doing in Mexico, to debriefing our experiences and giving God all the glory- it was all done with such excellence and in a way that made me want to return as soon as we arrived back in Atlanta. 2 years later, I did just that with SOAR.
Then my freshmen year of college, I went back to Mexico to help build a house with Casas Por Cristo. I had fallen in love with these people and this country. Looking back that first trip is such a formative part of my story. I believe all those firsts stirred something in my heart about loving and serving others and giving my life fully to be used as Christ saw fit. In high school, I continued to lean into that and decided to attend Atlanta Christian College (now Point University) to become further equipped to teach others about God.
After graduating, I took a job at Bread Coffeehouse, a campus ministry and free coffeehouse serving Emory University students. After starting as an intern here, I have fallen in love with the diverse students here that are from all over the globe. Five years later I am still here, now serving as the Team Leader. We say here that our sermon is hospitality. We serve free coffee and free baked goods and do anything and everything to meet the needs of our students and invite them into a community where they can encounter Jesus in a way that will change their lives forever.
I love my job, and I am so humbled that God has provided me with this opportunity to have front row seats to all He is doing in the world and in the lives of our students. I am so grateful that through SOAR, I was able to experience a trip that ignited my passion to serve God and his children all over the globe!
Alicia Marshall
Then my freshmen year of college, I went back to Mexico to help build a house with Casas Por Cristo. I had fallen in love with these people and this country. Looking back that first trip is such a formative part of my story. I believe all those firsts stirred something in my heart about loving and serving others and giving my life fully to be used as Christ saw fit. In high school, I continued to lean into that and decided to attend Atlanta Christian College (now Point University) to become further equipped to teach others about God.
After graduating, I took a job at Bread Coffeehouse, a campus ministry and free coffeehouse serving Emory University students. After starting as an intern here, I have fallen in love with the diverse students here that are from all over the globe. Five years later I am still here, now serving as the Team Leader. We say here that our sermon is hospitality. We serve free coffee and free baked goods and do anything and everything to meet the needs of our students and invite them into a community where they can encounter Jesus in a way that will change their lives forever.
I love my job, and I am so humbled that God has provided me with this opportunity to have front row seats to all He is doing in the world and in the lives of our students. I am so grateful that through SOAR, I was able to experience a trip that ignited my passion to serve God and his children all over the globe!
Alicia Marshall
Konos Academy to AFE by Danielle Doverspike
This summer I went on my third missions trip; this particular one being to a school named AFE in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. To tell you the truth, I did not want to be going there. Not that I don’t love missions trips, it’s just that two summers ago we went to Nicaragua and I fell madly in love with the children there. So when it came time for Honduras, I was A) still rather upset that we weren’t going back to Nicaragua and B) terrified because I knew that I would fall, once again, madly in love with these kids and I didn’t want to love them because I loved the one’s in Nicaragua. It sounds rather childish when I put it like that, but really in a way it’s the same as being a parent. You have your first child and you think ‘how could I possibly love any other child as much as I love this one?’ Then you have your second child, or your third, or fourth- and each time you love them just as much as the first child. It is not the same love, but it is just as strong and just as life-altering.
There is no other way to explain the transformation that happened not only in me, but in the entire team, than to tell you a story. To tell this story, I suppose, there must be a back-story. Six months ago I sat in a church in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, brushing shoulders with a fellow missions team member and a complete, Honduran stranger. If I’m going to be completely honest, I did not think of him much then. He laughed when I clapped off beat and when Pastor Jeony told us to talk to the person beside us, he and I would attempt to relay the message despite the language differences.
Well, little did I know then, I was sitting next to someone who would help shape the rest of my week at AFE. It is honest to say that when I walked into the high school classroom the next morning I was 100% surprised to see the little man I’d sat next to in a school uniform waving, smiling, and winking at me. But it was a good surprised, of course.
During the tour of the school that day the kids would ask us questions, and sometimes we would ask them some in return. The little ones asked questions like ‘do you have a boyfriend’ and ‘what’s your favorite food’, but as the grades got higher, the questions got harder.
