“Please tell your church that we thank them for letting you come and minister to us.”
The Ghanaian man who translated for me as I preached thanked me profusely for coming to his church while the congregation nodded their heads in agreement. It meant so much to them that my church in Minnesota would share me with them for a Sunday, one-third of the way around the globe.
In 2015 I started getting into the habit of traveling a lot. While doing an internship in Omaha, I still had to take seminary classes in Ankeny, IA, so I estimate that I made about 40 of those 5-hour round trips that year. God also provided opportunities that year to go on a family vacation in Washington and Oregon, an orchestra tour in Minnesota, a short soccer tournament trip in Florida, and a ministry trip in the San Francisco Bay area.
The sweltering heat gave way to the cool evening air as the sun quietly made it’s way down the horizon. Wiping the sweat from his brow, the cowboy-looking figure carefully dismounted his camera from its tripod and gently reloaded his backpack. “Home on the Range” had been a success, and now it was time to pack up the range and head home.
In the past, I wasn’t the biggest fan of weddings. As a child I went to weddings with my family and a couple times in my “later years” I had the privilege of playing music for the weddings of close family members or friends. But I never was too enthralled with them. I enjoyed the food though, and if I have enough mental capacity to remember any of the specific weddings I attended, I literally can tell you what food or punch almost every one of them served: Chicken enchiladas, pork roast, Famous Dave’s, grape punch with vanilla ice cream- to name a few.
The plane began its descent on American soil, and shortly before 6am EST we were on the ground in Atlanta.
A new day, a new month, a new city…and a new perspective.
My ministry trip to Brasil is over, but life continues on. I could not just come back the same person that I was when I went there. But I’ll talk about that later.
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