The Great Commission is for Everyone

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the passage in Matthew 28 that’s known to many of us as the Great Commission. It’s often used to talk about missionaries, it’s used almost every time someone starts a GoFundMe for their summer mission trip (guilty). It’s referenced in the majority of sermons I’ve heard around the topic of what it means to be in mission.
    The Great Commission to me, is deeply rooted in the memory of my mother kneeling by my bed each night for many years of my childhood and praying for me. It is rooted in the memory of delivering Meals on Wheels with one grandmother, and sitting beside my other grandmother as she taught Sunday school at our local nursing home.
    It was all those nights my father came home after a ten hour workday and asked me about my day as soon as he walked in the door, and his continued enthusiasm at the thought of me living in Alaska
    It was my brother checking on me after a long work day to make sure training is going well.
    And It was my church family, always asking me about my “next mission trip”, every single Sunday, repeatedly and without fail, because they believed I could be a missionary long before I believed it myself.
    The Great Commission in my life was not singular. I did not wake up one day and hear a sudden unexplained call from God to do mission work. Serving God was something that was exemplified by the people all around me, who followed the Great Commission right where they were.
    We may be the ones physically going somewhere, but we are not alone in the journey. I would not be standing here right now if not for all of those people who were part of the great commission in my life. I know that not everyone had an upbringing as easy as mine. I am extremely fortunate that I have always had Christian examples.   Even if your life story is not as smooth as mine has been, I’m sure you can think of at least one person who helped you on your journey to this program. Maybe it was a pastor, teacher or friend, or maybe it was the person who first told you about Global Mission Fellows. Maybe it was someone at Global Ministries, who helped you get through the application process or figure out the logistics of travelling to Atlanta. As we head out on our two years of service, let’s remember that we are not on this mission alone. Let’s notice and give thanks for the people around us, living out the Great Commission every day. Today, consider taking the time to text or Facebook message someone who exemplified the Great Commission in your life. Let them know you are thankful for how they helped you get right here today, on the brink of being commissioned as a Global Mission Fellow.

How to be a Missionary: A Step by Step Guide

     Arrive at your placement site armed with three weeks of training and a level of confidence that you will soon realize is almost entirely unjustified. Sure, you're ready to fight injustice and spread the love of God and be a generally amazing missionary, but first you have to figure out how to seemingly simple tasks like locking and unlocking doors and adjusting seats in unfamiliar vehicles. Those simple tasks will end up occupying a disturbingly large amount of your time, which really gets in the way of all of those love spreading moments you planned out.
    Spend hours creating detailed plans that will satisfy the powers-that-be and get you through the day in an organized, efficient manner. Plan Food Network worthy meals that will satisfy every imaginable nutritional requirement and crafts that should be featured on Pinterest. Take five to ten seconds to reflect on how well everything seems to be going. Great, now that you paused for those few seconds, you are now somehow approximately twenty-five hours behind schedule. You will probably remain that far behind for the next two years.
     Gather up all of those beautifully detailed plans, fold them neatly, and throw them directly into the garbage. You won't be needing them because the one variable you failed to predict has now changed. Turns out wheat flour doesn't work in the recipe you planned, so the children will have to eat dinner that was made with regular old white flour, which will most definitely be frowned upon by the mighty powers that decide what foods children absolutely must eat ever single day without fail in order to survive.
    Throw together a new plan with your coworkers while simultaneously yelling "Don't climb on that!" across the room for the five hundredth time. Realize that you have abandoned your Mary Poppins tone and worry that you are actually more like the Wicked Witch and none of the children really like you. Begin to have a small existential crisis, then quickly realize there is no time in your schedule for a crisis because there are too many other things you still need to do.
     One day at a completely unexpected moment, catch yourself in a feeling of immense happiness and realize that you actually really do enjoy this life. Sure, it's complete chaos the majority of the time, but it's the chaos that God let you to. Realize that even though you feel lost in a new place sometimes, you still believe you are exactly where you need to be.

   

The Good and the Bad

     There's a quote making it's way around social media recently, that most of you have probably seen at least once. A well meaning sentiment regarding recent events, it reads "America is not what happened in Charlottesville, America is what Happened in Houston." It was referring to the recent clash of protesters and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville that became violent, and rescue efforts in Houston after the recent hurricane. While this sounds like a nice thought at first glance and I have no doubt it was written with good intentions, I disagree with it. In my opinion, that is not how history works. We don't get to pick out the parts that make us feel good and forget the rest. United States history is full of heroic moments that should make us proud, but it is also full of darker things that many people do not have the privilege of simply forgetting.
     In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the United States government attempted to "Americanize"many Native American youth, including Native Alaskans, by sending them to boarding schools. At these schools, many of them were stripped of their names and forbidden to speak their native language. If they did, they were often abused. The internet is strangely quiet about these events. When I searched for sources to help me explain this history, I found only a handful of academic articles that revealed the truth.
      The reason I have become aware of this history is because it is still alive. There are people here in Nome who were students in those boarding schools, so they know what really happened. They are honest about the fact that often, the people who were behind sending them to these schools and sometimes the people who taught there, were missionaries.
     Christians forced people against there will into a place that abused them for being who they were. People claiming to be missionaries were part of an attempt to forcibly strip Native Americans of their culture, because it was believed to be "savage". I don't like this fact at all, but it is still a fact. I do not get to ignore it, because it is all around me.
     This is not a fun "Jennie goes to Alaska" blog post. There will be plenty of those, but not today. As a writer, I cannot leave out the difficult parts of the story. I cannot skip to the end, where a missionary and the daughter of a man who was abused by missionaries served side by side at a food bank. First, I have to be honest about history. Because we must learn about history in order to make sure that we do not repeat it.

Students at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania