One of the things I’ve looked forward to each day of training is getting to hear from a different missionary about their ministry each morning during devotion. We’ve now had Dotun and Ami from the team in Kenya, Margaret, headed to Soroti, Uganda, Ann from IT in Yemen, and the Timmers from Bolivia, as well as watching the ministry video and praying for Sammy in Cameroon. Even aside from Scott’s three classes on the Worldwide Ministry of International Teams, most everyone here at the Elgin Ministry Center has served for varying amounts of time in all kinds of places overseas.
While I’m understandably most passionate about Youth World in Ecuador, it has been incredibly eye-opening to see the needs around the world, and how missionaries from all of IT’s national organizations are spreading the Gospel and serving God. It’s also sobering to realize how dangerous it is for many of them, and even more so for new Believers in certain parts of the world. You can talk about how lucky we are to live in a country that guarantees your freedom of religion, but seeing photographs of a baptism with all the faces blurred out, or hearing a missionary calling a Yemeni woman “Brittany” to keep her identity secret halfway around the world really drives it home in a way that praying from a nice safe North Carolina sanctuary just can’t.
It’s really exciting to see what we are a part of as an organization, and I’m reminded of that even as I look around the classroom every day. During breaks I scan the pictures in the hallway of every MIT class back to 1998 and pick out all of the people I know. And pretty soon ours will be up there and Rich or Karen or someone will be telling some new MITs, “Yeah, that’s Danny and he’s in Ecuador, and there are the Moseys and the Rosses, they went to Bolivia…” Way cool.
