What does “short term missions” mean to Ten Eighteen?

I guess because summer is upon us and a lot of people are going on short term missions trips, there have been a lot of articles and blogs around the web on what short terms missions are for. I wrote this article about a blog post that I strongly disagree with, and posted this link on the Ten Eighteen Facebook page to one I strong agree with. Ten Eighteen is about to take it’s second group for a short term missions trip, so I thought I’d give an explanation of our mission and vision for those who might not have heard me talk about it.

Ten Eighteen is not an organization that specializes in short term missions trips.  We did one team trip in August of 2011 to do a basketball camp in Nsambya for 44 kids from Ray of Hope. To date, that’s our only team trip.

Why? From our founding, Ten Eighteen has been about relationships. We never intended to have a “one and done” type of a ministry. We have returned to Uganda 6 times since the original visit (or, more accurately 8, since my daughter went twice by herself). On each trip, we stick with our mission, which is to continue to build relationships with the people we have met and work with there. We do not promote an atmosphere of hand-outs, which is very easily done when you are going on a one-time, short term trip. It feels good to give kids stuff, to see them smile… But in most cases, that does more harm than good. It fosters an entitlement/welfare mentality, rather than one where self-reliance is the goal.

Agnes, May 2012

So why not big teams? I have been able to go 7 times. I have been able to get to know the ladies of Nawezakana, the kids of Ray of Hope and Nesco, the children at the babies home, the staff of hospice. We email, we Facebook, we even Tweet. My daughter has received a dozen or more wonderful, loving, heartfelt messages of congratulations on her upcoming marriage from her Ugandan friends. Taking teams takes time. Group mentalities are what they are – when you are with a group of people you know, you naturally talk to those people. You move as a big blob through the environment, making it difficult for people to break in and talk to you.  That doesn’t help our goal of relationship.

Well then, why do teams at all? First and foremost, because on both occasions, God has been very clear about doing it. The basketball camp was God’s idea, and the camp went great. We had a dozen Ugandan volunteers along with our six, and the kids had a blast. This youth camp is the same. When we were in Andros over Easter, God gave me a very clear vision of this camp. One way to know an idea is from God is if it’s something that isn’t at all in your wheelhouse. These camps aren’t. I’m an introvert that doesn’t love large groups. I find being responsible for groups stressful. I enjoy one-on-one interaction. But I am ridiculously excited about this team and this camp, and that’s how I know it’s a God thing.

Shouldn’t you do one every year, if they go so well? The typical “church” answer would be, “Of course!” We tend to try to institutionalize anything that is successful once. We were asked when we were doing another basketball camp, and my answer was (and remains), “When God tells me to do it.” He hasn’t yet. The same will be true of this youth camp in Andros in August. No matter how well it goes, unless God tells me to, I will not start planning “Youth Camp 2014″ as soon as we get home. There are times and seasons for everything. Success doesn’t mean you must duplicate. Obedience is what God’s after. Those are the principles on which we operate.

So what’s in it for me? Well… maybe nothing except a new stamp in your passport. You might get sick. You might be hot and miserable. You might find a bunch of kids annoying. You might hate the food. You might hate being with a group of people for a week. You might not cope well with a lack of power, water, or internet. If you’re going because there’s something in it for you, PLEASE reconsider spending your money (or other people’s donations). If God calls you to a missions trip, it’s for the people you’ll be serving. Your lack of ability to cope, eat, sleep, or be content and happy will be more than made up for by God’s… If you let it. Take one week (or however long your trip is), put yourself aside, and serve others to the best of your ability. Hug, laugh, talk, and show His love. Even if you don’t feel like it. Even if you’re grumpy. Give to whoever He called you to what He has given to you – uncompromising, unequivocal, unconditional love.

My family and I go to Uganda, and now Andros, as an ongoing calling. We don’t consider what we do “short term missions” even though we’re there between 2-4 weeks at a time. We are visiting friends. We are showing God’s love in the ways that He opens up for us. Maybe thinking about your short term trip in this same way will help you keep your focus on what’s ultimately important: HIM.

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Children will play! These kids were having so much fun in this old suitcase…

God is stirring in Andros!

I had a call yesterday from my friend who first introduced me to Andros back in 2008. He has lived in the states for about 17 years, and been gone from Andros for 20, but it’s his birthplace. He hasn’t wanted to go back. Until… God. He told me that God started stirring him to go back to Andros a few months ago. Just in last few days, he’s been calling old friends that he grew up with, talking to them about ways to revitalize the island. His sister moved back last fall. His mother is feeling like she might be moving back… God is stirring!

