On to Joplin: Why do we travel?

Often, when I begin to discuss past mission trips or plans for future ones with my youth, I am confronted by people with the age old, “We have plenty of need right here in ____.” It doesn’t matter where I am currently living. That statement is always true. The simple argument that there is greater need elsewhere is often true, but it’s not even the best argument, and certainly not the only one. Anyone who has ever worked with young people knows that there are myriad of reasons to take a mission trip. Recently, I came across a top 50 list of travel quotes. I found that several of them were particularly relevant to mission travel. When someone else has said it better, let them speak…

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons for mission trips, particularly, but not exclusively to destinations abroad. I have never taken a young person (or even a not so young person) anywhere that didn’t come back as a person more aware of themselves and others and more inclined to a greater love of all God’s children.

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

As to that statement that people close by are in need, this is true. Without fail, the people I take on mission trips come back with greater yearning to help those in need, resulting often in people who look for that need around them when they return. One of the questions I hear most often toward the end of a mission trip is, “How can I keep doing this when we get home?”

“All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson

If travel to places in need only had the consequence of making people grateful for their blessings, it might almost be enough in and of itself. In my experience, this is rarely the only side effect of a mission trip, but it can be one of the best.

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

Traveling can be tough indeed when we’re staying in unfamiliar places, eating things that may be making us sick, possibly being electrocuted in the shower and/or left behind in an unfamiliar city or country. Relying on the hospitality of those whom you serve can be a humbling experience though, and one that reflects the true kingdom of God, serving and being served.

″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

Our mission trips tend to be very productive. When we leave, new structures are built or repaired, lives and families healed. But I would consider any such trip a failure, if the people I took with me never saw God moving in those acts, big and small, or never came home to share what they learned and how they were changed. It’s why we take pains in small groups and conversations to process what we experience.

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

The hope when I take young people on mission trips is not to make them better youth or young adults, but to help them become wise adults, changed forever in positive ways, as better believers, better citizens and better people.

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

Pattie, the other associate here at Wellshire often says she won’t take high maintenance people to foreign countries. I echo the sentiment whole-heartedly. It is not about the strain or stress it puts on the leader or the group, but that a mentality focused on one’s self cannot serve others because it cannot truly love others.

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

Twain is right. There is no greater bonding experience for the youth than when they travel together, and particularly when they serve others side by side. It’s universal. You’re hard pressed to find a decent debate over politics or religion or sex among people digging for survivors in the rubble of a natural disaster. Show me a church that spends all its time serving others and I’ll show you a church that doesn’t have time or inclination to schism over small theological differences. The young people with whom I travel find ways to bond that surpasses any disagreement they may hold.

Mission trips are not a strategy for group building or self-improvement. Mission trips are designed to be a way to go meet the greatest needs in our world. But if you doubt the very real impact those trips can have on the people go to serve, you underestimate what impact travel has on the soul. We hope you’ll be going with us to Joplin this summer, or supporting us financially and in prayer.