Stepping out in faith

Editor's note: Pastor Dan Meek and his family, of Canadian Hills Church of the Nazarene in Yukon, Oklahoma, participated in Southern Nazarene University's 22nd annual Commission Unto Mexico mission trip the week after Christmas 2011. Meek writes about how this trip affected his family before, during and after. It was a true step out into faith.

Commission Unto Mexico marked our family's second Work & Witness trip and the first one out of the United States.

We hosted our extended family at Thanksgiving so that we could take the trip over Christmas break. Though they liked early Christmas presents, this arrangement was a problem for our kids. The idea of not seeing their grandparents and cousins over Christmas was well….unthinkable. To put it mildly, they were apprehensive. OK, my wife and I had some questions, too.

Well-meaning friends who had seen sensational news stories about violent border conflict expressed great concern for our safety. Over Thanksgiving weekend, while sleeping on the hide-a-bed with a house full of guests, I actually had a dream that one of the kids got very sick across the border. A month before the trip, we were anything but settled. But after some prayer and conversation with my wife, Earla, we were even more convinced that we all needed to go.

Throughout December we spent time each day (well, most days) working through an Advent devotional book called Illuminate. Several of the discussion moments brought out our thoughts about the trip. As the day approached, our confidence grew.

We left Oklahoma City on Monday, December 26. Somewhere between Dallas and Houston, we stopped playing Angry Birds and the Alphabet Sign game and opened the Illuminate devotional. The family activity for that day was to try thinking of as many characteristics of God as we could, then use them to write a family prayer. We brainstormed for a few miles, then got creative with the list and together the four of us wrote this:

“Dear God you are such a mystery, but thanks for what we know. Thank you for being loving and kind. We are glad that you never mess up. Thank you for being interested in our trip. We hope you will do miracles. We are brave on our trip because you are powerful. Amen.”

After a night at the border, we made it to Sabinas, Mexico. Our planned ministry started on Wednesday: soccer, Bible school and roof repair. We saw and heard about miracles the very first day. Mysteriously, unexpected scaffolding showed up making the roof accessible. A TV news crew came to one of our locations and allowed a bilingual college student to witness about Jesus to everyone who watched the local news that night. Fourteen children accepted Christ at that event. Two people experienced rather dramatic healing after our team prayed for them.


 

By the end of the second full day in Mexico, I heard my daughter Sarah say, “I’m definitely going on this trip again, even if I have to go by myself and pay for it myself!” (I’ll definitely hold her to the first commitment and I’m tempted to hold her to the second.)

As we traveled home, somewhere between A and Z in the alphabet game Earla said, “We took all the suggested precautions, but I never once had any fear for our safety or the safety of our kids.” I believe God used us to encourage the Church in Sabinas, but I know that God used Commission Unto Mexico to embolden a pretty comfortable suburb family from Oklahoma.

-- Dan Meek serves as lead pastor of Canadian Hills Church of the Nazarene in Yukon, Oklahoma, where he lives with his wife, Earla, and their two daughters, Sarah and Bethany.

Talk about it
 

• Would you consider giving up an important family holiday and tradition to go on a mission trip?
• How do you feel about taking children or teenagers on a cross-cultural trip?
• If you knew that a country was experiencing violence, would you consider going there for missions work anyway? If so, under what conditions? When would you count the risk too high?
• What are some of the possible obstacles that are in your life which might make a mission trip a step of faith for you or your family?
• Discuss some of the experiences that occurred during the mission trip. How might Pastor Meek's family have benefited from witnessing these miracles and answers to prayer?
• Is there an area in your life where you God is calling you to step out in faith and out of your comfort zone?