If you do a DTS, people will ask you this question a million different times and in a million different ways. I learned that it's best to have a simple answer ready -- just a few words that will casually sum up your outreach for anyone interested who asks after church or at a family get-together. This article, however, aims to bypass small talk and dive right in: we're going to talk about outreach in a way that is real, raw, and will give you some insight into what exactly you will be doing.
True outreach begins long before your plane touches down at your destination. Outreach begins when God speaks to you about the location He wants you to go. It begins when you are packing, praying, and preparing to leave. It begins when you and your team practice the same song or skit over and over again, until you're absolutely sick of it and you start to wonder how it will touch anyone's life. Then your plane actually touches down, and you breath in the air of this unfamiliar country, and realize this will be your home for the next two months.
You're tired and jet lagged, and while preparing for ministry, you might wonder why you ever signed up to do this in the first place. You arrive at your first place of ministry, and a hundred kids run toward you with smiles that light up the world around you. It's a moment that illuminates your own selfishness but most of all it fills you with an incomprehensible joy and it's then that you realize, you are exactly where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing.
You will go through more than you ever thought you could handle and you will learn what it really means to trust God with everything. It will be the sweetest most loving thing that you ever feel when God comes to you and says, “I know you're tired, and I know this is hard, but I'm by your side, always.”
Just in the moment when you step away to think about how few possessions these kids have, a child who owns nothing but the clothes on his back will give you a bracelet that was wrapped together with different color yarn. You could never sell this bracelet in a store or convince a celebrity to wear it, but it will be one of the most precious gift you will ever receive. You will see lives changed and people healed. At the end of it all, when the two months are over in what seems like no time at all, you'll realize that you just took part in changing the world. You will understand what treasure truly is. And who knows, maybe you will realize that this thing called “Normal life” just isn't for you."
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