I will never forget the first time I took a team to Santo Thomas, Nicaragua. We had an amazing medical team, lots of medicine to help the people, and a great VBS team with all the supplies. Everything was pretty perfect. We were the first team to ever go into this village and share the gospel so I couldn’t have been more excited.
The best word that could describe what happened that day when we left the village was disastrous. No one came to our clinic because the priests told everyone before we got there that the medicine we had would poison them, all the children’s supplies for VBS got stolen, we got rocks thrown at us, and it was obvious that no one wanted us there. We all felt so defeated because we had underestimated the darkness of a community that had never heard the gospel.
I was recently back in Santo Thomas and sat on the steps of the Baptist church that sits in the village today. As I was reflecting back to our first mission trip in Santo Thomas over 10 years ago the reason for the change I saw there was obvious. It was and only could be the gospel. The gospel finally penetrated the community as one by one people gave their lives to Christ, a church was planted, and believers became discipled. Now Santo Thomas is planting other churches in other communities.
It’s an amazing reminder to me why we do what we do. We do missions for various reasons, however the primary reason is to share the gospel at home and around the world. Only the gospel can change a community, nothing else. We do missions to make God known and as we make Him known we share about His glory. As we share Christ and make Him known His transforming work begins in people’s lives. I also never want to forget that it also changes and transforms me.