Hey, welcome back to Words of Life. We are in our final two weeks of our series on missions.
This series began back on October 20th, so if you've missed any episodes, scroll back on your favorite podcast store to October 20th to get caught up. This week, we begin again by having a conversation about intention. As we embark on missions trips, we need to enter new communities as guests with humility and grace to ensure we're making the biggest impact for the kingdom. To learn about the work the Salvation Army is doing around the world, visit salvationarmy.org. There you can learn about missions projects, refugee work, anti-human trafficking, and you can learn how to support the work of the Army from wherever you are in the world. And again, if you haven't reached out to us and you have a story about how a mission trip really made an impact in your life, we still want to hear from you. Send us an email at hello at wordsoflifepodcast.org or visit the contact page on our site.
Again, that's wordsoflifepodcast.org. So last week, we started talking about what can go wrong when we do missions poorly. We may have every good intention, but there's a few things that we can do that actually we end up believing that community doing more harm than good. So let's talk about what that looks like and some things we need to avoid, or if we're looking to partner with an organization that's doing missions, see if they're doing things this way and you might have some red flags.
Yeah. A big thing can be that, you know, especially folks who maybe haven't done a lot of travel before or, you know, going outside of their scope is kind of treating it like a holiday. It's unfortunate, but sometimes that can happen. And so I think that the more training that we can give our prospective missionaries, the more time spent in the Word, the more time spent talking about what the goals of the mission are, I think the better. And to just try to create an environment that is not about what I'm going to experience, but instead about what we can do for the kingdom instead. I think going in with just your worldview can be pretty dangerous. Just example of my own mistakes that I've made when we just went to London to serve, to the UK, which is a very Western country. So you wouldn't think that you would make too many mistakes there, but we served in a predominantly African core and I'm very time conscious, very organized, and I wanted our services to start on time.
I wanted everything very structured and I would get very upset when it wasn't like that. And I realized pretty early on that I was coming from my own point of view, my own worldview, and I did a lot of damage at the beginning. And I was really repentant of that because I was not only coming from my worldview, I was not being respectful of theirs. And I was not taking the time to get to know them and their culture.
I think that that's what happens when we go on short-term mission trips too. We come in with our own worldview. We don't respect their culture. We sometimes don't respect their language, don't respect their norms.
We don't even take the time to listen to their stories. And I think that that's a mistake and we can learn so much from just listening to who they are, like sitting around the table and finding out who they are, what they believe in, and just the culture of how they do things during the day. And I think that a mistake that we make is just not taking the time to do that. Yeah, I think as you're preparing for wherever it is you're going, you need to learn as much as you can. But also within that, you have to give yourself grace and enter with a different mindset to the country because there's no way you're going to learn everything before you go. Even if you're going for a long-term trip, like you're going to learn so much actually being there in the country. But it's that mindset. You have to walk in and know, like, I can't go in with any expectations, any preconceived notions, even my own kind of thoughts and worldviews and mindset.
Like I need to... I am a guest. I'm a guest. Yeah.
We're guests in these countries and we need to go and partner alongside these people in these countries and basically do things how they do it, like figure out what it is. Obviously, there's still room for correction, but not in the sense that most Americans kind of think is the way. And I'm thinking more biblical correction even than anything else. And that's just in churches today. Like when you go back to the Old Testament with Daniel in the country of Babylon, like he stuck to what he knew was biblically true. And that's where you can still maintain that kind of confidence in a missions trip. But culturally, like you have to just set yourself aside and become a part of where you are.
Something that came to mind, we're just talking about just being sensitive to the culture that you're going into. The first trip that I ever did was actually an Appalachian service project. And we went to Kentucky and rebuilt homes in very impoverished parts of the world.
And I didn't know that the US could look like this. And so as a 16-year-old kid, that really opened my eyes. But one of the things that they told us in our training, when we were doing the reconstruction of these homes, they were helping us be really conscious of the language that we were using. So specifically, when we were going to replace the carpet, they said, don't say around the owners, we're going to rip out the carpet.
So we're going to replace the carpet. And language like that, so that they didn't feel like what they had was just trash. And we were here to just make it better. But we're just here to help them.
They needed a new floor. So even just getting down to that level and being aware of just how our words have an impact, that really stuck with me. And also how we're presenting ourselves too. There was a mission team who came to Kenya when we were serving their long-term. And we went to go and pick them up for their first day helping out at the core. And all the girls were wearing short shorts.
