My life changed forever in the summer of ’99. Months before, our youth pastor had announced we would fly into El Paso, TX, then cross the border for a week in Juarez, Mexico. It would be my first missions trip! Granted, it wasn’t as exotic as backpacking deep into the Amazon Rainforest, but we were about to immerse ourselves into entirely new surroundings, culture, and language. Across the Rio Grande awaited an astonishingly different world.

During the following days, we ministered along missionary John Ridings’ side (fun fact – he was sent out of my grandfather’s church in the 70s). The missionary pointed out several budding communities in the city that needed Bible-preaching churches. He admitted that he had no immediate plans of starting churches there because his hands were tied up in the ministry he was currently leading.

“What?” I thought. “There are growing areas of the city that desperately need a church, and you have no immediate plans of planting a church there? How could this be?” I was shocked.

Just across our southern border were sprawling residential developments with little hope of hearing the gospel truth. If this were the condition of our border cities, what more must be left to be done further south in Latin America?

What I saw in Juarez, Mexico changed me, and I would never be the same. Seeds were planted in my heart that week that would soon grow and shape my future. Here are a few:

1. God birthed in my heart a love for the Hispanic people.
2. After a month in Juarez, the mystique of the foreign field lifted. I knew I could doit. I could make it overseas if God were to lead me there.
3. Speaking Spanish morphed from a dreaded drudge into a passionate pursuit.
4. Planting multiple churches would be necessary to reach a city with the gospeleffectively.

What about you? Have you visited the mission field? Plan to go as soon as you can! It will change your heart forever.