Advancing God’s Kingdom: Summer Missions Highlight
This summer a team of students traveled to New Bern, North Carolina on mission to help restore a community affected by Hurricane Florence. Rising BCM senior, Joe, tells his story of leading the trip and how God can use unpredictable circumstances to advance his Kingdom.
Written by Joe Pogoretskiy
I have never been on a mission trip until joining JMU BCM my freshmen year of college. Since then, I have been going to almost every mission opportunity through them since. I went as close as North Carolina and as far as Nicaragua. In all of these trips, I saw God move in incredible ways through the group I was in. Not only did He expose the beauty and reality of His great and diverse kingdom, but He also utilized and challenged me to further His kingdom as He saw fit.
My biggest challenge happened in the first week of June, when I felt challenged, yet encouraged to lead a small group of young adults on a mission trip to New Bern, North Carolina. The organization who hosted us and led us were Baptists on Mission, a non-profit disaster relief program that takes in volunteers to help rebuild homes damaged from Hurricane Florence back in 2018. Since hurricanes are not common in the Carolinas, many homeowners had neither insurance nor the financial resources to repair the damage. Some have even been scammed by insurance fraudsters who claim to help them rebuild. These are the people Baptists on Mission intend to be there for, and the people my group sought after to help.
Throughout the trip, my team were led by site coordinators to continue the work done by previous volunteer groups. Often times, we were clueless of the day’s agenda until the morning of. This ranged from painting the local church, building the front deck of a house, installing a crawlway door, bolting in hurricane ties, and many other practical tasks. It was hot, humid, stormy, and often uncomfortable. Yet, despite the conditions, the team showed a tremendous effort to help the people in need.
This trip reminded us of the reality of missional work. It is often unpredictable, and many of the tasks that the Lord leads us to do seem mundane and inconsequential in the moment. Whether that be caulking a window sill or preaching the gospel to a remote village with seemingly no listeners, it can be difficult to feel as if we are really advancing God’s kingdom. Yet, that is the nature of missions, we often do not see the fruit of our labors. 1 Corinthians 3:6-9 gives us a picture of this reality:
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.”
In this team, I saw how the Lord touched the volunteers’ hearts to put their faith in Him and allow Him to grow the seeds that they have been planting and watering throughout the week, even if it primarily involved physical labor. We also saw the incredible hospitality and generosity of the staff we worked with, cooking meals for us 3 times a day and always being there for us to answer questions and make us feel at home. Furthermore, the generosity with the students’ sacrifice of time, comfort, and part of their summer vacation to be the hands and feet of Jesus were prevalent throughout the week. And personally, God has grown my leadership skills and taught me how to be confident and faithful in Him to lead others, and hopefully, more opportunities will arise in the future.
