Honduras trip wrap-up

Well, in case you were wondering, we all made it back safely. I apologize if I left anyone hanging in suspense for the past nine days.

A quick recap: we ended up seeing 640 patients in four days of clinics, for an average of 160 patients per day. That's a busy week. Our team endured several illnesses, two IVs being given to team members, and the flooding of our medical equipment. Our team also built (from start to finish) a new house for a Honduran family in the village of Rio Lindo and continued the work on the infant/toddler housing at the orphanage operated by Pan-American Health Services. We worked hard, we prayed hard and - for those young enough to do so - we played hard.

For the first time since I have been on staff at Crossings, we intentionally recruited families to take part on an international short-term mission trip. Out of our team, we had at least six families (meaning at least one parent and one child) participate, including two entire families. It was an amazing opportunity to observe the parents and children serve, worship and grow as a family unit. It created shared memories and experiences that I think will serve as landmarks on their spiritual pilgrimage. I am already looking forward to our next family mission trip.

As a reader of this blog, you may not have ever joined one of our short-term mission trips. Maybe you have served locally in one of our many missions opportunities but you've never taken that next step to move from local to global. It's possible that you have participated in mission trips before but you have yet to find a local service opportunity right here at home. Whatever your case may be, I encourage you to visit the missions page on the Crossings website http://crossingsokc.org/missions/ and pray about where you can serve. Our faith in Christ and our devotion to the Father should make acts of service a non-negotiable part of our daily life.

So, what's next? There are still three short-term mission trips scheduled for the remainder of this year. At the end of September we have two trips: 1) a women's trip to work with Crossings missionary Deborah Hunnicutt on the island of Roatan and 2) a water well trip to Kenya with Water4 to train pastors in the drilling technique and to the pastors with some basic theological training. Our final trip of 2012 will be to India in late October, working with Helping Hands in Motion and National Fellowship. Please be in prayer for all of these remaining trips as we continue to prepare and plan for how God will use us to fulfill the Great Commission.

Soli Deo gloria.

Michael