South Carolina Church's India Mission Trip Yields Mutual Blessings
by Allie Martin
August 8, 2005
(AgapePress) - A group from one South Carolina church has used part of its summer to travel to southeastern Asia and help victims of December 2004's Indian Ocean tsunami disaster rebuild their lives. Last month, a group of 21 people from Low Country Community Church near Hilton Head spent several weeks on the coast of Tamil Nadu, India, an area hit hard by the deadly waves.The Low Country Church team helped rebuild a local school that was destroyed when the tsunami hit Tamil Nadu, a state at the southern tip of India. Rob Jacobs, youth pastor with the U.S. church, says the response from the locals has made the trip a life-changing one.
"They have really taught us by their example as far as their level of peace, contentment, and smiles on their faces in the midst of everything they've gone through," Jacobs says. "And they're just so hospitable and generous in the way that they treat us and invite us into their homes -- if they still have a home. They've just been a wonderful, Christ-like example of servanthood to us."
The church's trip to India was organized by Youth for Christ. For Low Country's youth pastor, the journey has been a reminder of God's priorities. "I think every time I venture into a new area of the world," he says, "it helps me to understand just how big our God is. And it takes me outside of my little sphere -- my little world -- and helps me to see that there's so much more; there's so many people out there who need to know and hear the message of Christ."
Jacobs says he plans to encourage other church members to visit India on a short-term mission trip. He believes most Christians who do so will discover what his group did -- that there is as much to be gained as to be given, if not more, when believers serve among those who may be poor in material resources by Western standards but who are rich in hospitality and faith.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online. Allie recently returned from a trip to India where he visited various ministries.