The high schoolers, logically, asked the toughest questions. I think after their first few questions, all of us were crossing our fingers that we wouldn’t be chosen- not because we didn’t want to talk to them, but because they were asking extremely intelligent questions that required good answers and more brainpower than we’d used all day. But the little man from the day before was looking at me and smiling every time I looked his way, so when he raised his hand to speak I began to mentally prepare myself for a question.
He began in the fashion we all were supposed to, “Hello, my name is Daniel. I’m in the 10th grade and I want to be a civil engineer. And my question is for you,” he had been looking at me the entire time, and I laughed at the fact that he wasn’t afraid to point that out. “When you look at Hondurans, what do you see?”
I laughed and thought a moment, and then answered, “Hi my name is Danielle-”
To which he interrupted, “In Spanish please.”
We all erupted into laughter. He meant it jokingly, and it helped ease the tension a little. Well, my tension- I despise speaking in front of large groups, and this was me making my first impression by saying what I thought of Daniel and the rest of them in front of a large group of people. I was holding my breath, because I tend to mess things up when I’m nervous.
So I started over, “Hello, my name is Danielle. I’ll be going into the 12th grade, and I hope to be a writer and photographer.” I paused for a moment, “I see people who need loving. Who need God’s love.”
Pastor Jeony nodded in approval, and asked if I was going to write about that. Well here I am, writing about it. Except my view on each and every one of them has changed, and if Daniel were to ask me that question now my answer would be startlingly different. Because I know them now. They are not just children on the side of the road walking to school, or people who I see at church. The garbage dump is not a heap of pity and trash at the top of a hill- it is a home, a workplace. There are people who live, sleep, work, and die there- surrounded by my trash from my hotel room, buzzards, vultures, cows, flies, and stray dogs.
I have met them now; I have seen their faces. And now, I know something I didn’t know before. Those children are filled up to the brim with love- God’s love. They laugh and tell jokes; tease each other and play on swing sets. Sometimes they don’t really pay attention during the lesson, but at the end of the week it doesn’t matter. Because it is not the lessons or the crafts or the songs that we have come there to bestow upon them, it is our love, and God’s love. Yet, we leave more filled up with love than they are left with.
Daniel- laughing, joking, smiling, Daniel. Who left his parents because of his belief in Christ to work in the trash dump, then came to Afe and works as a welder there (at least for while the new building is being built), and lived in a house that Afe built him on the side of the dump only to have his life threatened by a gang his parents are involved with and be forced to live alone at Afe in the nursery. The one who constantly was saying that it was not good for him to be angry, that he needed to be happy. He, who told me I could not cry when I left because that would be sad. (But he did start it by saying he would cry when I left, to which I replied I would be a crying mess when it came time for us to leave. I was the more accurate one.) Daniel, who had every bit of reason to be bitter and hateful towards the world- convicted me of my own self-pity, yet opened my eyes to yet another wonder.
Those children had every right to be mopey and sad, yet they were filled with more joy than I have ever seen before. Not human happiness that ebbs and flows with circumstances- pure joy. God’s joy. There is a quote from the book ‘Kisses from Katie’ that a friend of mine sent me in one of our letters that we were given on the trip that although I did not realize how applicable it was when I read it then, has stood out to me in memories since. It reads:
“These children are not poor. I, as a person who grew up wealthy, am. I put
value in things. These children, having no things, put value in God. I put my
trust in relationships; these children, having already seen relationships fail, put
their trust in The Lord. This nation is blessed beyond any place, any people
have ever encountered. God has not forgotten them. In fact, I believe he has
loved them a little bit extra.”
Throughout the week we heard stories of the people there talking about how ‘blessed they were to have food for that day’. Or how excited they were about a shopping trip to buy their first pair of shoes. Intermingled with stories of children being run over by dump trucks, peoples lives literally being threatened, and younger siblings falling down wells to their deaths. Those people are not a fragile people; their children are not kept in sanitized boxes with baby-approved toys. Yet they are still living, and they do it with a smile on their face.
