I was using Google to look for mission trips to Colombia for awhile, and I found one that within my budget range and happened to coincide with my thirty-fifth birthday. I'm going to help Fresh Wind Children's Center in Medellin, Colombia!
After speaking with the planners of this mission trip, I saw that my expenses were going to be more than theirs because I didn't live in the same area. Mostly, the extra expenditure was in the plane tickets since Seattle (where I live) doesn't have airlines that service Colombia.
At the same time, I was researching information on missions and sponsorship. Admittedly, I had to learn and accept that sponsorship is a humbling experience. In my mind, I want to pay for everything myself instead of asking for help. It took a change of heart to understand that sponsorship is a Biblical practice for missionaries (1Co. 16:1-3, 2Co. 9:5); it's one thing to read and hear about people getting sponsorship, but it's another to actually do it yourself. God had to take down a wall of pride and give me the humility to ask for help.
After I committed to the mission trip by purchasing plane tickets, I built a fundraising website, Take Me to Colombia. I'm so pleased that so far I've already collected more than 40% of my $2,000 goal in less than three weeks! As well, I've received communications from various people, and I've become encouraged by the people God has prepared for this project. Instead of being a burden, this trip is becoming a blessing, and not only to me.
The biggest lesson I've learned from asking for sponsorship is that people who invest in a project care the most about it. If I am the only one to contribute to this mission trip, no one else really thinks about it, and just says, "That's nice." (I learned that from the previous mission trip I took where I provided 100% of the funds out of pocket.) Once people are invested through prayer and partnership, the results of a trip affects them, and they want to know everything about it. They want to see how God worked through adversity and performed miracles.
It's one of the reasons the early church had such love for each other. Remember how these people sold their houses to help those who had been displaced? They saw these displaced people as their own brothers and sisters and realized that they had to do something for them. They invested in them, and it made their love for their fellow Christians blossom all the more. It made the early church grow stronger.
So I guess what I want to say out of all of this is that I've been blessed by the responses I've had about this mission trip, and I'm so happy that others want to participate in spreading the gospel and Jesus' love through my efforts. There really is a blessing in sponsoring missionaries, and it's a mutual blessing to the missionary and the one who sponsors the missionary.
Here's some more good reading:
7 Reasons Why You Should Personally Sponsor a Missionary
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