Mission Trips, International Ventures, and the Horse and His Boy

Here's to this year's International Ventures teams: East Africa, Paris, China, and Turkey.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr.com

The Horse and His Boy, Lewis's great story about two horses and their humans' flight through the desert, might as well be a guide book for mission trip teams. If you've ever been on an overseas trip, see if any of these sound familiar:

• Long, unpleasant travel time.
• An exploration of a strange city with the guarantee that someone's going to get lost in the crowd.
• Pride that gets bigger and bigger until everyone's squabbling.
• A rescue from the beasts that only come out at night (which in real life are scary men or giant bugs).
• A steady, peaceful female becomes the adopted Team Mom.
• Unexpected medical emergencies leave part of the team out of commission and the other part trudging on, burdened with the fear that they don't know what they're doing.
• People start coming into their own left and right.
• The climax. All hope is lost...the lions are about to tear the team apart. Then suddenly--out of nowhere--everyone realizes what they're afraid of is God pushing the team out of its comfort zone so it can face the real danger and achieve the greatest victory.

That pretty much covers it.

(Oh wait, one more: romance between the two people who were ready to kill each other during the first leg of the trip.) If you know the story, feel free to add comparisons I missed.