Short Term Missions

I was recently asked by My Love to express my thoughts on the matter of short-term missions. Short-term missions being the sending of people, typically westerners, to remote territories that have heard little of the Gospel. My Love, in her undergraduate studies at the University of Biola, is undertaking research as to lead to a conclusion of the effects of short-term missions. Specifically the effects that these trips have on the native populous, the current residential missionaries and on the participants themselves. Rightly to be understood that there seems to be more affects to these trips then actual effects, but that is part of a conclusion that My Love is to draw. I have been asked simple, without intentionally trying to compensate, to state my personal testimony on the matter. When I was eighteen years of age I heard of an outrageous attempt to take people, from my community, to the then British Colony of Hong Kong and communist Republic of China. I doubted in my mind that I would be aloud to go. Yet with a purring in my heart by the Holy Spirit, I had the courage and confidence to approach the leader (Mr. English) and ask. After every interested party was interviewed, I was told that I would be allowed to participate as long as I was sure. Sure, that I was and so I reported to preparatory class in the near weekend. Many were there that day, crowded in a small room that resembled a closet more then a lecture hall. Excitement and wonder filled my thoughts and I am sure invaded my dreams. I was surprising to see some familiar faces missing. A couple of which I, at the time, considered "Christian Hardbodies", were not attending, not coming. My confidence in God and is plan for this event grow. It was not that it could truly be stretched, but more the my faith did not ever diminish. We prepared in the following ways: reading books like The Green Leaf and Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Journeys, regular Bible study together, listened to Hong Kong native and their testimonies, learning a minimal amount of Cantonese, practicing dramas, and began to understanding how our time will be spent, services used. The overall preparation was not sufficient, but the understanding and spiritual focus that so many of us had was the key to a successful outreach. A team of sixty, of whom I was one, arriving in HK on a hot/steamy morning. It is hard to recall the time-table of events and all of the various activities that we were apart of, but I know this. We, forty kids (age ranged from 13 to 20) and twenty adults (age ranged from 21 to dirt old), came into a city, a metropolitan bee hive, with the purpose to do all we could to accomplish the goals of God. We interacted with at least two local churches. The pastors and residential missionaries led us to predetermined locals to setup and preform dramas. On those various street corners, some preformed, others setup, many just prayed, a number walked about handing out tracks the we could not read, but were given by the local churches for evangelism, and some spoke via a locally provided translaters, a message to the people that were gathered around or walking by. Our effect on the local churches was one of support and numbers. We had sixty people that were not there yesterday. Sixty people that were not on the churches staff and had no job to go to expect that of what the Lord willed. We were equipped with unusually white, brown and black skin which alone draw a number of people unto us. We were a large group of adolescent Americans that could not helped but be stared at, as we smiled back. Above all, we were sold out to the idea of reaching people with the Gospel. The most amazing thing is not that we sixty turned that tide, but that we sixty were just one group that went that summer.Groups just like ours returned, month after month and summer after summer, to this day. My love had passed through HK with her group weeks before and again days after I had left. We all made a difference. Hong Kong has factories. In some of those factories the people of the British Colony produced Bibles. Bibles seemed to be in stock in HK, though I do not recall seeing any in the many stores that were packed into uncomfortably close buildings like the honeycomb of a hive. China forbid the Word of God. A citizen of the Republic of China could sign up on a list and receive a Bible that had been written by the communist government themselves. One would receive a Bible full of lies and that had the true taken out. Coupled with that fact that all that had signed up were then marked and watched. Hong Kong citizens tried to bring in Bibles but it was forbidden and punishable. We, as Americans, had the lee-way to attempt to transport Bibles across the border, feeling safe behind the might hand of Uncle Sam. In what I have come to believe was the most effective display of our presence there, we made a Bible run. I remember the fussy calm and glorious excitement was we rapped canvice sacks around our midriffs, stuffed with Bibles. I carried eight around within that sack and two, probable unwisely, in the outer pockets of my boardshorts. One long, quite bus ride, two boarder checks, and a hotel room later and we had made it. Six hundred Bibles in a hotel room in mainland China. Now all that was left was a seen out of an eighties spy movie. Three men from our group were chosen, loaded with two Jansport backpacks each and set off to a location predetermined. The messengers came to a cafe. Only one of them knew what to do and who to recognize. To men approached and they all followed. They were led back behind the cafe down an alley. The two men that came for them, without words took the six Jansports of the shoulders of our men and disappeared. I believe there was more to this operation then what we were told, but it matters not. What matters it that fact that in China, one Bible reaches and thus has an affect on one thousand people. The country is so without that one Bible, that sits on our shelves or over our seldom lit fireplace, would be used in some manor by one thousand Chinese. To say that short-term mission trips are useless or even harmful, does not fit that trips that I have been apart of. We encourages two local churches, gave support to two resident missionaries that have been banned from entering China, delivered over six hundred Bibles and a number of messages on tape. I led one kid to salvation and hundreds stopped to watch our dramas and listen to our message. This trip did effect people and non more severely then the participants of mission.