Reflections after a Short Term Missions Trip

(Our team with the IFES workers in Sienna, Italy)

Got some of my pictures from my trip to Italy up now:

   Check em out on FlickR

Thought I'd share some reflections after the trip:

Synposis:
We visited two cities (Siena and Perugia) and worked with the local IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) chapter there, known as GBU (Gruppi Bibblici Universitari). We helped with doing questionnaires to evangelise, gave handouts to let people know about the group, and hosted 2 International Student nights, with games/food/testimony. We were also there to encourage and bless the workers there, so time was spent to pray and Bible study together. We spent 6 days in these 2 cities, and then took a day and a half to sightsee and we went to Assisi (home of St. Francis) and Florence (went to the Uffizi there).

Setting:
As we know, Italy is the home of the Vatican, so there is an extremely strong Catholic ethos about the society. There's cathedrals all over the place, and often even in the main city piazza where everyone hangs out. The Protestant evangelical church however is quite weak, and also quite divided. There is no longer a native Italian financial support for IFES. What is happening now is that other countries are supporting people as missionaries to work in Italy. The team working in Siena and Perugia were made up of a Korean family, and two gals from England and the States. Almost all the native Italians I met had some experience with the Catholic church when they were young, but all stopped going for some reason or another. Italy also has a lot of foreign students, our International Student Night in Perugia included students form Isreal, Palestine, Tunisia, Japan, Korea, China, Netherlands, Albania, and others I can no longer remember.

1. Who's changed?
For a short term mission, I think it started to sink in that the one who is mosted change would likely be me, not the people I was reaching out to. Short term missions don't allow much time for creating real relationships. Rather I think how I was stretched in terms of culture, comfort zone, boldness, etc. That is not to say that I don't think God could use the things we did there, but really I think a large part of the experience was how it changed me, us as a team that went.

2. Linguistics
Language matters. It was a struggle for us as a lot of the people we encountered spoke very limited English, or didn't want to make the effort to try to communicate with us. Fortunately we were able to get in touch with a good number of internationals who spoke english. I am motivated again, if I want to work more in the Chinese church in Canada, I gotta get a move on learning Cantonese, and hopefully down the road, Mandarin (with this as my main help right now). So ditiching German lessons to accomodate this.

3. Approaches to Evangelism
We quickly realized we were all comfortable (or uncomfortable) with different styles of evangelism. The native Italians there were very much into random evangelism, very public things such as setting up in the main piazza (with dozens of people around), doing a skit, and then preaching the gospel right then and there, as far as their voice would project. It would seem that relational evangelism is the current trend in North America, so it was good for me to see something different. It was stretching for me, I kinda think I could get comfortable with being willing to go up to strangers - hmm but "could" and "will" are 2 very different things.

4. Heart for the Lost
Its too easy to totally immerse oneself in Christian circles. I consider myself guilty of this.

5. Hospitality
Finding places for 9 people to sleep is not easy. It was so heartwarming to see the Christians simply open their homes and fridges to us. I don't think we do hospitality particularly well in North America. I'd love to offer my couch my day (when I have my own place). Its neat to see other people with grand visions of hospitality (check out couchsurfing.com)

6. Time Alone
Spending a week of constantly being shoulder to shoulder with your teammates, whilst stretching yourself to talk and interact with strangers takes it toll - my introverted side was starved by the end of it of the week. I pretty much didn't want to be around anyone. Heh, funny thing is some suggest for my personality type (INTP), one way to love me is to encourage me to spend time alone. Its important, and it keeps me healthy.

Final Thoughts:
-Short term missions are very good in expanding one's vision, but I think the better work is done by those there longterm. Similiarly then we need to understand our homes as a mission field. But then on, perhaps we shouldn't label a place as a "mission field", everywhere is a mission field.
-The countryside of Italy with its rolling hills is really beautiful. Vineyards, olive trees, quiet homes, trees blossoming... it was really beautiful.
-I've been reminded of the Great Commission, I think I've become too Christianized in terms of living almost solely in Christian circles, I'm convicted to find a balance of knowing what it means to live within and bless believers, yet to be reaching out to those who do not yet know God.