Our youth mission team arrived back in Bristol around 7:30 pm Sunday evening (June 27, 2010). We were glad to be back home and tired from a meaningful but exhausting trip to Kingstree, South Carolina. The eight members of the team were (as you see them in the picture on the top right named from right to left): Dylan Tolbert, Gretchen Tolbert, Logan Luttrell, Medea Clawson, Catherine Hyatt, Derrick Jones, Brent Miller, and me. We participated in the Black River Workcamp (sponsored by Group Workcamps). All together we had 353 students and youth workers from 21 churches in 11 different states (some from as far away as Denver, Colorado). We split up into 58 different work crews and served in 53 worksites throughout Williamsburg County. We completed all of the planned work at all 53 sites and altogether worked over 7700 hours of service in the name of Jesus. Our work ranged from dry wall installation and interior and exterior painting to roofing and construction of wheelchair ramps.
My work crew (the bottom picture on the bottom right) was made up of teens from Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and we worked for Mrs. Tisdale (at the center of the picture). Her house was in need of a little attention, so we repaired her roof, replaced rotten fascia boards along the eves of her house, and repainted the entire exterior of the house. Completing the work proved to be a challenge for our six person crew, so we were assigned an extra crew for Thursday and Friday and worked over about an hour on Friday to finish the project. The work was extremely hot, but we sort of got accustomed to the heat after the first day, so 100 degrees didn’t seem so bad—after all, we were working in Jesus’ name, and we had grown to enjoy the company of Mrs. Jannie. She was 85 years old, very independent, and full of an exuberant faith that she shared with us daily. During our work site devotions she would share with us stories of her life and her faith. She was an inspiration to us even as we served her.
As I listened to the stories from our other team members I heard similar stories. Once in a while, we serve someone who does not seem to be in need or who does not seem to appreciate what we are doing, but most of the time we find residents who are as much a blessing to us as we are to them. Our theme for the week, “Undeserved,” drove home the point for us. All week we looked at the Parable of the Prodigal Son (or the Parable of the Loving Father as I like to call it), and we realized that all of us are undeserving in many ways. The Prodigal Son did not deserve the grace he received from his Father, and we have done nothing to deserve that same grace that God extends to us. Some of the people we served may not have deserved to be served by teens from 11 states, and we certainly didn’t expect to receive a blessing from the residents we came to serve, but all of us find that God comes to us in unexpected and undeserving ways to offer us a radical love and grace that only our Heavenly Father can give. As children of the Father and followers of Jesus, though, we are called to extend that love and grace to a hurting world. We extend that love and grace on mission trips (and sometimes that’s easier because that’s what we expect to do on a mission trip), but we are also called to extend God’s love and grace as we go about our daily lives right here in Bristol. So I have a challenge for all of us: Let’s learn to extend God’s grace even to the people we may think are undeserving. Let’s plan mission trips that will give us opportunities to serve people in near and distant lands (and by the way, we hope to plan a multi-generational weekend mission trip for this fall; more on that later), but let’s also encourage each other to build service and grace into our daily lives. Many people right here in Bristol are in need of a touch from the Savior, and God may be planning to use us as his hands and feet to carry his love and grace to people we meet everyday.
In Christ,
Brian
