Why do missions need a bridge?

If you’ve heard of us before, you might already know that Puente de Misión helps connect small Adventist missions with the resources they need to grow. What you might not know is that the growth goes both ways.

Every Saturday for 3 years of my life, I would climb up the wooden stairs to the upper room in our church community service building, which housed a full house of Adventurer Club members on Wednesday nights, and was also home to the comparatively desolate Junior Sabbath School. I mostly remember when it was just an odd trifecta of us. One friend who was so well-behaved she put the rest of us to shame, but so nice you couldn’t be mad about it. Me, a know-it-all pastor’s kid looking to memorize Bible verses to feel smarter than others. And a new kid, who had just moved in with his grandparents, wore a kilt to church and kept a knife in his sock, and would cry sometimes. The rest of us were too young to understand quite why. Along with the singing and the lesson, we would get updates on two things: the child and the missionary couple our class was sponsoring. These updates, shared through personal stories, inspired my love of missions and made me feel connected and motivated to bring my offerings each week.

As an 11-year-old who loved Jesus and was learning to love my siblings, I needed two things for a love of missions to take root in me. I needed the shiny organizations that took pictures of the kids, helped them mail letters, and shared the stories from the missionaries we supported without revealing their identities as they worked in closed countries. I also needed my sabbath school teacher showing up every week to care about me, about us. And care about these kids we had never met, and missionaries whose faces we couldn’t see, to teach me to care about them. My sabbath school teacher was just as, if not more, important to my personal journey with missions than the organizations and projects she told me about.

Me and the coolest Sabbath school teacher ever

After doing my own stint as a junior sabbath school teacher recently, filling in for a family that does missions in the Philippines half the year and keeps themselves busy in our local church the other half, I have come to view my former junior sabbath school teacher as a kind of saint. She brainstormed ways to get us awkward adolescents interested in the Bible, took us on outings, and demonstrated care for us as individuals outside of class. As I’ve had to find substitutes to teach for me, it has felt easier to find people willing to sponsor a child with their money than to find someone willing to sponsor a class of children in their own church. And let me clarify that my church is a great church and extremely active. But trying to find consistent funding and volunteers is a struggle I see every ministry face, from my local sabbath school to mission clinics overseas.

Bible “Sword” Drill was one of my favorite parts of Sabbath School

This newsletter is a resource for obstacles that missions face and a reminder for anyone in the trenches of local ministry in your own church to keep up the good work. At Puente de Mision, we aim to support the people on the ground in mission projects, such as Queen Elizabeth’s Adventist Children Home, Creation Educare, and Ebenezer through marketing resources, volunteer recruitment, and financial sustainability. We also aim to support the people on the ground in their local church through this newsletter by highlighting creative approaches to ministry, wrestling with the challenges of mission, and inspiring a community committed to sharing the good news and loving people.

In our newsletter, we will continue to share updates from the field and from organizations we partner with; those great stories aren’t going anywhere! We are adding to those stories information also to address the local part of our bridge. Our organization isn’t anything without people like you in your local church serving and passing on the love of missions.

If you know anyone with a heart for missions, anyone passionate about or even burned out from serving in their own church, pass on this newsletter, and I look forward to hearing your experience with missions and the people that have inspired you.

Till next time,

Laura Danese

P.S. Have an idea for a topic you’d like to read more about? Share it with us in the comments!