God had an only Son and He made Him a missionary. David Livingstone

This August, for the second time, our church mission team will leave for a week to Central America. We will partner with an International Ministry called Hearts in Action and focus on bringing support to their Jungle School in Petén, Guatemala.

This missionary effort is special in a number of ways. It’s been said that assessing the heart of a church should include what it does for the benefit of children and what it does on the mission field. Coming along side to help the Jungle School in Guatemala, our Church team has a true opportunity to be a practical blessing in both of these critical areas. In this setting, our primary need to pray becomes very clear. As we expect the unexpected in our foreign adventure, we need to seek the Lord to be with us so we can be bigger than our challenges.

On a very personal level, it also gives us a time and place where we can embrace an encouraging memory of a young man, Christiano Barbosa. He traveled with us on our first mission trip to the Jungle School in 2013. Shortly after our team returned, he was tragically killed in an auto accident.

None of us can pretend to know the whole story or explain Christiano’s early departure from Earth. Only the Lord knows fully. Still fresh, however, is the way Christiano towered over the children (see photo) we met in Guatemala. His 6’9” presence among them went beyond being physically compelling. Without the need of a tryout, he won the role of playing Goliath in one of our Evangelist outreaches. It’s not by coincidence that He was chosen to participate in perhaps the most famous Biblical story, only this time as God’s effective star as His big man acting the part of the big bad guy.

In faith, we know that the God who loves, liberates, comforts, protects, and inspires our ongoing hope hasn’t changed, especially since our first trip to the Jungle School in Guatemala.

Family and friends, it’s in that trust, and by God’s grace and mercy, that we can be fully persuaded that our young, former teammate, Christiano, is now in Heaven. It’s only fitting that God’s Goliath is now rooting for the rest of us to be bigger than our challenges, as we move out again to serve the Lord and advance His Kingdom.

Matt 28:19-20; 1 Cor 10:31