This is in responce to a comment my dad made to me in passing today when talking about my last blog. He said I struggle with if we are using our money wisely when we spend so much money to send people out for short term missons.
I understand and agree to a point, we spend so much money and wouldn’t that money be better put to use if we could just send them the money that we pour in to it rather than sending people for a few days. But there are two things that I think are important to realize, first off the relationship aspect of things, the way we do short term missions through AIL at our church allows us to work with the same people every year and as we are down the our biggest focus is to love on the kids and show support for the pastor. I think it is good for the kids to feel that love from out siders and also I think it is so good for the pastors family to have that support to feel the encoragement that we are right there with him supporting him and we believe in what he is doing. Second what the poeple going on the missions gain, on each of the missions trips I have been on they have all been a big spiritually growing point for me. The refocus you on God in a way that other things can not do.
In closing I just wanted to say like Matt said in his comment on my blog is we need to be careful not to just be focused on money, sometimes in our rich country it is just easier to just send the money but it is so important that we are actually phsically and emotionally invested in the people we are supporting for our sakes and theirs.
Anyway we leave tomorrow for Mexico, if you guys could be praying that would be great.