Hi, I'm Matthew. I'm a 20's something guy from Baltimore MD who has a passion to serve, and this is my story.
It is late Spring, 2012 and my Church has announced that we will be getting a group from our church to come alongside another church from the area and go on a mission trip to Nicaragua. That's all I knew. It was all I needed to know, because somehow I knew I would be going. I didn't know what we would be doing or how it would be paid for I didn't even really know where Nicaragua was. All I knew was that inside of me was a need to be on that trip.
In that week God opened my eyes to a world in need, like really opened them. Sure I knew there are people all across the world who, are starving and children who need to know what it’s like to be picked up and loved on and be told that they are loved. I knew that there is sickness and that people are being mistreated. But when you feed a child their one and only meal for the day, and you have to tell them that there isn’t enough for a second plate it kills you. Here I was in a wood shack with a tin roof feeding 30 something children all of who are malnourished and hungry for more, telling them I’m sorry but there is no more. “No more” is not a phrase we use here in the states. If anything it’s the complete opposite. We say “can I get you anything else”? Or “I can’t get enough “. We are not a country that knows what it’s like to hear “no more”. In that moment of telling these children there was no more food my heart broke, and not just the “oh, that’s so sad” kind of brake, it literally broke into a thousand pieces. I thought I was going to break down in front of all these people, and I’m not a crier. What may even be sadder then that was the reaction I got, they shrugged their shoulders and ran off playing. Now you might say what’s so sad about that? What’s sad is that that is normal to them. It’s normal to eat one meal a day. It’s normal to always feel the pains of a hungry belly. It’s normal to be 20 pounds lighter for your age then what you’re supposed to be. It’s normal to be sick all the time. NO IT ISN’T! In that one moment everything I thought was important to me was lost. It didn’t matter anymore what I thought I knew or what I thought was important. What mattered were these children. In that moment I knew I’d never be the same. The rest of the week continued very much the same. There were times of joy too, the children from the trash dump of Managua laughing and playing when we took them to the park, or hearing the songs of praise and worship of the men and woman of El Faro church. But everyday my eyes were opened to the pain and suffering of this world.
After I got back, Nicaragua was all I could think about. I longed to be back feeding the kids from the trash dump and playing with the orphans we met at El Canyon orphanage. Nothing in my world seemed to matter anymore. I wanted to return, feeling this urgency to go back and do something I almost hopped on a plane and just left. I mean I really thought about it. What I now realize is that God was moving me to take action. To not sit in my perfect bubble anymore and to move. I asked him to do that. I wanted that. I was no longer comfortable being comfortable. I could see myself in a village having never heard the good news of Christ before sitting by the man dying of AIDS, praying with him as he asks Christ to be his Savior before going home to be with his new king. I could see myself crying with the widow at the loss of her husband. And something I had never thought of before, I could see myself as a father to children who had no one to call daddy. I was in love. In love with wanting to give it all up for Christ to serve the “least of these”, so I did the only rational thing I could think of. I applied to a mission organization.
Now here I am planning to move to Cambodia, planning to spend two years of my life in a part of the world that few people go to. A part of the world that has suffered greatly, a part of the world that needs to know that God loves them, I can’t express to you the joy I feel when I think of how God has called me to this. To think that I am worthy of serving my Lord and King in this way astounds me, but I am! And I’m asking you to join me on this journey. Fallow my blog and keep in touch with me as I serve these people and as I show them the love of Christ.
Come, Lord Jesus!
Matthew.
