Been Traveling

I've just returned from traveling about 30 hours by plane and train during a two week period. Those 30 travel hours have taken me to Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Netherlands and Belgium. I made this trip as a part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's Global Missions Office, Member Care ministry. The Fellowship is, among other endeavors, a mission-sending organization of moderate Baptists--moderate, as in no creed to sign and the freedom to follow God as a person senses God's leading. My travels, therefore, were to visit five families who are accomplishing amazing ministry among some of the most neglected people of the world, the gypsies and international refugees. My task is to support, encourage, pray for, assist with resources, etc. I am quick to acknowledge that these families bless me far more than I assist them. This Member Care ministry has been a life-long calling, although I didn't know it for most of my life. As a teenager, I made the public commitment to become a missionary, if that was what God desired. Evidently, that wasn't what God and I worked out together over these many years. However, now that sense of missions is being fulfilled in a way that didn't even exist when I was a youth. Deo gratis.