asia aftermath

Embarking on this trip was one of the most surreal, and yet most natural, things that I have ever done. While my major is in mass media communications, my heart is in missions. So, when the invitation came to be a part of this groundbreaking trip, I was excited for the opportunity. For those of you who might not know, I was able to travel with the first ever ORU Media Missions team to India, China, and Japan, visiting 4 mission teams in a month to document their experiences while pursuing the heart of God in a foreign country.

I sometimes wonder what God was thinking when He dreamed this trip into being. Correction: this question has been burning in my mind for the past month, and no matter what I do or the answers I come up with, it will not go away. Why, exactly, were we there? What did we accomplish? The obvious answers are there - we left with the intention of capturing footage for several different branches of ORU and bringing back media that accurately portrays the work of the students and of God in the places we visited. However, there seems to be a greater purpose, a deeper meaning, and a more significant grace on this project than we ever imagined. Stumbling through the many technicalities and logistics of planning this trip and then living it out on the field was frequently difficult and frustrating; yet, in retrospect, every step seems to be in line, divinely orchestrated and covered with grace. Perhaps that is the word that most accurately and succinctly summarizes the entire trip: grace. At some moments, like the afternoon we spent talking to a recently elected Member of the Legislative Assembly in India or the morning we watched a girl get to see pictures of her adoptive parents at a foster home in China, that grace was easy to recognize and appreciate. At others, like the early morning hours spent transferring files instead of sleeping, miles traversed in transportation designed for a much smaller load, or when we were dropped off at the wrong airport at 4:45am in New Delhi and had to find a way to get ourselves and all of our equipment to the right airport, checked in, through security, and on our flight by 6, the grace that led us to the right people who put us in the front of the lines and held the plane for us was not thoroughly realized until after the moment had passed and we were on our way.

It is moments like these that make me think there might have been a bigger purpose to our trip than we realized. Stories like these spark the wonder in my heart and I begin to think that maybe, and more than maybe, this wasn't our idea at all. Perhaps the whole time, when we thought God was working through our ideas, this whole thing was a dream in His heart. Perhaps it is simply time, in the grand scheme of things, for the hidden things to be revealed and for the seeds that have been so long underground to spring to life. It's strange to realize in such a significant way that while you have been chasing so hard after God, searching high and low to find Him at work, that He wants to be known more than you want to know Him. He wants to be seen more than you want to show Him. Perhaps, and more than perhaps, the dreams of our hearts and the dreams of our Creator were perfectly aligned, the timing was more than coincidental, and we found ourselves walking in the perfect will and intentions of God.

Still, in the process of returning and beginning the process of arranging, assembling, and articulating the stories that we were privileged to capture, I find myself face-to-face with my own inadequacy. I don't know how to explain the situations in which we found ourselves without talking far too much about how we got there or going into detail about the early morning, rush to pack equipment, cramped car, beads of sweat, caffeine withdraws, jet lag, and emotional strain. Then, if I begin to go down that path, I feel that the story has been compromised in some half-hearted attempt to justify the imperfections of our communication and details we overlooked while attempting to capture an event that we had traveled halfway around the world to observe. And yet, that is not the story at all. The story is that we remembered anything at all, that when the bulbs for our lights were 5 hours away at the house, we found the only lamp in the entire hotel and were able to (almost) get rid of the eye shadows and convince sleepy team members that sitting down for an interview was not as bad as it sounded. The story is that when I managed to leave one of the $100 batteries for the Sony camcorder on a bus, I also found a replacement in China that, after I began to turn and walk away, the vendor offered to sell to us for 150 Yuan (about $22). Stories like these more accurately represent our trip - and yet, they seem superficial in comparison to the stories our contacts told with their lives.

In all honesty, their stories are the ones that need to be told. The significance of our story is that we were able to witness, for a moment, the work that they have given their lives for. Russel and Sandra Board have lived in Japan as missionaries for 30 years. They gave up much of their privacy and personal space by allowing us to live at their house for a month, and then were going to pick up an intern who was moving in for several months on the day that we left. Longevity and commitment like this are rare in the world, partially because they are not valued. Consistency is not flashy and makes for a really boring montage, but it is highly valued in the economy of Heaven and greatly honored by the King. There is only so much footage of driving around town or across states that anyone would want to see, but it is what consumes a large percentage of Nelu's time. I tell stories about being tired because of a lack of sleep, and yet I cannot forget the mornings that I would wake up a full hour before my alarm to the sound of dishes rattling and breakfast being prepared.

To tell all of the stories we encountered and experienced on this trip would, in all honestly, take a full month :) So, if you want to hear more of them, just ask. God is moving in the earth, but this is the story I know best - the story of my own life being changed, of my steps being directed one at a time, of unexpected connections and surprises that leave me in awe of His goodness over and over again. Maybe later I'll have time to extrapolate on some of the others - or maybe I'll wait and let you see them :)