Less than one week from my first team meeting with the Connections mission team I am going to
Tartu with in June (leaving May 30st, actually), I am throwing around ideas about what I want to write in my support letter for this upcoming trip. That's one item on my busy "to do list" for the next couple of weeks... also included are renewing my passport and saying "hey" to the peeps that I want to touch base with when I get over there. But, the agony of raising support is there and it's important.
There are a couple of reasons for this... first, I like to put some thoughts into this thing because the whole exercise is really about recruiting a support team that goes far beyond finances for the trip. I'm really liking some of the things that Peep shared with us at the last support dinner in Atlanta about Give-Pray-Go, as well as his vision of the church being the church versus "doing church" in Estonia. Believe me, I've got ideas... how to get these into a concise format is going to be the challenge :-)
Second, a thought I've had in my recent quiet times has been about Paul's letters to the churches... things that we today in modern Christianity analyze, go to seminary and Bible Study training classes to understand, and pour over the words to apply to our lives... but also letters that contained a significant amount of emotional capital. For the vast majority of these letters (such as Ephesians, Galatians, Corinthians, etc.), they were written to people that Paul spent months, sometimes over a year doing life with during one of his missionary journeys... and he wasn't just writing theological treatises but instead an intensely personal letter to people whom he knew their names and could see their eyes and their smiles in his memory...
In a way, this trip is a lot like that for me; where it's not really now about Estonia as a category anymore... it's about people... it's about Tarmo and Ragnar... it's about Daniel... it's about Evelin and Hannah and Kati and Timo... and there's more names that I can list. People that I care about that live and truly desire to see God move in mighty ways in their city, their circles of influence, and their country.
It's hard to convey the personal aspect in a support letter, but somehow I feel that I should. I think it's my prayer that through this trip, that we can all touch their city in some unique way that God uses to transform a country... and even more important that we can, as Paul told the Roman church, to "impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong - that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each others' faith." (Romans 1:11-12) I pray that you reading this, and those that read that letter that's in my head that will be in paper soon, may catch that vision and choose to participate in the way God calls them to.
