Reflections on Mission

Amanda Stogsdill and Amy Dimond served in the 2003 class of Global Justice Volunteers. Below are their reflections on their experiences as GJVs and their understanding of mission based on those experiences. Amanda is a student a University of Missouri – Columbia, studying Psychology. She served with Accion Medica Cristiana in Nicaragua. Amy is in seminary at St. Paul School of Theology and served at the Sao Gabriel Community Center in Brazil.

Stopping to Ask Why
By Amanda Stogsdill

Recently I returned home after spending two and a half months in Nicaragua as a participant in the Global Justice Volunteers program. The GJV program is a part of the General Board of Global Ministries, which provides young adults the opportunity to explore the links between faith and justice. I, along with two other young adults, were placed in Sahsa, Nicaragua, a small community in the northeastern region of Nicaragua where most live in conditions of extreme poverty. In Sahsa I was able to take part in several types of public health education, such as self-esteem training, sex and gender education, and leadership training. I also had the opportunity to spend a week traveling with a medical team whose goal was to provide vaccinations and doctor’s visits to those who live in such isolated areas that they do not have access to health care.

At some point during the summer I realized that these children, who I had come to see as my friends, as beautiful little people full of hope and spirit, could be those children from the late night commercials with the sad little faces and bloated bellies. Why? It was at this point that I had to stop myself and ask why my friends did not have food to eat, why they had no real concept of childhood, why was my favorite child unable to have access to acetaminophen, or Tylenol, when she suffered a temperature of almost 104 degrees? I soon realized that my trip was not about coming to feed, or clothe, or build. I could do these things as well, but my main objective was to learn, and grow, and live in solidarity with others, so that I could return home and begin the mission; the mission of beginning to understand the root causes of injustice and then working to change the systems that hold them in place.

In mission, we often fill the immediate needs and try to end the immediate pain and suffering of those around us. When we do this, it becomes easier to live with ourselves, and God, knowing that we have done something for someone else. However, there is danger if we, as people of God, get so caught up in feeling that we have done a good deed that we forget to stop and ask ourselves why this is happening, why people are starving, why people are dying from simple illness. It is a danger of injustice raging on in the world for hundreds of years to come. If we, as people in mission, can begin asking ourselves and others why with the same passion, heart, and sympathy with which we fill the immediate needs, we may, one day, be able to work ourselves out of a job. That will be the day my friends can stop starring in those heart-wrenching commercials.

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Humanity to Humanity
By Amy Dimond

The relationships I built, now that is mission. Those are steps. Connecting humanity with humanity. It didn't matter that I was from South Dakota, USA and they were from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Humanity with humanity. There is something so spiritual about that. That is mission. Learning about who they are. That is mission. It's not what I can do for them or bring to them. It's not even what they did for me while I was there, although I treasure both. It's the bond we share because of the time we spent together. God shows up in those moments and those places. It is very clear to me that God is in mission not just when people build something, which we did, or when people give food or money, which we did, or when you are able to help someone be healed physically or emotionally, which I hope we did, but God is in mission with us when we take the time to know someone. To be. And while it's the hardest thing, it the thing, it's the most important.

(October 27, 2003)

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