Story and photos by Estelle Rodis-Brown
Sometimes, a luxurious vacation or spa day is not what you need. While it’s natural to crave an escape from the humdrum of everyday life, a self-serving getaway is not always the cure.
It can be much more refreshing and meaningful to take a purposeful detour into a place of deprivation; someplace where people are struggling. They need help, hope and encouragement from people – maybe someone like you. But how do you get plugged into such an experience?
Oftentimes, places of worship are the starting points for someone’s introduction into outreach projects and mission trips. Churches, synagogues and mosques provide a home base for a wide range of opportunities to help others, whether they live in a far-off country or just around the corner.
First Steps
Elaine White is a good example. She recently returned from her fifth mission trip to the Dominican Republic. The trip was one of many outreach opportunities available through her church, Royal Redeemer Lutheran in North Royalton. Along with regular short-term mission trips to the Dominican Republic and to Haiti, the church also organizes a Vacation Bible School program in a remote village at Scammon Bay, Alaska. Closer to home, Royal Redeemer sponsors construction projects to benefit a poor rural community in Caldwell, Ohio.
The church also provides volunteer opportunities to do community service projects on Servant Saturdays or to help serve Care and Share meals that feed more than 1,500 people every Thanksgiving. A men’s team also meets monthly to serve hot breakfasts at St. Herman homeless shelter in Cleveland.
Additional mission work involves Operation Christmas Child (part of Samaritan’s Purse ministry), which provides shoeboxes filled with gifts for children around the world as a way of sharing God’s love. Further, the church supports Hope Center for Refugees to provide services and employment opportunities for immigrants and refugees.
White’s involvement in outreach began shortly after she joined Royal Redeemer about five years ago. She was drawn to this church because it was focused on “connecting to the community and the world rather than on helping within the church.”
Her overseas experience was overwhelming. “What I found on my first mission trip was eye-opening to the abundance of blessings we have in this country,” she recalls. “We think of our own poor and homeless, but there are services to help them because we are an affluent country. They can get healthcare and visit food pantries.”
In developing countries, no such safety nets are in place. She said, “At a construction site last year, a worker stepped on a rusty nail that went through his shoe and into his foot. A paramedic on the team asked about a tetanus shot. He said he would not get one because they cost about $1,000.”
White and her mission team return to the same area of the Dominican Republic every February. “We have built relationships with the people there and they have learned that they can trust us,” she says. Over the years, the team has built homes, a water filtration plant, guest housing for mission teams, churches, basketball courts, and smaller projects. This year, the team worked on a construction project and provided a women’s Bible study and Vacation Bible School for 60 children.
“As I come home, I see how richly I have been blessed and I want to be able to share that with others. It’s what I feel called to do,” she says. “Oftentimes team members go on mission trips to be a blessing to others, but find out we are blessed in so many wonderful ways.”
Other Options
For those eager to help others outside the church setting, charitable organizations like The American Red Cross and The Salvation Army provide opportunities for volunteers to help with disaster relief efforts. Volunteers constitute about 90 percent of the Red Cross workforce, responding to more than 62,000 disasters annually (mostly home and apartment fires). Through training/development and field experience, volunteer disaster responders can serve large-scale operations within a region, division or across the country.
A standard deployment for a disaster relief volunteer is two weeks. However, due to numerous federal regulations, uninvited volunteers can no longer just show up spontaneously at a disaster site and help. For those interested in becoming a disaster worker, register online for the Red Cross (redcross.org) or Salvation Army (disaster.salvationarmyusa.org) to explore options and schedule training so you’re prepared and cleared to go when disaster strikes.
The next time you start mulling over a getaway, consider setting aside your vacation plans and opt for the unexpected detour into an outreach trip. You may go to offer help, hope and encouragement to others, but you will return more refreshed and with more purpose and gratitude than you expected to receive.
Can a spa day do that?
My Mission Trip Story
Taking a Life-Changing Adventure into the Unknown
By Estelle Rodis-Brown
It wasn’t a vacation. It wasn’t work. Yet it was the hardest work I’ve ever done in one of the most beautiful locales I’ve ever seen. My first mission trip was a life-changing adventure into the unknown. And I couldn’t wait to do it again.
I got my first opportunity to travel to Nicaragua with Living Waters Fellowship for Missions (lwfmissions.org) in 2010. Our purpose was to distribute Christmas gifts, food, hope and joy to impoverished children throughout the countryside.
More trips followed. Some were to distribute school backpacks, supplies and uniforms so children would have the prerequisite materials to attend school. Other trips were to provide physical therapy and medical services to those suffering from physical disabilities, chronic diseases and common illnesses. Others were to offer food, support and fellowship to forgotten indigenous peoples in the jungles near Honduras.
Every time, my primary function was to take photographs and help tell the story of ongoing needs so Americans would continue to support the ministry through child sponsorship, indigenous pastor support, annual giving, donations of physical therapy equipment, or other means of relieving the suffering while spreading the Gospel throughout Nicaragua.
I captured poignant images of beautiful children, grateful parents, majestic tropical mountain scenes, desperate-yet-dignified poverty, the irony of squalor in paradise, and urban street scenes where no pavement, traffic lights or street signs exist.
Beyond taking photographs, I lent a hand wherever I could. I served food, distributed gifts and supplies, sang, played games with kids, organized the makeshift pharmacy, prayed with people, fit the elderly with shoes, held babies – you name it, I did it.
It doesn’t matter that I’m not fluent in Spanish or the Miskito language, or that I have no credentials in medicine. It doesn’t matter that I cannot control the schedule, the weather or the situation at hand. All that matters is that I stand ready and willing to help as needs arise, with a smile on my face and goodwill in my heart. As I’ve heard it said, “God doesn’t call the equipped. He equips the called.”
Never underestimate the power of being plucked out of your comfort zone and dropped into the heart of others’ needs. It’s spiritually transformative to be shocked out of self-absorption and into a cause so much greater than yourself. You come away with a clear perspective about the injustices in the world, the blessings in your life, and your higher purpose on this earth.
Estelle Rodis-Brown is a freelance writer and photographer from Northeast Ohio whose insatiable curiosity secures her enduring commitment to purposeful lifelong learning, wellness and pursuit of adventure.
