Letting the Light In
Thoughts on missions and my awe in seeing it done right
Earlier this month, Ubuntu Football and our family hosted a church group from North Carolina (with my SISTER and NIECE!!), who came to lead a camp for 40 of our Ubuntu girls and boys. We have hosted groups before, but it’s been a long time, and this one felt very different to me. I have since been acutely mulling over the week and my feelings on it ever since. What does it mean for a group of strangers to come to a foreign country and serve people they have never met? Is it helpful? Is it good?
We have been living here in South Africa for 15 years, and before that, Casey and I both traveled around the world, going to different locations and serving as ‘missionaries’ in those contexts. Those small experiences are what stoked our desire to move here to do the work we are privileged to do now, but sometimes I look back on these experiences with a different lens and wonder about the impact it had, not on my life, but on those who hosted and met us in all those exotic locations.
Years and YEARS ago, I was a high school student in South Florida, and I had recently become a follower of Jesus Christ and was very serious about my Christian faith. That summer I went on my first mission trip with my church, and we went to a small town in Mexico called Mérida. My memories are spotty of this trip, but I vividly remember the cold Cokes in bottles drunk under staircases at the end of a long day of work, flying cockroaches that were Biblically ascending on us during a worship service as the words of the songs were splayed on the wall and the overhead projector whirred, or, most excitingly for myself, my rules for tanning for the week, which included, “No matter where you were working, make sure your face is facing the sun.” Great. I am sure many were deeply impacted by my tanning goals (hah), but I don’t even know how much that first experience even impacted my faith in God, let alone those we went to help.
Whatever that first experience was or was not, I started going on trip after trip, with my church, then with my college, then with the church I worked for as a young adult. I began to find these trips to international destinations as a time when I felt my soul come to life, where my faith and the actions of my life aligned as the noise of the world quieted. Additionally, I fell in love with each culture and country we visited, and my curiosity and love for the people we served grew more with each journey.
A question and wrestling began to grow in my spirit, however, as we went on more and more trips, alongside my studies in development and poverty. What was the actual purpose of these trips? Who were they helping, and what was the untold cost? I had the stories of myself and hundreds of others who would GO to these exotic and faraway locations, but what remained THERE after we returned? We were experts in the debrief, how to apply it at home, and what it means for our own spiritual lives, but what about those we claimed to help in the first place?
I think these potentially aggressive questions are hugely important, and now I see them so differently as I am on the other side. I still forget which side I am on, to be honest, and was reminded of that in a short exchange between my sister and myself a day after the rest of the mission team left. My sister introduced me 2 years ago to the missions pastor at her church, and now we were reflecting on a robustly successful trip that had just concluded. But her comment caught me off guard.
“Wow, Sarah, I can say for sure that everyone in the group was completely transformed,” Lauren eagerly reflected to me as we were on a walk.
I literally had to stop in my tracks. How did she know the reports of our boys and girls who had attended camp and what they were saying about their experience? The entire group was transformed? How could she possibly know this?
Suddenly it hit me. She was talking about HER team, her group of friends from the United States, from her church, who had come to run a camp for our amazing kids. She was completely thinking about her context, and she obviously should have. My context is the opposite; it’s the environment I am coming from, which is Ubuntu Football and South Africa. I was struck by the beauty of it all. Two sisters who had come together to create an experience for two different groups, and what a joy that my group was South African.
It also hit me, very vividly, that I was surprised because she COULD have been talking about our group. Both the students and our staff of Ubuntu Football who attended the camp truly felt transformed by the experience. I believe that the space for transformation by both participants and those served, a transformation of all sides of the coin, was because the American and the South African sides had partnered together, but the American side always saw the partnership as their team building on the work that was already being done by Ubuntu Football. They were coming in to facilitate an experience, a camp, that we couldn’t do ourselves, but wholly jumping on the shoulders of the work of our incredible staff.
Every step of the way the team from the USA asked questions, looked for our wisdom, deferred to what we thought was best, and trusted our perspective on things.
I am not sure I have ever experienced anything like it.
Let me remind you that this shock is coming from someone who did short-term missions trips for years and years before moving to Africa. Did I ask that many questions? Did I defer in those ways? Did I always seek those whom we were serving for their perspectives? I am not sure.
What was beautiful was that this team not only deferred to us, but they came with wild and unrestricted joy and care towards every single person they encountered. It was stunning and raw and very real.
As I reflected with the team at the end of the trip, what struck me was that the Americans came not to fix a problem, not to save anyone, but just to love and learn from those they served.
"Don't look for the leader, the controller, or the problem solver.
Look for where the light gets in."
- Rowan Williams
The team jumped in with total joy and quickly got to know the students and staff on a very close level. I never heard the cliché tropes from their mouths, such as, “They have so little but have so much joy!” Rather, the team learned as much as they could about the real lives of the students and staff and responded by sharing their own stories and hearts. They TRULY let the light in.
Two weeks later, the team is still messaging the staff and kids and contacting us all the time about how they can support these kids. There is transformation in these kids and our staff, and at the bottom of it is the reality that we felt deeply and profoundly loved by these people who came and served us. It moved us, and it changed us.
Even now, even with SO many words, I am still not able to put into words what the experience with this team has done in my soul. It’s given me a new hope for cross-cultural work, for partnerships, maybe even for those who call themselves ‘missionaries.’ It’s given me a hope for myself, I think, that in all I do for others, possibly what can be received is just a pure and raw love from those I am aiming to serve.
"Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love."
— Roland Allen
Your reflections on the mission trip are very interesting, Sarah. I too struggle with knowing how much good such trips do, having listened to the reports of people who felt transformed by a mission experience and those who have had missionary groups visit them. Sometimes, it seems as if individual "missionaries" haven't been properly vetted for participation in the group, with the result that they become a drain on the group and a problem for the hosts. Mission work isn't just an opportunity for an overseas trip. It requires humility, self-discipline and openness to having one's ideas challenged. When it does go well, though, as you say, it's awesome to observe and no doubt a moment of great significance in the lives of all concerned.
Hey Sarah thanks for such a thought provoking read, something I too wrestle with as I live my life in South Africa and that of my birth, the UK. I often wonder what would happen if the mission was reversed and what impact Africa could have on the rest of the world given the opportunity. in fact there was a very good documentary series a few years back that did just that, missionaries from Africa went back to birth places of those who originally brought the word to their town/city, for example David Livingstone. The findings were fascinating!