Those people do not need my love. They do not need your love. But oh, they do want it. And you will never on this planet find a more worthy recipient of your affection and time than you would there. I am still in awe of their resilience and selflessness.
People who have nothing, giving of themselves- giving their bracelets or drawing pictures. A man in line for food at the garbage dump handing his food and water to a woman despite the fact that he may not get any himself. Sacrifice. Godly sacrifice.
We came expecting to see ruthless, pitiable people seeking only for themselves. But instead we saw humans; more than that we saw humans who lived more like God/for God than we ourselves (who have the world at our fingertips and so many more opportunities to share His love) did. Not only that, but our eyes were opened to our own selfishness. They were not the ones who needed God’s love, we were. Those people were not the ruthless, pitiable, self-seeking ones- we were. We were not the ones making the real sacrifices (though we tried to pride ourselves in the facts that we paid a bunch of money and asked time off from work to be there) they were. Daily.
I have never met anyone like them before. I cannot tell you how many times I have said the words, “I’ve never met anyone like him before.” (speaking of Daniel)
And it’s true. How many people do I know would leave their family to work in a trash dump because of God? How many of us would still have joy, or even mere happiness? How many of us would have the audacity, in his situation, to say that it was not good for us to be angry? It’s strange, isn’t it? Convicting. Godly, and convicting.
Let’s just take a moment and talk about the trash dump. It’s a large mountain of trash and dirt piled on top of each other. You can see it from the school, with the vultures circling it, making it seem like a mountain of death. And it is really; there is an extreme lack of respect for life up there by the truck drivers and the gang that controls it. Yet, if you haven’t been up there, and if you don’t know that the vultures are vultures, it seems pretty. With the tall grass growing along the side, and the sheer enormity of it towering over the streets below; it does not appear to be what it actually is. And little do you know that just behind that grass is a baby in a tarp contraption built to shield it from the sun with a vulture resting on the side of it. Or an elderly woman struggling to find enough supplies to make money to provide for her young grandchildren that she was somehow left to protect. Just on the other side of that ledge is the napkin you used to wipe your mouth with at dinner last night, or the piece of toilet paper you used the day before, and countless other discarded items that we have deemed garbage. And that is someone’s home, that is what reeks in the air they’re breathing, that is why their teeth are rotting and their children have lice.
It’s horrid, yet breathtaking at the same time. Terrible because those people who are created in the image of the Almighty God are forced to live in such conditions. Yet beautiful because they, at least, are working. They are trying to provide for themselves and their families. Those people do not sit around feeling entitled, or telling the government to take care of them. They are working, even though their ‘office’ reeks of someone else’s decomposing leftovers. My heart swells with pride for them, and maybe they are only working because their government is so corrupt and they wouldn’t provide for them even if they asked. But they are not begging, and they are not giving up- they are working. And to me that represents hope. Godly hope- though they are not all Christians, but still a hope that represents salvation, the dreams of a better tomorrow and the gratefulness for what they have today.
That, when you strip all the rest of it away, is really what Afe is there for. Hope. To provide Godly hope to children and their families, and opportunities for things that none of them ever would’ve dreamed could be possible. To change the future and learn from the past, to change their world.
I look at that and I think about how so many times here, in America, we talk about the things that need to change or things we want to change; yet we do nothing about it. We sit and live contently in our own little bubbles, complaining about the things we think are wrong yet doing nothing about them. We reek of hypocrisy and laziness- with the world at our fingertips dying to be transformed. Yet those kids, every single one of them being brought from the trash dump, every single one of them with tragic pasts, treacherous presents, and hesitant futures, every single one of them changing not only their lives but also their families lives. And their friends lives, and their community; people they don’t really even know at all’s’ lives. They’re changing their country one math lesson and English class at a time- taking baby steps, but leaving giant footsteps behind. Imagine what they, with their determination and drive, could do with our resources and opportunities. Think about how much our world would change. And then ask yourself, why in the world are you, with all of your luxuries, not already making the changes you see need to be made? Look at how they are revolutionizing their generation, and ask yourself why are you not doing the same?
