To begin this story I’ll start with an email that I received. Here’s what it said: 

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Hi Jack -

This is (name)

Congrats on your mission career direction!

I am having 7 cubic yards of mulch delivered to our house on Friday April 30 at around 3 pm. I have our youngest son Noah helping and a friend of his. I anticipate we will spend a few hours Friday and finish up Saturday morning.  

If you have any interest in helping and seeing some $$$ towards your mission let me know!

-(name)

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I said to myself “Hey, I need money for my trip and spreading mulch isn't that bad, I’ll say yes”. So I responded 5 minutes after I received the email and set up a time and date to go help.

Once I got to the house there was this huge pile of mulch and I was astonished at how I had to spread all of that mulch, but I had committed to it and I was just going to knock it out really quick. As I talked with the guy who owned the house and told him about my trip as we worked on the yard, I had a realization. I had created this glorious image of what mission work was in my head. I knew what all it entailed but with all of the money flowing in so abundantly my mind had shifted it away from what it actually is. Most people think mission work looks like this:

However, in reality sometimes mission work looks like this:

One of the biggest things about mission work isn't just walking in and throwing the Gospel at them and leaving, but meeting needs and forging friendships, and then letting God do the miracle making.

Sitting there moving mulch around in his yard I realized that I was meeting a need. He wasn't the youngest man and would have had a lot of back pain without my help. On top of that, I was forging a friendship and creating a life long partner for whatever God leads me to next. That is what mission work is about. It’s about creating the space of friendship and meeting the needs of people, not just preaching the Gospel and leaving, but rather leaving that space for God to work in those conversations.

As Christians we are all called to be seed planters, we aren't called to be saviors. Jesus is our savior, and our human selves can’t save others. We are called to plant a seed of the Gospel in the people around us and let go do the growing in their hearts. It is super cool thinking about leading people from knowing nothing about Christ all the way to their salvation, but in reality it rarely works this way. We are just the planters, not the farmers.