The holiday season found us in Orlando, Florida, site of Disney World, for the Latin America/Caribbean Missionary Retreat aptly titled, “Dreams Come True.” It was a gathering of over 600 missionaries, representing countries from the Rio Grande in the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south. It was a time of reconnection, worship, and inspiration.
As part of the theme, video clips were shown during the large group meetings, showing how several of our missionary colleagues had seen God help them realize dreams that He had given them. There were those who had planted now thriving churches and those who had birthed ministries that are now international in scope. There were reports of high-powered children’s ministries teams and thriving national missions departments sending missionaries from the mission field to all corners of the world. Truly, things are happening in our region!
Still, for all of the encouragement that such videos bring, I couldn’t help but ask the question, “…and the Godzwas? What have we done in comparison?” The progress that we have made all of a sudden seemed to pale in comparison to the reports of victory being broadcast before our eyes. On top of this, our son Jonathan had come down with a fever, leaving Kelly and I taking shifts staying in the hotel room with him, instead of participating as we had expected.
I was in a funk by the time Doug Clay took the stage to talk about restoring the joy of our calling to the ministry. As he finished his sermon, he asked for those who would like to experience a fresh touch of that joy to meet him at the altar. I walked forward, knowing that that was something I needed. A group gathered around the altar, and after a time of individual prayer, Doug led us in an exercise. He told us to look around and find a partner ten years removed from our age. As I looked to the left, standing beside me as Dale Coad who, 17 years prior, was a missionary on the field in the Dominican Republic where Kelly and I had taken our first short-term missions trip. As the speaker told us to join hands, I reflected on the time I had spent there on the mission field with Dale and his wife Patti. I remembered wondering, as I watched them go through their day to day ministry, “Do I have what it takes to be a like them? Do I have what it takes to be a missionary?” Now I was standing next to him as a co-worker singing, “He has made me glad!”
We then were told to widen the circle, and there, in our group stood Ron Hittenberger, a missionary that attended AGTS with me when I was in the first year of my masters degree program. At that time in my life, the mission field seemed farther away then when I was 18. I had a growing family and an uphill climb to complete my studies, but here we now stood together in our circle, Dale, Ron and I, along with other missionaries, sharing in the joy of the realization of our dream of serving our master on foreign soil.
It was unmistakable. God “opened my eyes” that night to see past the little pity party that I was giving myself. He has made my dream come true. He has completed what He had promised, and what He had confirmed so many times before has become a reality. I am a missionary!
Of course, this is only the beginning. God has bigger dreams, dreams I am only now becoming aware of after spending the last four years on the field. One such dreams is the dream of a relevant, outward-focused, Mexican church that reaches across cultural boundaries and generational assumptions to practice true Christianity in everyday situations. God has done it before in my life and in the lives of so many whose testimony was on display during our retreat; He can do it again.
How about you? What dreams have you seen God bring to fruition? What dreams does God have you dreaming right now?