I’d like to close with a confession: I did not want to go on this mission’s trip. In fact, the last two missions trips I have been on, I dreaded the arrival of the day the trip would start. For different reasons of course, logical anxieties, but still for the girl who claims to always have been interested in missions it’s rather unjustifiable. But that is the beauty of our Lord and Savior- He changes everything. That is the beauty of the God we serve- who changes dreading hearts into eager ones. Who teaches us things in the most surprising ways; who calls us to do His will with the most unrelenting passion. I have learned now that though I may worry relentlessly, He never does- because He is always in control. And though it took me 17 years to realize whether I worry or not His plan with undoubtedly prevail, it did not take the children I met in Honduras this past week long at all- and I think maybe that is their beauty. Trust. Godly trust.
I do not think that I could give a very good answer if Daniel asked me that question today, not because I don’t have one buried somewhere deep inside of me. I’m sure I have a suitable reply somewhere in my scattered mind, but I think that when I look at them I see so many things that one answer would simply not suffice. And I know them now, not as a whole, but as individuals, if only just a little, so logically there are different answers for all of them. But I do know that my answer was and still is wrong. They do not need my love. They do not need your love. But oh, do they want it. And how could I, or anyone ever, not fall madly in love with them? They are sons and daughters of The King. They are the people who will change our world. And as for me, I would follow them to the ends of the earth.
There is no other way to explain the transformation that happened not only in me, but in the entire team, than to tell you a story. To tell this story, I suppose, there must be a back-story. Six months ago I sat in a church in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, brushing shoulders with a fellow missions team member and a complete, Honduran stranger. If I’m going to be completely honest, I did not think of him much then. He laughed when I clapped off beat and when Pastor Jeony told us to talk to the person beside us, he and I would attempt to relay the message despite the language differences.
Well, little did I know then, I was sitting next to someone who would help shape the rest of my week at AFE. It is honest to say that when I walked into the high school classroom the next morning I was 100% surprised to see the little man I’d sat next to in a school uniform waving, smiling, and winking at me. But it was a good surprised, of course.
During the tour of the school that day the kids would ask us questions, and sometimes we would ask them some in return. The little ones asked questions like ‘do you have a boyfriend’ and ‘what’s your favorite food’, but as the grades got higher, the questions got harder.
The high schoolers, logically, asked the toughest questions. I think after their first few questions, all of us were crossing our fingers that we wouldn’t be chosen- not because we didn’t want to talk to them, but because they were asking extremely intelligent questions that required good answers and more brainpower than we’d used all day. But the little man from the day before was looking at me and smiling every time I looked his way, so when he raised his hand to speak I began to mentally prepare myself for a question.
He began in the fashion we all were supposed to, “Hello, my name is Daniel. I’m in the 10th grade and I want to be a civil engineer. And my question is for you,” he had been looking at me the entire time, and I laughed at the fact that he wasn’t afraid to point that out. “When you look at Hondurans, what do you see?”
I laughed and thought a moment, and then answered, “Hi my name is Danielle-”
To which he interrupted, “In Spanish please.”
We all erupted into laughter. He meant it jokingly, and it helped ease the tension a little. Well, my tension- I despise speaking in front of large groups, and this was me making my first impression by saying what I thought of Daniel and the rest of them in front of a large group of people. I was holding my breath, because I tend to mess things up when I’m nervous.
So I started over, “Hello, my name is Danielle. I’ll be going into the 12th grade, and I hope to be a writer and photographer.” I paused for a moment, “I see people who need loving. Who need God’s love.”
