You Don’t Have to Leave the US for Missions (Lessons from Samaritan’s Purse Pt. 2)

Imagine that you only have one leg and you lost it in an accident. You were walking to work and you were hit by drunk drivers. The only reason you knew it was drunk drivers is because when we came back to you are lying on the street in pain and surrounded by the empty beer bottles they had thrown out their window at you. As you painfully try and drag yourself to the side of the road, a semi-truck drives by and runs over your legs. you’re lucky to be alive because if the truck had come seconds earlier it would’ve been your whole body that had been run over. You survive this horrible accident, but only have one leg now. You had dreams of joining the army, but there’s no way that will happen now. 

Now imagine that years later your wife is diagnosed with breast cancer. She has to have surgery to get a double mastectomy and you now need to step up to help take care of her while she’s recovering from surgery. Sure, life has been a little more difficult with only one leg and you may be less mobile, but you won’t let that stop you from supporting your wife. 

As if that wasn’t already enough now imagine that you have to leave your home for a night or two as a hurricane blows through. You don’t want to leave home but you know you’re likely to be safer in another place. When you finally can come home after the hurricane is passed, you pull up into your driveway only to be surrounded by the destruction cause by the hurricane. The beautiful tree that once stood tall and proud in your front yard is now lying on the grass in two different directions as if it had been split in half by lightning. The edge of the tree just barely missed the section of the house where your son sleeps. You’re thankful that the tree missed the house, but you’re so overwhelmed by the mess and destruction that when you go into the backyard and see a single beautiful flower in the backyard you finally come to your knees and just weep. 

While I’m thankful that this story is not mine, I’m also thankful that I got the opportunity to meet the people who do have this as their story. I’m thankful that I got to see the smile on their faces when we showed up to remove the tree from their yard. I’m thankful I got to hear the joyful parts of their story as well. The love this man and woman have shared since they were in high school, their children who are alive and healthy, the late night fishing trips they enjoy as a family. 

Not every homeowner that I encountered had such a hard story. However, every homeowner had one thing in common: they were all facing destruction from the hurricane and many of them weren’t sure how to go about cleaning up the mess the hurricane had caused. They all went through the same storm, they all needed help and they all were brave enough to ask Samaritan’s purse for help. In my couple weeks with Samaritan’s purse I encountered homes that no longer had roofs or were leaking from being damaged, fallen trees that destroyed yards and mold inside houses from floods or leaky roofs. 

There was something very rewarding about working with Samaritan’s Purse and I believe it was the ability to make an immediate fix to a very obvious need. Like putting tarps on the roofs so the homeowner didn’t have to worry about the rain, or removing moldy walls from a house so the homeowner could be one step closer to be able to move back into their once beautiful home. Yes, working with Samaritan’s Purse was very rewarding, but it also opened my eyes to a very important truth: You don’t need to leave the United States to find missions. 

You’d think I had learned this while on the world race considering one of the phrases they teach us from the very beginning is “life is ministry and ministry is life.” I think I learned that lesson only partially on the race. I learned it in the sense of everyone deserves to be loved as Jesus loves and there are always opportunities to love people in such a way. You just need to be compassionate and sensitive to Holy Spirit’s leadings. 

What I guess I didn’t realize was the physical needs in the United States and the opportunities to be on a “mission trip” right here in our home country. It’s possible to take a week off of your “normal” life and dedicate that time to serving others.  When Jesus commands us to give to those in need, that includes our neighbors around the United States. There are so many storms that people face. It could be a community of people who have all been through an actual hurricane together, or it could be storms like losing a leg or breast cancer. The point is that we all have needs. We can’t compare the needs in “developing countries” to needs in the United States or we might miss the ones that are right in front of us. One thing I know for sure, God doesn’t miss any one. He’s the God who sees and He wants us to see those people as well and be willing to help in any way we can.