Flashback to the summer before my junior year in high school. I signed up to go on my first mission trip through the youth group I was a part of all through high school. We were headed to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to help with community improvement efforts and local charities. We were paying to travel a couple hundred miles to help complete strangers. We were going to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to show His people some love. And maybe, if the opportunity ever arose in an appropriate manner, we would share the gospel and tell people something good and inspiring that they may have never heard before in their life.
Now, if you’ve ever gone on a mission trip, especially if it is associated with a church, or even just volunteered in your own community, there seems to be this common theme of thinking, “Yeah, let’s get out in the world and do some good because it really needs to be fixed and I can fix a part of it!" or, "Let’s get out there and teach these people about goodness and truth because I know so much about all that stuff!” Or, maybe that’s just me. But I think some of us have had those types of thoughts when we make the big sacrifice to serve others; we want to stand out as someone who is good, who knows how to do good.
After this mission trip, I would never think those things again.
For this trip, participants were split into small groups that scattered throughout the city each morning to volunteer at different local organizations. One day, my group was sent to a food pantry where inmates had been working to receive community service hours. For most of the day my group was helping in one room, isolated from the rest of the pantry and the inmates. It wasn’t turning out to be as great a day as I expected it to be, mostly because we hadn’t “taught those inmates a thing or two about love, service, or Jesus” all day. I wanted to interact with them.
Finally, near the end of our time at the pantry, we were sent downstairs where the inmates had been stocking shelves with fresh food. Each of them had their conventional orange jumpsuit on with black tennis shoes just like in the movies (I had never spoken to someone who had gone to jail for anything before this trip and I come from a very small town that lacks diversity). The supervisors at the pantry told us these inmates weren’t violent. Most of them were incarcerated for small crimes. All of them were working diligently, examining each food item carefully.
I walked into one aisle and began helping a black inmate who had been working alone. He began a conversation with me, asking who I was and who I was with and what we were doing. I answered all the questions with a smile, hoping I would find a spark of “wow you are all such good people” in his eyes. He nodded to each of my answers; he was glad we were there. I thought it would be a good time to bring up the bracelet that was around my wrist that the mission trip leaders had handed out to every student. It was a salvation bracelet with the colors of the rainbow on it. Each color represented something pertaining to the gift of salvation and what Jesus did for us on the cross. Once a student explained what each color meant, they were supposed to give it to the person they shared the message with, to remember those colors.
I began my spiel about the bracelet and wasn’t halfway done when the man cut me off and said, “Keep your bracelet. Give it to someone who needs it more than I do. I am saved. I know what each of those colors mean." I looked at him, surprised but dumbfounded. Humbled. "But here’s something I want you to know: Never be afraid to step out in faith. Just like you’ve done here. . . Walking up to a black man in a prisoner’s outfit and helping out and then sharing the gospel. Never be afraid to step out in faith.”
“Never be afraid to step out in faith,” I repeated the words quietly to myself, to make sure they were buried deep in my soul, fixed into my pores.
He said, “Yes. You got that? Never be afraid.”
I believe to this very day that the words that came from that inmate in South Dakota were straight from God’s mouth. He sent me those words to humble me. I went on three more mission trips in the years following; one to Grand Rapids, Michigan, one to Thunderbay, Ontario, and another life-changing one to Tijuana, Mexico. But during all three of those trips, that man’s face, his orange jumpsuit, and those eight words never left my memory. I am reminded of two things: To never expect what I’ll learn next or from whom and to never be afraid to step out in faith.