Pastor Jeony nodded in approval, and asked if I was going to write about that. Well here I am, writing about it. Except my view on each and every one of them has changed, and if Daniel were to ask me that question now my answer would be startlingly different. Because I know them now. They are not just children on the side of the road walking to school, or people who I see at church. The garbage dump is not a heap of pity and trash at the top of a hill- it is a home, a workplace. There are people who live, sleep, work, and die there- surrounded by my trash from my hotel room, buzzards, vultures, cows, flies, and stray dogs.
I have met them now; I have seen their faces. And now, I know something I didn’t know before. Those children are filled up to the brim with love- God’s love. They laugh and tell jokes; tease each other and play on swing sets. Sometimes they don’t really pay attention during the lesson, but at the end of the week it doesn’t matter. Because it is not the lessons or the crafts or the songs that we have come there to bestow upon them, it is our love, and God’s love. Yet, we leave more filled up with love than they are left with.
Daniel- laughing, joking, smiling, Daniel. Who left his parents because of his belief in Christ to work in the trash dump, then came to Afe and works as a welder there (at least for while the new building is being built), and lived in a house that Afe built him on the side of the dump only to have his life threatened by a gang his parents are involved with and be forced to live alone at Afe in the nursery. The one who constantly was saying that it was not good for him to be angry, that he needed to be happy. He, who told me I could not cry when I left because that would be sad. (But he did start it by saying he would cry when I left, to which I replied I would be a crying mess when it came time for us to leave. I was the more accurate one.) Daniel, who had every bit of reason to be bitter and hateful towards the world- convicted me of my own self-pity, yet opened my eyes to yet another wonder.
Those children had every right to be mopey and sad, yet they were filled with more joy than I have ever seen before. Not human happiness that ebbs and flows with circumstances- pure joy. God’s joy. There is a quote from the book ‘Kisses from Katie’ that a friend of mine sent me in one of our letters that we were given on the trip that although I did not realize how applicable it was when I read it then, has stood out to me in memories since. It reads:
“These children are not poor. I, as a person who grew up wealthy, am. I put
value in things. These children, having no things, put value in God. I put my
trust in relationships; these children, having already seen relationships fail, put
their trust in The Lord. This nation is blessed beyond any place, any people
have ever encountered. God has not forgotten them. In fact, I believe he has
loved them a little bit extra.”
Throughout the week we heard stories of the people there talking about how ‘blessed they were to have food for that day’. Or how excited they were about a shopping trip to buy their first pair of shoes. Intermingled with stories of children being run over by dump trucks, peoples lives literally being threatened, and younger siblings falling down wells to their deaths. Those people are not a fragile people; their children are not kept in sanitized boxes with baby-approved toys. Yet they are still living, and they do it with a smile on their face.
Those people do not need my love. They do not need your love. But oh, they do want it. And you will never on this planet find a more worthy recipient of your affection and time than you would there. I am still in awe of their resilience and selflessness.
People who have nothing, giving of themselves- giving their bracelets or drawing pictures. A man in line for food at the garbage dump handing his food and water to a woman despite the fact that he may not get any himself. Sacrifice. Godly sacrifice.
We came expecting to see ruthless, pitiable people seeking only for themselves. But instead we saw humans; more than that we saw humans who lived more like God/for God than we ourselves (who have the world at our fingertips and so many more opportunities to share His love) did. Not only that, but our eyes were opened to our own selfishness. They were not the ones who needed God’s love, we were. Those people were not the ruthless, pitiable, self-seeking ones- we were. We were not the ones making the real sacrifices (though we tried to pride ourselves in the facts that we paid a bunch of money and asked time off from work to be there) they were. Daily.
I have never met anyone like them before. I cannot tell you how many times I have said the words, “I’ve never met anyone like him before.” (speaking of Daniel)
And it’s true. How many people do I know would leave their family to work in a trash dump because of God? How many of us would still have joy, or even mere happiness? How many of us would have the audacity, in his situation, to say that it was not good for us to be angry? It’s strange, isn’t it? Convicting. Godly, and convicting.
