Day 10: Travel and Closing Remarks

Hello everyone,

Today we traveled back to our home states. Looking over the group chat, it sounds as though everyone who was traveling today made it home safe and sound. For the Oregon group, at least, the trip was smooth and pleasant. The one thing we noticed was that the temperature gradually increased as we headed south. The warm morning in Vancouver gave way to an unbearably hot afternoon in Corvallis.

My car, which I left parked in the open for the past ten days, had a particularly bad reaction to the weather. The heat had caused the windshield glass to expand unevenly. This, in turn, had caused a hairline crack to spread up from the wipers until it covered the full span of the windshield. It was not a pretty sight and it got me thinking about the “return to earth” sensation one feels in the wake of a successful mission trip.

This “return to earth” is a return to the chores, practicalities, and routines that make up your daily lives. One of the great things about mission trips is that they let you step outside of these routines and focus more of your energy on the things of heaven. These things include time spent in prayer, conversations with strangers about what it means to be human, and the love and fellowship of other Christians. Yet there is a time when these things must draw to a close and we must resume our regular rhythms of life.

I am already making plans for how to fix that windshield, but before I jump all the way back into daily life I want to write one last update…

The purpose of our trip was to “change the campus[es]” of Simon Fraser and UBC. But if you were to walk around those campuses tomorrow, they wouldn’t look any different from the way they did when we arrived. Look at it this way: Mark and I waded around in a pool at UBC [photo 1]. But as soon as we took our feet out, the water filled the space where we had stood and it was as if we had never been there. Viewed from a purely materialistic perspective, our outings to the campuses were the same way.

But all of this takes us back to the conversation I had with Max and the Saint-Exupery quote: “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” Is that quote true? Does the world of value precede the world of material? My team and I believe that it does, and that our work over the past week has changed the world of value – the spiritual world – on the campuses of SFU and UBC. We believe that we have planted some seeds of faith. Now we just have to follow the example of the farmer in James 5:7 -

See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.

As a matter of fact, I am pleased to report that the first fruits are already appearing. On Sunday, Morgan and I met up for a second time with Max. Our lunch was supposed to last 45 minutes but it ended up lasting almost twice that amount of time. We talked about physics, dreams, Genesis, and different definitions of what it means to be a human. We also talked about his family, his passions, and his hopes. We encouraged him in his work and prayed for him and his loved ones. Then, as we got ready to part ways, Morgan and I mentioned keeping in touch. He seemed to brighten and said something to the effect of,

“Actually, I’d like to keep in touch. I’ll have some extra time this summer and maybe we could keep talking about these things over email.”

“I’d love that” I said.

“Me too” said Morgan.

I was surprised that Max initiated that conversation. It felt very different from the stereotype of Christians shouting their message from street corners while ordinary people rush by trying not to make eye contact. It felt like a real relationship. My belief is that this relationship did not come out of the content of our message (the ideas and arguments we presented) but rather from its source. That source is love, and that love comes from Jesus.

And so today, as my teammates and I return to our daily schedules, we are praying that all the seeds we planted will someday bear fruit. We are praying that those seeds bring change to UBC and SFU: first in the world of values and then, someday, in the world of material. If you have been praying for me on this trip, I hope you can pray for the same things.

For one last time, I’d like to thank all of you for donating towards this mission trip. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this work without you.

Much love from Oregon -

Sincerely,

Sam