A Continuing Mission Back Home

In some respects, mission continues long after you've returned home as you see and move about the world with a heart, a mind and a faith that has been changed by your mission experience ... whether it was across town or around the world.

But you would think that, in other respects, the mission comes to an end as you return to familiar and comfortable surrounding, settling back into your time zone and the normal routine of life, home and work ... right?

Well, maybe not. Maybe the thousands of miles you've traveled, the hundreds of people with whom have formed a bond, the connections and correspondences you have established, the insight that you have gained ... all of this is just the beginning of a mission - not on the far side of the world, but in your home town ... just a mile or two down the street.

Which is exactly what has happened to many members of our 2008 Thailand Mission Team. Building upon what we have learned in the refugee camps and migrant worker villages along Thailand's border with Burma (Myanmar), we are now called to continue serving those who have fled the oppression of Burma's government - and do it right here in Midland, Texas.

It turns out we have a small-but-growing community of Burmese refugees here in the Tall City. An oppressed people, they have been allowed to emigrate from the refugee camps to the United States, where they are now making new homes and new lives for themselves. They are members of the Chin, one of the largest ethnic minority groups in Burma. And while they are different from the Karen people with whom we worked while in Thailand, they share a common and terrible story with the Karen and other ethnic groups in that troubled nation - they are an oppressed people and an oppressed church (an estimated 80%-90% of the Chin are Christians).

What began with a single man has grown in recent times as he has been joined by more refugees - individuals, couple and small families. As they arrive, they go to work, providing badly-needed personnel for Midland's strained workforce. They rent apartments at a complex close to one another - just as immigrants to America have done for hundreds of years, watching out for one another and aiding one another in their shared goal of establishing themselves in their new home.

And there is so much to do in that process, and our mission team members have stepped forward to help them - providing them opportunities to better know Midland and its people; helping them fill out the many, many forms that are such an important part of American society; helping them acquire the English language; helping them into the workforce; connecting them with opportunities to furnish their apartments and their lives; aiding and providing for their worship; aiding and providing for their education ... the list goes on and on.

And we have been blessed in how others have come forward to help. It didn't take a trip to Thailand for them to realize that we can ALL answer Christ's call to mission (as outlined in the tenth Chapter of the Book of Matthew) in one way or another.

For some of us, it's a new model for mission - one that will continue long after our return home, long after our lives have returned to normal ... whatever that is.