In all my interactions with my missionary friends, I never recalled any of them sharing about the exhausting mental exercise of scheduling homeland ministry visits (maybe the second go 'round is easier?). The picture above doesn't do justice to the process of scouring address lists, reconciling availability, looking up contact info, and figuring out logistics for an agenda that tries to steward our limited resources of time and finances. But please don't think I'm complaining. I actually kind of relish the challenge and find a peculiar satisfaction in seeing it all come together!
The process has actually reminded me a lot of
my first job out of college when I worked for our local congressman. For fifteen months I worked the front office (which is code for 'receptionist') in 329 Canon House Office Building, (though my business card sounded much more official with the title "constituent services representative"). When I wasn't answering telephones or divvying up the boxes of mail that arrived twice daily, I arranged special, reserved tours of Washington's top federal attractions for constituents of our district.
I absolutely loved the city of Washington D.C. from my very first Gray Line Bus Tour over freshmen year spring break with my suite-mate, Jenni, and her Mom. After several more visits and eventually moving there, I delved deeper into the city's sites and discovered that there were even more treasures and history around every corner with enough to do something different (and usually free or very cheap) every weekend to last me years. Connecting visitors to our nation's treasure trove of sites was a whole lot of fun and I couldn't believe it was my job!
The challenge I had was to balance a limited number of tickets per site (e.g. we only got 10 congressional tour tickets per week for the White H*use with requests for as many as 10-15 times that many during the busiest weeks of the summer), the days of the week that these reserved tours were offered (at some places, only 1 or 2 days per week) with the constituents' availability (e.g. in town on a Friday/Sat/Sun) and their priority list (they could rank the order of which sites were most important to them to see, and it seemed that everyone had the same top three favorite sites).
My goal was to create a little travel itinerary for our guests that hit as many of their requests as possible, throwing in a few recommendations here or there for a good place to eat or shop and directions for which Metro lines to use to reach their destination.
While most of the time it was a very fulfilling task, there were other times when I knew I was going to have to disappoint a lot of people simply because the supply of tour slots was no where sufficient to meet the seasonal demand. This was particularly stressful when the requests were coming from members of the congressman's extended family, local officials, or even family friends and I had already given away all of the tickets at my disposal! (For serving a district more than 800 miles from D.C., we sure seemed to have a lot of visitors!!!) But regardless of who was visiting, friend or bigwig or total stranger, I wanted to please.
That's when it was handy to know the staffer down the hall from Sonny B*no's office. Representing a district in California, they didn't have nearly as many constituent visitors as us and he was usually good for a handful of extra tickets when our supply was short. It was also nice to have cultivated a relationship with the tour coordinator at the Treasury who would sometimes allow me to squeeze a couple of extra heads on a tour every now and then. And when those favors were all used up, I would draw from my personal travel experiences and recommend a few obscure-but-none-the-less fascinating sites not listed on the official tour request form. Most of the time, they were places our constituents didn't even know existed, but would later write me to say it was their favorite tour of all. And when all else failed, I would give a private guided tour of the Capitol building (which I got to give after taking a little class from Architect of the Capitol), taking guests through the underground tunnels and down on the floor of the House and Senate. So while I wasn't doing something as significant perhaps as crafting public policy, if you wanted to get a tour of the White House or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, you had to go through ME! ;-)
In this position today, we are playing the role of constituent! There are people we want to see and a message that we want to share, but how do we get access to the places we want to visit? And when we do, how do we reconcile our schedules and prioritize where we go in the limited time we have?
Particularly helpful in this task are the friends who have acted as our "constituent services representative" and said, "Hey! I've talked to our missions pastor and arranged for you to share with our small group, if you're available." Those generous friends definitely help make our visits even more valuable, giving us 'behind the scenes' access'! It's like we're getting the VIP tour instead of driving by and looking at the building from the window of a moving tour bus.
I also understand that there are times and places where there is limited availability -- some churches are very missions saturated. And that's okay because we're seeing that we are making some of our more meaningful connections in small groups and small churches. Places where we meet brothers and sisters in Christ with a genuine interest in becoming more missions active and learning more about God's work in our own little obscure corner of the world, Albania.
Definitely the process is full of the unexpected, like Thursday when I get an e-mail out of the blue from someone who read
our calendar and saw that we were going to be in her town and could we get together? Yay! I didn't have her address so we had missed her on our initial zip code query. Thankfully, with only a few weeks' lead time, their schedule was able to jive with ours and we are going to meet in person for the first time!
Bit by bit our itinerary for our big trip south has started to take shape. I'm okay with the fact that we're not going to "hit all the sites" (e.g. speak in a church each and every time the doors are open). In some places, we're getting a basic introduction to a place we've never visited before, making contacts that might lead to future relationships. In other places, we're getting the "VIP tour." In both cases, we've prayed over our schedule and committed it to the Lord, doing our part to schedule what we can, but also be available, trusting in his divine appointments.
RIGHT NOW we are working our our spring schedule! We are going to be in the States of Pennsylvania, NJ, VA, MD, NY, VT, and Maine! PLEASE e-mail me if you would like to see us while we traverse through your state! You would make our day!
.JPG)
