During our furlough (June 2009-Feb. 2010), we were asked not to spend our “state-side” time & energy recruiting the next summer’s interns and short-term missionary teams. So, we haven’t had the usual super-busy hosting schedule that we’ve had before. However, it was as if the Lord “pulled-together” 2 special small groups for us to host this summer of 2010.
On July 9 I welcomed 2 young interns, Cole and Aaron, from the Memphis-area. They were a first for us… they were high school interns. Previously, Kim and I have only hosted college and seminary students, or young adults. Cole and Aaron did great during their 3 weeks in Honduras. Much of what I usually teach interns formally with paper and pen in a class-room setting was disguised as casual dialog. The plan with them was that more would be “caught” than formally “taught”. Whether we were driving Honduras’ back roads, walking a Mt. trail between villages, resting in hammocks, or sharing a meal, they learned of “missiology”, “cross-culture living”, “language acquisition”, and just before their return we “debriefed” and discussed “re-entry”. Furthermore, the beauty of an internship is that the intern experiences in real-life that which no book, sermon, or lecture can provide.
A few days after the interns arrived, and for the next 10 days, I was able to experience another “first of its kind”… a “father/son” short-term missionary trip. 3 fathers and their 4 sons arrived from Germantown Baptist, from TN. Leading the team was Jason Fisher who ministered with me on staff with Mid-South YFC in Memphis. That was back in the 1990’s, so it was especially good to again “bend knees” and “lock arms” with Jason to pray and work together. Our mission was to travel to the remote Mt. de la Flor region to share the Gospel with the mostly unevangelized Tolupan tribe; specifically the village, Hierba Buena. This village has a few believers that are requesting a church be planted there. I anticipated the record rainfall this year in Honduras to impede us crossing the 4 rivers between us and the Tolupan.
Remote and primitive mission trips have their challenges. But, the irony of the trip was that our rustic travel through the rivers went fine, but the modern airlines (for some unknown reason) split the group and didn’t let one of the “father/son” teams travel with the group. This delayed the arrival of 2 of them by one day. Once again we had to practice the golden rule of missions, “blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.” In his mission trip report Jason Fisher wrote, “Overall, we were blessed to have the opportunity to be used by God to share the Gospel with all of the villagers, many of them accepted Christ, and we left 280 Bibles in homes and schools in the mountains. In the end it is God that works in the hearts and uses His Word and His Spirit to teach the people.”
