Submitted to the MB Herald in October ...

Getting the Boot

I’m a 46-year-old Mennonite from way back. I’ve sat through my fair share of “Mission Sundays” and after each one I prayed, “Please, God, don’t ask me to go. Pick someone else. Don’t make me to go to a place with big, ugly bugs, mud huts, and no flush toilets. I can’t do nursing, I’m awful with languages, I’m not a preacher…please, God, don’t send me.” He has always answered that prayer by saying, “Of course, dear child of mine. Stay right where you are. Be safe.”

I currently attend Murrayville Community Church and we started off this year by giving three guys the boot. Keith Knowlson, Hans Martens, and Trevor Buvyer, all hammers-n-nails kinda guys, traveled to Ndola, Zambia, Africa, and spent two weeks using their hearts to build relationships and their hands to build kitchen cabinets with Seeds of Hope at the Buseko Orphanage and Grace Academy. During their commissioning service on the Sunday before they left, we gave them a boot with the verse: “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news” (Isaiah 52:7) written on it.

Six weeks later in mid-February, we gave the boot to Elaine Manky, an English teacher who left for Taiwan to teach English and learn Chinese. (She and her boot are still there. You can read about her adventures on her blog at http://www.emanky.blogspot.com.)

Then at the end of April, the boot was prayerfully given to Lene Tonnisen, a trained massage therapist. Lene took it with her as she went on her Around the World in Seven Weeks trip, looking for future short-term opportunities where she can use her skills to help survivors of traumatic injuries with their rehabilitation. Check out her blog: http://www.leneonthelord.blogspot.com.

Esther Warkentin, a TWU nursing student, got the boot in June, and took it with her to Jos, Nigeria, where she spent the summer helping at a hospital and working with a medical outreach team that provides medicines to blind and leprous communities.

And then a team of 38 Murrayvillites were given the boot at the end of August. Most were students, but a few were members of The Going-Grey Group: a farmer, a receptionist, an appliance repairman, a building contractor, and so on. The boot and the prayers of 100 people were taken to Mexico where a home was built for the Garcia family, and a day camp to share the gospel to the kids in their neighbourhood was set up.

If you’ve been keeping score, that’s 44 folks (from a church of about 100 people) who’ve been on short-term mission trips in the past 10 months. And I was one of them. I went to Mexico. Where the toilet situation was sketchy, the spiders were hairy, and the soil was contaminated. Despite my addiction to “House” and “ER,” I still can’t stand the sight of needles, don’t speak a word of Spanish, and I’m not a preacher. But this tiny missions-focused church encouraged me to go and allow God to use my gifts for His purposes. My gifts? I like to take pictures and write words.

God and the rest of the Murrayville-to-Mexico team didn’t expect me to do more than that. I photographed our adventure (www.missuzo.smugmug.com) and recorded our thoughts (www.M2M07.blogspot.com) and loved just about* every moment.

I came back a changed person (which is to be expected when one goes on these types of trips). My prayer now is; “Dear God, if you can use me, I’ll go. I’m willing to get the boot again. Send me.”

Jane O
Jane and her three sons attend Murrayville Community Church in Langley.


*Moments that I didn’t love so much? Sleeping on the ground (I’m 46). Sharing a tent with teenaged girls who recorded my snoring. (Just too embarrassing for words.) Riding 43 hours nonstop on a smelly bus (My nose? It works). These moments are well documented on our blog.