In the Steps of Heroes

Paul: I grew up in a church that has always had an unusually high commitment to mission. Some of my earliest memories are of praying for “our missionaries” whether they were workers on the base in Papua New Guinea, (Brian and Rachel) medical mission (at times on hovercraft- how cool!) on lake Chad (David & Ros) or the truly cross-cultural work that took place in Wythenshawe, Manchester – the largest Council Housing estate in Europe (Ken & Cynthia).

They all captivated me in different ways and although I would never have admitted it at the time, theses were my heroes as I grew up. In particular, I was fascinated by Kitty and Leslie who have committed most of their lives to the Chatino translation of the Bible in Mexico. What a legacy!

These were the things and people that were going through my head as I sat on a plane heading for Mexico last week. To go to a country that has been so formative in my thoughts and prayers concerning mission over the years – and go there as a ‘missionary’ – had a profound impact on me (I’d emailed Kitty and Leslie the day before just to say “guess where I’m going!”).

I was heading to a city called Puebla, where our national office is. It did cause the adrenalin to pump just a little, being in a city overlooked by an active and smoking volcano, but no-one else seemed to mind much. (It was a great flight in, weaving between mountains!) I was there, along with Karen (on my team) to help the national leadership team think through and develop their HR functions. It was an excellent time. There’s always the tricky stuff to work through when you are looking to move a ministry forward, but it was so exciting to see the plan for developing Human Resources and moving the ministry forward, that we came up with by the end of our time there.

If you’d like to join my spiritual heritage in interceding for Mexico, then please do remember Kim and the rest of the team there as they seek to grow and have a wider impact on the spiritual climate in this nation. Thanks.

the journey back home

Paul:
It's becoming a bit of an ongoing joke amongst our youth group that recently all my stories of talking to people about my faith start with "well; I was on an aeroplane.....". Occupational hazard I suppose. To celebrate the end of our mad-season as a family, I traded-in some air-miles and we all went to Orlando over Easter. Our journey back home from Orlando added another story to the list.

Joel and I were in the middle and window seat. I'd tried to co-ordinate our "getting up" to minimise disturbance to the poor guy in the aisle seat. After checking twice with Joel (and despite the vast amount of Orange juice he had consumed) he decided he didn't need to 'pay a little visit' until just after I had sat back down, when he loudly announced "right; I think I need the loo now". I was just deciding whether to throw Joel out the window, when the guy next to me said "it's OK, I've got a boy of my own" and promptly got up for us.

I got chatting to Kevin about kids and life. He was from Ireland but had married a New Yorker and was now living in Florida. We got to talking about what we did - he is in Pharmaceutical testing - and he was quite intrigued when I told him I was a missionary. He'd had a classic Irish Catholic upbringing and although he'd left most things of faith behind him years ago, he and his wife had recently started to become more spiritually interested. "Coincidentally", they'd had a neighbour round a few days earlier, inviting them along to church over Easter. We talked for the rest of the flight about the Bible and church and Catholicism and Jesus and Easter and eternity. I'd love to tell you he made that step of faith into the kingdom as we were about to land in New York, but he didn't. He's still got a way to go on that journey, but I felt privileged to have walked part of it with him. Do pray for Kevin and the Spiritual journey he's on.

We had a grand old time as a family in Orlando. I was working for the first few days and we did some 'connecting' with my team out there, but the 4 days over Easter was just pure fun.