Mission trip thoughts

hello dear, how are you? I miss you 🤍

Today I went to church as usual, and one thing that really stood out to me was the church introduced some upcoming overseas mission trip opportunities for the next few months, and I am now considering if I want to sign up for one of them.

Mission trip means travelling abroad to an underprivileged place to serve the needy. It usually involes activities like visiting orphanages or poor families, running camps or English programs, or like supporting some local churches there. I participated in this kind of mission trip twice to Cambodia many years ago when I was really young with my previous church.

The main reason I want to join is because one of the things that have been in my heart since the beginning of the year is to take a step to participate in some church activities other than the regular sunday service. The care group I recently joined was one where it allows me to begin with joining a smaller community within the church, which I quite enjoy so far. But I also want to participate in roles to serve others as a way for me to respond to God’s love for me.

I have actually considered some other opportunities, such as serving in the kids club here (like what I did in my previous church), or they have even more specific role of supporting SEN kids on Sundays, which is also what I am passionate about. But my hesitation is that those require longer term commitment, but I sometimes travel quite often and I am also unsure if my mental capacity is enough for these longer term roles. But for these mission trips, they are one off activities, which feel more manageable for me.

What’s interesting is that actually I have been thinking about my travelling plans for the next few months recently. One of my considerations is whether I want to maintain my silver CX membership for next year. It’s actually super hard to maintain it, I will have to do at least two mileage runs that involve a lot of unnecessary connecting flights and obviously a lot of money. So after doing all these digging in the last few nights, I really questioned if it’s worth it. Then today I heard about these overseas mission trip opportunities, and I feel like perhaps it was God’s prompting for me. Rather forcing to maintain my membership status so that I could continue to enjoy those worldly “perks”, perhaps my money and time can be better spent on things that bring deeper meaning to me.

So right now, among all of the mission trips they introduced, I am most interested in one that is 10 days to Mongolia in end July. It focuses on visiting the poor families and orphanages, which I feel is closer to my passion. Another option I am also interested in is a 7 days trip to Vietnam in end June.

One thing I do worry about is actually my mental capacity, especially I won’t know how my state will be like around that time of the trip. I also will have to sign up alone without any friends, which scares the introverted me quite a bit. But I also think these shouldn’t be stopping me from going, just like all the solo travelling I have done in the last two years, especially if I was able to manage those deadly business trips, I should be more than capable to handle this :)

But after all, I want to make sure that this is a carefully considered and prayerful decision, so I think I will give myself another 1-2 days to sink in before I sign up.

Sorry that I am being so wordy about such a seemingly trivial matter. It’s probably because I also need to “talk” my mind through it. I hope I didn’t bore you, dear Andy. 😊

Photos of today, finally I’ve got a new outfit :)

Good night dear.