2023 Travel Day

As we fly to Miami on the first leg of our trip to the Dominican Republic, I keep finding myself considering Paul’s words to the Corinthians in Chapter 13, verse 13: ‘So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’  That classic verse is certainly applicable to the idea of embarking on a mission trip.  We make our third trip to the Dominican Republic to again work with Mission of Hope.  After 5 trips to Haiti, it still remains too dangerous for us to go there.  I often think about my friends in Haiti and I pray for their safety and well being.  In the DR, we have generally worked with mostly Haitian refugees.  Over these many trips I have developed a connection to the Haitian people, their joy and belief in God is a deeply moving inspiration to me.  Faith binds us all to the family of God, our superficial identities melt away when we come together with God at the center of the relationship.  With faith, comes hope.  Our partner and guide, Mission of Hope, embodies that in their name and their mission.  My many friends in the Mission of Hope organization are so dedicated to the concept of bringing hope through faith.  Paul says the greatest of these is love.  Many bible translations interchange love with charity.  It gives me much to ponder when contemplating that love equals charity.  If a mission trip embodies the concept of charity, my experience is that it also embodies the concept of love.  Love of our fellow man, love of our mission teammates, love of our supporting families and church, love of God.  There are so many things I love about these trips, our sunrise rosaries to start each day, the joy of children we work with, the faithful example of people who have so little but exude joy, the temporary relationships we develop with other teams, the exhaustion after a long day of work in the heat.  Paul said faith, hope and love/charity remain.  For our mission trips, that’s where it begins. Dave Berg