On Friday, Ten Eighteen committed to funding a house of prayer in Andros through the end of the year. We believe that the interceessors tilling the soil in preparation for what God is going to do is vital for success. We hope you’ll join us in prayer, and if you’re led, with a donation to help with the rent of the building ($250/month).

Exciting times!!

2013 is shaping up to be big!

Project Friendship!

Time is really flying! How is it May already?? And I haven’t posted here in two weeks… Sorry about that! (You can go to the Facebook page and Like it so that you get more frequent updates.) So here’s what’s going on:

• I found out today that I actually DO have an attorney working on the nonprofit in the Bahamas, I just didn’t know it! Yes, “island time” has a lot in common with “beach time.” It turns out, they’ve been calling the relavent government ministries to gather information. So that’s pretty exciting! I will almost certainly be going down to Nassau and Andros before my daughter’s wedding on June 22. I’m just waiting to get a bit further in the process. But I have sent a letter of authorization for the chambers (law firm) to act on my behalf, so I feel like we are finally up and running there. This will help a lot with the hospice.
• We have gotten our tickets for Uganda. Zeke will be there August 21-October 2. I will be heading over September 12 and returning with him. Because he will be working on Ten Eighteen’s behalf in Namuwongo, particularly with the Haven boys, I can make another short trip, but not work quite so hard, and still get everything done.
• The Andros trip in August is well into planning. We have a tee shirt design (I will unveil that soon!) which is AWESOME, and a schedule. Once Ryan graduates from college this weekend, she will be putting together the VBS curriculum, and making the schedule for the camp days. And it looks like we’ll have at least 5 local volunteers from National Church of God to help us out.
• New Life Camp is partnering with us to make the Project Friendship bracelets for both the youth camp in Andros and the party in Uganda. We will need 500-600, so this is GREAT news, and will help us forge a valuable relationship that hopefully will be ongoing.

Keep checking back (or Like the FB page!) for more updates!

Hospice in the Bahamas

Andros’ coral reef

To those of us in the States and Europe, hospice and palliative care are things we take for granted. If someone has a terminal friend or relative, it is a natural question to ask, “Have they signed up for hospice?” We have come to understand the value of hospice care, of dying at home, of help for caretakers, and the like. In other words, we completely take it for granted.

In Uganda, there are six hospices in the entire country. I work with two of them. Hospice Jinja, with a dozen staff and two vehicles, is supposed to service a population of 8.5 million. Hospice Tororo, newly begun in the Tororo Hospital, is near the Kenyan border. Their supposed reach is probably in the neighborhood of 4-5 million, if I had to guess. Their first vehicle has just arrived (it hasn’t gotten it’s paperwork yet, though), so they’ve been visiting patients by boda or at the hospital.

In one of my first conversations about Andros, before I had visited this Easter (I’d been once, for something totally different, for 1 day 4 years ago), I found out that there is nothing for the elderly on Andros. So naturally, after working with hospice in Uganda for over three years, that was the first thing I thought of. Once we returned, I started doing some research. I thought that, surely, there would be a hospice in Nassau I could talk to. And maybe in Freeport, too. But the internet didn’t find anything except a newspaper article about an in-patient hospice opening in Freeport late last year. However, the Cancer Society of the Bahamas was involved with that, so I decided to call them.

The secretary/treasurer of the Cancer Society called me back, and we had a nice long chat. What I learned right off the bat is that there IS no hospice in the Bahamas. At all. The four room facility in Freeport is technically hospice, but it’s expensive to run and all there is. There is no outreach, no visiting, no training, no care. My contact said that the culture is somewhat resistant, but then, so has been Ugandan culture until they learn what hospice does and how it benefits them.

I have been in touch with Dr. Frank and Dr. Patricia, the retired Irish couple who go to Uganda twice a year for a month at a time to volunteer. They’ve given me a long list of things we’ll need to do to get hospice off the ground in the Bahamas. We will have some challenges… well, a lot of challenges, but some that they don’t have. For one thing, in Uganda, nurses are allowed to prescribe morphine and other drugs, so that a doctor doesn’t always have to accompany the team in the field. This is good because there is no staff doctor, only volunteers that come. They carry a portable pharmacy (otherwise known as a suitcase) and are able to dispense meds right away when they see a patient. This is an obstacle for us, as I’m sure nurses aren’t allowed to do that. We’ll need a doctor, physicians assistant, or nurse practicioner, which is expensive and complicated. (I’m hoping we can get volunteers from Florida on a regular basis, since it’s so cheap and fast to get to Andros from there…)

We’ll have to work with the government, which is always delightful (*cough*), and will no doubt be doubly so on an island where the government seems to be too involved in life.

