Sometimes I think people don’t understand. Doing things, even those that are outside of my comfort zone, is what keeps me going. It normalizes my life between those dreaded CT scans and brain MRIs. I am not immobilized by my disease; I am empowered by it.
Which, on a side note, my next CT scan is scheduled for Monday, July 21. One last check before my overseas trip.
Speaking of that trip, most people have been very supportive of my willingness to give back while at the same time navigating treatments for my disease.
However, there’s also a lot of misunderstanding about what it is we are doing, traveling to Estonia for nearly two weeks. Here are just a few recent encounters.
In a very brief reconnection to an (old) art fair vendor, I simply mentioned my mission trip and affiliation with the church. Her response was unexpected. She said something like, “We can’t be friends.”
“Huh?”
She reasoned that life was too short to have friends who were not like-minded. Someday, I will understand.
I simply said, “As a Christian, I would never have said that to you.” I would have never said we couldn’t be friends because you don’t believe what I believe. If that were the case, I would be missing out on a lot of friendships, not to mention relatives.
That was the end of a very short couple of days of reconnecting.
After last week’s blog post about doing a little fundraising for the trip, someone asked me what qualifies me to be a missionary.
Hmmm. What indeed? If you are all familiar with the major Bible stories, you realize God picks on the least likely people to carry out his plans. Whether I thought I was prepared to travel overseas or not, I am committed.
I have reservations about my qualifications to conduct an Adult Bible Class in a foreign country during tomato harvest season. But here I am wading across a river of unknowns, trusting that I will be guided to the other shore. There’s no looking back now.
Ultimately, I was reminded by my fellow travelers at our Sunday planning meeting that God does not call the qualified; He qualifies the called. And, I’m banking on that.
There are countless Bible stories about the most unlikely candidates stepping up to the plate to serve.
Here are some examples:
Moses felt inadequate because he stuttered, yet he appeared before Pharaoh on behalf of his people.
David was a king who committed adultery.
Gideon felt unworthy because of his family status.
Rhab was a prostitute and a relative of Jesus.
Jesus’ disciples included Matthew, a tax collector; Simon, the Zealot; and James, John, Peter, and Andrew were fishermen. (Jesus filled their nets).
Finally, while we were visiting with customers at the park, my grandchildren were in charge of sales, and a woman walked by and stopped to read my sandwich board.
She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face and asked what I was doing. So I told her. She shook her head in what I thought looked like disgust and said, “You look like you are at least as old as me.”
“Huh?”
She turned and continued to walk away, leaving me to think to myself, “I forgot to look in the mirror this morning. Do I look as old as this woman?”
In conclusion, here I am, Lord —
- A believer
- Untrained as a missionary
- Old (that thought never crosses my mind, hahahahah)
Numbers have meaning in the context of the Bible. Three is a number significant of completion.
So here I am, the perfect trifecta for traveling to Estonia to share my life’s story and a Bible lesson about worry.
INDYchildrendotme 
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