It’s a long title, I know… This post, & the next few are a part of a project I’m working on to help answer “Why are you always going to Germany?” & “How come Hillside has a ‘sister church’ in Frankfurt?” It will chronicle the thought processes behind my own development & understanding of what missions is, as well as the situations, people, & happenings that have most shaped me & my outlook on missions, & what it means to me to live out faith, missionally.

At the end of my Jr. Year, in the summer before my Senior year, the youth group I was a part of was participating in a “mission team” to Mexico City… the city that was hosting the World Cup, a place that the whole world would be descending upon for a short time with the focus being on who had the best soccer team in the world. The purpose of the trip was to ‘evangelize/share the gospel message with the people coming to Mexico City.’ Our youth group was partnering with 2 or 3 other groups from different parts of California, most notably San Mateo, to put together ‘outreach teams’. My youth pastor asked me to consider going – I spoke broken Spanish, don’t you know? – & helped me raise the money to go. I was working a job in landscaping & through that & a couple of well-meaning donors, I was able to raise the $700 necessary for the airfare & all of our ‘in-country’ supplies.

I’d never been on a mission trip before, & didn’t know what to expect. We met as the Reno group a couple of times in advance of our trip to talk about what we’d be doing (though I don’t remember what we talked about,) & 1x with all the other youth groups that would be going too – to familiarize ourselves with them; to work out an organizational plan so that no one would get lost in the biggest city in the whole world at a time where more people were descending on the aforementioned biggest city than could be imagined… My group (which existed for the purposes of travel) had 5 people in it, & we named the group the “Jackson 5” – (back in the day when they were Oh So Cool, & before Michael became… Michael.) The idea of a large group travelling in a bunch of smaller groups to avoid confusion in airports, subways, train stations & buses is something that I carry with me to this day…

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. We were going to go to Mexico City, which I imagined as very impoverished & needy of the gospel of Jesus, to present the gospel through some amateur plays, songs in Spanish (that we’d just learned,) & by handing out gospel tracts in front of the main stadium where the semi-finals & finals of the Copa Mundial were to be played.

As we arrived by plane in the city, it became very clear to me that every thought of what I had imagined would be happening on this mission trip went out the window – looking as far to the left & right that I could, seeing only the vast expanse of big city, La Ciudad, Mexico City.

to be continued…