I’m sitting in an airport with a group of five young men waiting for a flight that’s an hour late that will cause us to miss a connecting flight in another city that will in turn cause us to miss a third and final flight. The end result will be that we’ll get to our final destination a few hours later than we planned. That’s how international travel works and none of us is surprised.
We’re on our way to a major city in Central Asia where we’ll spend the next week doing mission work among some of the most anti-Christian people on earth. Our purpose is to build relationships that will allow us share our faith. We’ll be mainly among college students and other young adults.
One particular day we actually have free access to a much broader cross-section of people, gathered for a national festival where religious talk and ministry is welcomed. I’m not sure how that came about, but it sounds cool to me. Thousands of people from the region travel to a nearby neutral location to seek a blessing from whatever religious figures are present. So of course some sketchy folks show up to push some pretty far-out beliefs. But among them are a few Christian evangelists, and the guys I’m with are excited to be included in that number.
I was instructed to wear a Catholic priest shirt to this event. One of those black dress shirts with a white tab collar. That should cause quite a stir if my church back home gets a picture of it.
Back to to the point. The guys I’m with have been meeting together for three months, talking, praying, learning and figuring out what the Holy Spirit is trying to do in our lives. It’s been a glorious time for all of us and this trip is the capstone of what we’ve been doing.
In about twelve more hours we’ll stumble off our last flight, looking like the last day of Pompeii, ready to jump into the 25 million people of this great city, for Jesus’ sake.
It’s going to be awesome.