The Importance of Travel

This week I leave for Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and South Africa and I wish to ask for your prayers.

In Cameroon, I will join the DML Cameroon team to do some ministry with the Full Gospel Church, teach Economics of Hope, and do a training of trainers.  One of the DML team members recently lost her husband to cancer and another team members was kidnapped (and has since been released) just last week.  The conflict in Cameroon is now going on seven years without much change in sight.  We ask for your prayers as this team deals with these difficult and sorrowful events and seeks to trust God amidst hardship.

In Sierra Leone, we will be working with the Wesleyan Church who started DML last year.  More than 35 churches have completed a business month (four weeks of teaching/preaching/highlighting the God of Business and Work as Worship), and so we will be teaching the Basic Business Principles and finding a way forward to have a training of trainers for this denomination.  Please pray for this denomination as it seeks to make workplace discipleship an integral part of the local church.

Lastly, I will be traveling to South Africa, where DML has an opportunity to engage again with the Full Gospel Church as well as some other strategic meetings in the area.  As we continue to meet the body of Christ around the world who "speak the same language," we continue to pray that God will show us how to link arms with the global church, while discerning how and where to spend our time, treasure, and talent.  I appreciate that for your prayers as well.

One of our DML partners posted the poem below about travel, which resonated with me and reminded me to be very grateful for the chance to travel and learn from people from so many different walks of life.  Travel helps us to see many things, including that what we think is the norm is often not the norm.  It helps us to see that what we think is black and white is often not black and white.  It is invaluable for learning how to love your neighbor.  And remember, traveling is not just getting on a plane or in a car.  Sometimes traveling is going right next door to people we don't know, as the world (cultures and people) has come to each of us in many ways.

Try to travel, otherwise

you may become racist/caste-ist,

and you may end up believing

that your skin is the only one

to be right,

that your language

is the most romantic

and that you were the first

to be the first.

Travel,

because if you don't travel then

your thoughts won’t be strengthened,

won’t get filled with ideas.

Your dreams will be born with fragile legs and then you end up believing in tv-shows, and in those who invent enemies

that fit perfectly with your nightmares

to make you live in terror.

Travel,

because travel teaches

to say good morning to everyone

regardless of which sun we come from.

Travel,

because travel teaches

to say goodnight to everyone

regardless of the darkness

that we carry inside.

Travel,

because traveling teaches to resist,

not to depend,

to accept others, not just for who they are

but also for what they can never be.

To know what we are capable of,

to feel part of a family

beyond borders,

beyond traditions and culture.

Traveling teaches us to be beyond.

Travel,

otherwise you end up believing

that you are made only for a panorama

and instead inside you

there are wonderful landscapes

still to visit.

- Gio Evan, poet and songwriter.

Translated from Italian.