And culturally, that was a huge faux pas because in Kenya, women are supposed to cover their legs. And so even small things like that, that maybe to us seem like nothing, have a huge impact on how we are taking it. Well, maybe not even like nothing. It's almost even the opposite of like, oh, you're not going to hinder my freedoms or anything like that too. And it's like, you're not home anymore. Yes. Yeah.
This is right, right, right, right, right. It takes like a moment of humility because I mean, you can get it the other way around too. Like you go to these other countries and as a white man entering so many other countries, people do literally place you on a pedestal. Like they want to serve you in ways it's like, no, like you don't, don't do this.
Like I am not any better than any of you. Even when I was in Mozambique, I was helping with, they were helping to build an orphanage. It was just a plain field at this point. And so it was literally in the designing stages. And at this point in my mission strip, I had half a semester of architecture school. Not didn't even finish the semester, but they found out about that. And instantly they were like, okay, like you need to like help us with this and design this and tell us where this is. I was like, no, this would be dangerous.
You know more than I do. Like I think I told them maybe the bathroom shouldn't be right there next to like the kitchen stove, but that was it. But you know, as you were saying about them wanting to serve you first, like it'd actually be impolite if you didn't let them serve you first because they would find that like offensive that you didn't let them do that too. Commissioner Donna was talking about when they first got to Africa and one of the other officers there, another woman, she invited her to sit and have dinner with her. And she said, she was like, no, I can't do that. And Donna just did not understand. And she just like kind of kept pulling. And it was a respect thing that she wasn't able to sit at the same table with this leader.
They eventually developed a relationship and kind of moved beyond that. But yeah, you just have to understand that what you think is normal may not be, and you just need to be able to pivot and be flexible. I think one of the other things that I've only kind of just been learning over the last few years is, you know, I have a huge heart for foster care and adoption. And I've always like growing up thinking, Oh, you know, I want to, you know, go overseas and I want to work in an orphanage and I want to like be one of, you know, just want to go there and be a missionary over there. And as I was doing my masters, I learned a lot about how damaging it can be to just kind of go on trips and, and just spend time at an orphanage just for short term, just to go and you think you're doing a good thing to just go and help at these orphanages, but actually can be really damaging to some of the children sometimes.
And that's not always the case. You know, sometimes we have, especially in the Salvation Army, we have these children's homes where they, you know, they have special guidelines and it's okay and, and stuff like that. But there are such things as, you know, orphanage tourism, where they actually have places where they bring in people and they have them come and, you know, look after the children and stuff like that. And then the poor kids, like they're left behind when everybody else goes home and, and that can be really damaging. And I think that we just need to be really careful of that. So I know that there's so many young people out there who have a heart for that and have a heart for children and, and they want to, you know, be someone who adopts later and stuff like that.
And I just think that we want to nurture that heart and we want to nurture the passion that they have, but we want to make sure that they check on the agencies that they go with and the mission teams that they go with so they're not causing more damage in the end. Because sometimes our passions, they are God-given, but we want to just make sure that we direct them in the right place. On my trip, we also had this rule that if anyone was complaining, someone else would immediately say, what are you thankful for? Because it's so easy to enter somewhere that you're not used to and immediately like, oh, like, I really miss my coffee at home. I make it like this, but I can't feel like this, but I can't get it like that here.
Or even where you're staying, like I know, we brought our tents with us and we just were on roofs of buildings and outside and on cement floors and everywhere. So it's easy to kind of know what we came from and complain with what we don't have. But in that moment, it's so important to just, what am I thankful for? Like, what, even if it's like that country itself, like what, what is about this country that is, what's it teaching me?
Because even one offhanded comment could completely devastate someone in that country too. That also just helps remind you that, you know, when you leave the people that are in this community now that you might be complaining for how they live, they're going to continue to live this way after you leave. And so if you're truly in mission-mindedness, you're going to embed yourself in that community and live like they do and eat like they do and, and love on them in that way and not from a pedestal. And so I think it's a lot harder to, to show love like Jesus if, if we are like, you know, driving back from our Hilton hotel to like go to this community to then, you know, pretend like we get them.
Right. And yeah, but you know, if, if you haven't been on a mission trip and you're really feeling a tug that you want to start to get involved in this kind of work, especially if maybe your church doesn't have its own structured short-term missions that they're working on, any organization that you're going to partner with to do mission work, do your research and just kind of find out what is their plan long-term and are we not just going to just check a box? The Salvation Army's mission doing the most good means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to The Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support. You can subscribe to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. Join us next time for The Salvation Army's Words of Life. Thanks so much for listening to Words of Life. We want to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the show. Visit lifeaudio.com where you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They have shows about prayer, Bible studying, parenting, and more. Thanks again for listening.
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