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Fifty Years and Counting � Counting the Cost
Operation Mobilisation celebrates fifty years of mission work in 2008, OM missionaries taking time from their lives to carry the Good News around the world, from a few months to several years each. With ongoing Bible teaching, training, mentoring, and working in teams to provide life-changing knowledge, practical assistance and hope to over one hundred countries worldwide, OM offers two training and "count the cost" events for new recruits each year, GO (Global Orientation) Conferences.
On January 14, 2008 I left my comfortable environment of Florence, SC where my family has lived and worked for three hundred years and headed to a GO Conference in Mosbach, Germany. Daytime and night workshops and worship services offer intensive cross-cultural missions training. Young, middle-aged and old, single and married, the recruits come from everywhere and are headed to everywhere around the world. The common greeting was "Where are you from and where are you going?" English was spoken by everyone but Texas drawls, Scottish brogues, Australian, European and Oriental accents created quite a global blend.
As a Florence volunteer for OM Ships (the destination for 100 or so of those new missionaries), I came to meet many people and participate in the activities. Pat and Terry Brown of Florence, new OM Ships team members, were also there. "Old hands" at short-term missions, Pat and Terry were just as impressed as I was at the level of commitment we saw.
We three have it easy. We will be working from nice safe offices here in the states. We met men and women who will be working from unsafe streets in China, or Africa, or the Middle East, or the Far East. Single kids just out of high school, college graduates, married couples with small children, were elbow to elbow with older adults retired from secular careers. All had chosen to go and were here at the jumping-off place, packing and re-packing their 30 kilos of belongings per person, the maximum allowable luggage. From Mosbach they would fly to their final destinations.
One morning was dedicated to counting the cost. Considering the call. Are you really ready? Do you have "baggage" to leave behind? Some of those packing and re-packing sessions involved leaving behind articles like hair dryers. Extra jeans. Books you thought were must-haves. Too heavy, too bulky, leave them behind. Pack light; pack wisely. Take intercession, commitment, compassion, dependence on God, trust in Him. Leave behind anxieties, fear of failure, resentments, uncertainties, pride, unforgiveness. It was a thought-provoking and heart-rending session.
Another day was set aside for prayer, Shhhh time. No talking, just praying. Prayer kiosks filled the major conference rooms with photos and lists of prayer needs for various regions of the world. Spiritual needs and medical needs and practical needs, hunger and AIDS and violence and oppression.
I left the conference to spend a week aboard the Logos Hope, where some of these new missionaries will spend the next months to years sharing their lives and their faith along with literature, secular and Christian, with needy people in many nations. I met men, women and families onboard who had joined OM for a few years, thirty years ago. Some had retired from secular careers and had returned to help out for a few months, some were spending vacation time, and some had just kept signing back up - they'd never left! I'll be writing their stories for OM publications and perhaps for the News Journal too. I'm glad I'm home, but I'm glad I went. I won't soon forget this trip.
For more information about OM and OM ships, please visit www.OM.org, www.OMShips.org, and our very own Carolina pages, www.OMShips.org/Carolina. Or call me! Bette Cox, (843) 665-7620.