Applause broke out the Sunday morning when it was announced that Ajay* had become a Christian. Ajay is just one of over one million foreign students that study in the U.S., and one of over 50 students who visited St. Matthew’s Parish, Ft. Motte, SC as part of our International Student Weekends. He opened his heart to Jesus after our church family opened their hearts, lives, homes, and church doors to him. BUT, what were students from China, India, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Brazil, Japan, and Russia doing in the “mythical village” of Ft. Motte? How did a church in the middle of a cotton field launch a ministry that is having a global impact?

The flight home from a conference is always a mixed bag. A number of years ago, I returned from Plano, Texas, where we held our Anglican 1000 gathering affirming our commitment to new churches. I was full of vision and energy. Scribbling in a notepad on my seat-back tray, I wrote notes of new friends and old, ideas and vision, challenges and goals. Could there be a more exciting time for a minister of the gospel? We were planting churches!

What does it mean to be devoted to the Apostle’s teaching and why is that important for our spiritual lives?

It’s easy to compare the Old and New Testaments and think of missionary activity – the outward-focused spreading of faith in the God of the universe – as something new and unprecedented until Jesus’ time. After all, there is little evidence that Israelites traveled very far outside the Promised Land except as prisoners of war. However, a closer look at the Hebrew Bible shows that God had threaded mission as a constant theme throughout his word, and even into the very fabric of Creation.

I’m sitting on our plane, flying back to North Carolina from Chicago, still reeling and absorbing all that ACNA Assembly 2017: Mission on our Doorstep was and offered to me.…

I set off on my bike for the Garifuna village to spend the afternoon with friends, to stroll on the beautiful Tela beach along the Honduran coast. Before I knew it, it was getting late and I knew, as a young single girl living in a foreign land, that I’d better hurry home before it got too dark to be out on my own.…

In the launching of our redesigned website, we took care to make sure that the story of our history was preserved and presented with accuracy and honor. As we thought about our 43 years of helping Anglicans live as mission-minded Christians, we began to see three distinct eras of our ministry’s life.…

When I first step off the plane, turning the corner into the crowded terminal and before I even collect my suitcase from baggage claim, I’m hit by a deep, rich aroma of berbere. Berbere is a pepper that is fire-roasted, sun-dried, and ground into a red powder that spices nearly every dish in Ethiopian cuisine.…

We had been in Honduras for a few months when I decided to wander off in the crowded San Pedro Sula market to “look for care bears.” I was three years old, but I still remember my mother’s frantic expression, running through the rows of vendors, with my older sister in tow. “Busca mi nina,” she called over and over in her broken Spanish. She was sweating, half-crazed, and crying when she swooped me into her arms, shouting, “never do that again!”

When I was eleven, my dad picked me to go with him to church where a missionary would be sharing about her experiences serving in Africa. I remember being mesmerized by the photos and the stories she shared. After just an hour of being exposed to the world of foreign missions, I said to my dad on the way home, “I want to be a missionary when I grow up!”