As I look back on how I started this journey of wanting to help people in need, I find myself looking back to age 6 and my first “missions” trip. Now, I would imagine that most people, when hearing the word “missions”, would immediately think about religion. Throughout history, the phrase "missions trip" doesn’t have the best rap. There are many accounts in history telling of religious “missionaries” coming to a new land to force their worldviews on people; some even going to the extreme of death if they didn’t change. As some people see it, religion was just a way of spewing their rhetoric to a people group for the purpose of not helping them, but to try and change or control them. However, when I say I'm going on a missions trip, I'm not trying to change anything. I'm just trying to help where need be. So when people say "Humanitarian" or "Missions Trips", they’re all the same in my eyes. We are just trying to help.
I have a heart that wants to serve, therefore, I have been on many of these "trips" throughout the course of my life. Especially when there is a direct need for basic human needs such as clean water, sustainable food, medical help, education, or injustice etc. This is what we want for Lavego; to help motivate, promote and equip individuals to help those in need around the world more effectively. If the tables were turned and you were the one crying out for help, wouldn’t you be praying for someone to just help you? Even if it was just a glass of clean water, a bed to sleep in for the night, or a piece of bread? As small as some of these things are to us, it may mean the world to someone that needs it. It doesn’t take much to help and it's not the amount….its just making that choice to help.
Even if we can just create a tiny ripple that might spur some motivation to create another ripple... One might say, “How is a ripple really going to help in an ocean that's dead calm?” In response, “A small ripple could mean thousands of lives helped……so it’s worth trying.”