We’ll need community volunteers and community training about what hospice/palliative care is, how it helps, and why they need it.

Finally, I believe we’ll need a vision that isn’t limited to Andros. There are only 8,000 people on Andros. But there’s also no hospice in Nassau/New Providence, where there are over 250,000 people. None in Freeport with 50,000 people. None in the Abacos or other family islands that make up the rest of the Bahamas. Eleuthra. Exuma. Inagua. 700 islands. No hospice.

It’s a big task. It’s too big to think of as a whole, really. But I firmly believe that it is something that God has called me to, and so He will give us the ability and the funds and the favor to accomplish it. Who am I? Nobody. But the God I serve is big enough!

Missions are NOT about you!

I sent this letter to the Andros team today, but am copying it here. I am not the only one that is bothered by this. I’ve spoken to several of my Ugandan friends who are, as well.

I was reminded today of something that I meant to discuss at the meeting, before we were so rudely interrupted by the nice fireman evacuating us… Please share this with your kids, since I don’t have everyone’s email address.

Something has swept the short term missions trip world over the last 5-10 years. I noticed it for the first time 3 or 4 years ago, and have been watching it play out in successive short term missions teams that I’ve encountered and stayed in the same location with in Uganda. And that’s this philosophy (this is a quote from a blog I read today):

The trip is primarily about us, not them. And that’s OK. This is an insight trip to expand our spiritual horizons, see how faith works when resources are severely limited, discover how God is at work among culturally and theologically diverse people.

I’m not sure where this sprung up, but I can tell you that, in my opinion and those of Ugandans who house and interpret for and guide missions teams, it has been extremely detrimental to the good work that short term missions trips should be doing to advance the Kingdom. Now, the article also talks about not encouraging a victim/give-me mentality with a lot of free stuff, and that’s fine. But this idea of “The trip is primarily about us, not them” is a dangerously slippery spiritual slope.

Americans always think things are about us, unfortunately. I guess Brits and Congolese and Japanese do, too. But when you feel God pressing you to go on a missions trip, He is NOT saying that that trip is about you. That trip is about HIM. The single purpose of the trip is to go where He is sending you, tell the people that you are there because He loves them enough to send you, and then share that love with them. That can take the form of evangelism, a sports camp, a VBS, hospital visits, or building an orphanage. The WHAT isn’t important, except that you are obedient to God’s vision of the what. But the WHY is vitally important!

Going into a foreign country, especially one with great poverty, and presuming to tell people what they need without asking their needs is a problem. Many missions trips do this, and they don’t see anything wrong with it because “it’s about them, and that’s ok.” You are there for one reason, and one reason only: God. He has something that He wants to impart to the people you are serving, something that will show them that He hasn’t forgotten them, that He loves them just as much as He loves you, and that we are all part of one body.

Your spiritual journey might be advanced by a short term missions trip, and that’s certainly a blessing. But it’s not why you go. If this is why you have signed up for the Andros trip, I would encourage you to really seek the Lord about it. I hope that we all have fun, that the trip goes as we’ve planned, and that everyone is safe. I hope that the trip opens your eyes to things about God and the world that you didn’t know before, and that you receive a revelation that will lead you into bigger and greater things in His Kingdom. But that’s not why we’re going.

God has called me to both Uganda and Andros for relationships., to show the people there the things that He wants and needs to show them through me or my kids or the people we bring. It’s about knowing and loving the people as God knows and loves the people. For me, it is vitally important that we all prepare for the trip with this mind- and heart-set. This trip is NOT primarily about us, and we will only accomplish what God has in mind for the trip if we embrace that fact.

Thanks for your willingness to go and represent Him.

PS. Oswald Chambers has a lot to say about “workers for God.” I’d encourage you to read him!

A meeting and an evacuation

We had our first meeting for the Andros missions trip today, and it was going great… Until a fireman knocked on the door and told us we had to evacuate because there was a broken gas line up the street! The ended things quickly!

We did get our information covered, and I showed a slideshow, which you can see here as a video.

As it turned out, we didn’t totally evacuate. We got the dog out right away, and then my son and I spent 15 min looking for the cat. By the time we got her into her carrier, the gas smell was gone and my husband was standing in road talking to a neighbor. The police and firemen didn’t ask us to leave, so we put the animals in the car and hung out in the yard. Apparently getting blown up in the yard would have been preferable to getting blown up in the house…!  Anyway, although there were more than a half dozen vehicles with flashing lights in the street, it was over in less than an hour from start to finish and all is well.

With the much excitement at the meeting, just think how exciting the trip will be!