Mission Trip: Costa Rica

Of all my years in the church, I’ve never taken part in an out-of-state mission trip, much less out-of-country. Those that know me best know that my time outside of the US has been quite limited even for personal travel, so embarking on an international mission trip is a much bigger deal than it may seem to others.

My biggest decision factor was not a fear of travel, nor was it going into another culture. No, the biggest questions were, “Is it time?”and “Why now?”.

Julie does a LOT of traveling for work and we often have an opportunity to make a vacation out of her work travel if I can take off from work and get a plane ticket. Usually the majority of the expenses are taken care of by nature of lucrative corporate travel. She has a trip for Hawaii planned for late June to Oahu, where Tesoro has a refinery. Our plan has been to use a Southwest ticket that we have acquired from her frequent flyer miles for me to tag-along. Well… the partner that Southwest used to fly to Hawaii, ATA, is no longer in business and SWA no longer flies to Hawaii. I would only have enough vacation time to fulfill ONE trip this summer and it looked like it wasn’t going to be to Hawaii.

When the church first announced this mission trip, Julie and her mom were very interested and went to the first meetings with Pastor Adam. As the weeks and months played out (and we realized that I was not going to Hawaii), it turned out that I was instead in a better position to take this mission trip. Julie and her mom had to back out and I stepped up and made my intentions known to Adam that I would be going instead.

It helped my decision tremendously that Adam and I have become quite good friends since he joined our church a year ago, and I would be remissed if I didn’t give him any credit for my decision. We attend bible study together, often meet for lunch during the week, and were even workout partners. To top it off, our wives share the exact same birthday! We can always talk about sports (which usually brings up the Texas A&M / Texas Tech rivalry), but mostly we can just talk and share life together. I’m looking forward to this new experience and I feel fortunate to be able to learn from such a close friend.

When it came down to it, the decsion was a “no-brainer”. I truly feel that this mission trip is the next hurdle in my path to challenge my life as a follower of Christ. It was time to for me step out into the unknown and trust Him to use my talents and services for others.

Oh, what I would do to have
the kind of faith it takes
To climb out of this boat I’m in
Onto the crashing waves
To step out of my comfort zone
Into the realm of the unknown
Where Jesus is,
And he’s holding out his hand
[…]
But the voice of truth tells me a different story
the voice of truth says “do not be afraid!”
and the voice of truth says “this is for my glory”
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the voice of truth
– “Voice of Truth” by Casting Crowns

-RB