Let’s just take a moment and talk about the trash dump. It’s a large mountain of trash and dirt piled on top of each other. You can see it from the school, with the vultures circling it, making it seem like a mountain of death. And it is really; there is an extreme lack of respect for life up there by the truck drivers and the gang that controls it. Yet, if you haven’t been up there, and if you don’t know that the vultures are vultures, it seems pretty. With the tall grass growing along the side, and the sheer enormity of it towering over the streets below; it does not appear to be what it actually is. And little do you know that just behind that grass is a baby in a tarp contraption built to shield it from the sun with a vulture resting on the side of it. Or an elderly woman struggling to find enough supplies to make money to provide for her young grandchildren that she was somehow left to protect. Just on the other side of that ledge is the napkin you used to wipe your mouth with at dinner last night, or the piece of toilet paper you used the day before, and countless other discarded items that we have deemed garbage. And that is someone’s home, that is what reeks in the air they’re breathing, that is why their teeth are rotting and their children have lice.
It’s horrid, yet breathtaking at the same time. Terrible because those people who are created in the image of the Almighty God are forced to live in such conditions. Yet beautiful because they, at least, are working. They are trying to provide for themselves and their families. Those people do not sit around feeling entitled, or telling the government to take care of them. They are working, even though their ‘office’ reeks of someone else’s decomposing leftovers. My heart swells with pride for them, and maybe they are only working because their government is so corrupt and they wouldn’t provide for them even if they asked. But they are not begging, and they are not giving up- they are working. And to me that represents hope. Godly hope- though they are not all Christians, but still a hope that represents salvation, the dreams of a better tomorrow and the gratefulness for what they have today.
That, when you strip all the rest of it away, is really what Afe is there for. Hope. To provide Godly hope to children and their families, and opportunities for things that none of them ever would’ve dreamed could be possible. To change the future and learn from the past, to change their world.
I look at that and I think about how so many times here, in America, we talk about the things that need to change or things we want to change; yet we do nothing about it. We sit and live contently in our own little bubbles, complaining about the things we think are wrong yet doing nothing about them. We reek of hypocrisy and laziness- with the world at our fingertips dying to be transformed. Yet those kids, every single one of them being brought from the trash dump, every single one of them with tragic pasts, treacherous presents, and hesitant futures, every single one of them changing not only their lives but also their families lives. And their friends lives, and their community; people they don’t really even know at all’s’ lives. They’re changing their country one math lesson and English class at a time- taking baby steps, but leaving giant footsteps behind. Imagine what they, with their determination and drive, could do with our resources and opportunities. Think about how much our world would change. And then ask yourself, why in the world are you, with all of your luxuries, not already making the changes you see need to be made? Look at how they are revolutionizing their generation, and ask yourself why are you not doing the same?
I’d like to close with a confession: I did not want to go on this mission’s trip. In fact, the last two missions trips I have been on, I dreaded the arrival of the day the trip would start. For different reasons of course, logical anxieties, but still for the girl who claims to always have been interested in missions it’s rather unjustifiable. But that is the beauty of our Lord and Savior- He changes everything. That is the beauty of the God we serve- who changes dreading hearts into eager ones. Who teaches us things in the most surprising ways; who calls us to do His will with the most unrelenting passion. I have learned now that though I may worry relentlessly, He never does- because He is always in control. And though it took me 17 years to realize whether I worry or not His plan with undoubtedly prevail, it did not take the children I met in Honduras this past week long at all- and I think maybe that is their beauty. Trust. Godly trust.
I do not think that I could give a very good answer if Daniel asked me that question today, not because I don’t have one buried somewhere deep inside of me. I’m sure I have a suitable reply somewhere in my scattered mind, but I think that when I look at them I see so many things that one answer would simply not suffice. And I know them now, not as a whole, but as individuals, if only just a little, so logically there are different answers for all of them. But I do know that my answer was and still is wrong. They do not need my love. They do not need your love. But oh, do they want it. And how could I, or anyone ever, not fall madly in love with them? They are sons and daughters of The King. They are the people who will change our world. And as for me, I would follow them to the ends of the earth.
RSS Feed
