The river, fast and wild, cuddled our mission airstrip for 1600 feet then made a big bend on the lower end where the strip T boned the river with a ten foot drop off. I had always been fearful of running our mission tractor off the end of the strip as I mowed the grass every ten days.
Then came the day my 13 year old son Bill and a National friend, Maile about 16, thought it was time they got to operate the little red tractor and mower. We had been working to this point for some time so with fear and trembling I watched them both make their solo trip up and down the strip.
I had reason to be fearful, Bill a wild teenager and Maile a young National that had never seen a tractor until the missionaries showed up with one a few years before. Thoughts of losing our mission tractor and how hard it would be to replace the equipment surfaced from my worried mind.
Then these words came to me, words that have shaped me forever as I work with young men and women. “If you cannot trust them with the mission tractor how can you trust them with God’s church”? My son Bill went on to become a fine church planter. Maile my young National friend was trained by our missionaries and is now one of the better leaders in the church and oh how he can preach.
The only way we can trust them is to train them well, we call it discipleship and sometimes it starts even before the church is born. The men and women of New Tribes Mission have a heart beat for discipleship in the language of the people around the world. Jack Housley
Dun says
Love it, Jack! Mighty true.