August 11 Krum Star Article
"On Travel and Service"
Foreign travel just about always
gives one a different perspective on life. When we approach
different cultures with open and receptive minds and hearts,
we learn to appreciate diverse customs and languages,
returning enriched.
An even greater way to become
enriched through travel comes from going on some sort
of a service adventure. This is an intentional time spent
working in a part of the world that we generally see as
less fortunate than we are, but might be better known
as simply in a different place than we are. Almost everyone
I know, including myself, has returned from such service
travel far more enriched than those whom we intended to
serve.
I will never forget the ten
days I spent in Almaty, Kazakhstan, teaching in the Central
Asian Leadership Training Center. I worked with about
30 students who were taking a year to learn enough about
Christianity and the Bible to go out and plant churches
all over parts of the former Soviet Union, by the time
I was there a group of independent, and often struggling,
nations. The common language of all was Russian, so working
through my translator, I gave them a crash course in the
art and practice of teaching the Bible. For their final
assignments, I put them in groups and each group taught
an assigned passage.
Although I certainly needed
a translator, I had picked up enough Russian by then to
have a general idea of their final presentations. I found
myself moved by their powerful expressions of creativity
and their obvious joy in their proclamations of the truths
of Scripture. I was definitely the one who gained the
most by that experience.
This Sunday, August 13, we
are going to hear from Brittany Burrows, the director
of the Krum UMC Youth Ministries, as she shares about
her recent trip to Cameroon in Africa. Brittany, having
discovered that one can survive without bathing for days
on end, also experienced life-change in her service. Don’t
miss this opportunity to discover the power of service
and the joy of receiving as well as giving.
