I received an email today from Rev. Daniel Genovesi, the minister, Lord willing, with whom I expect to be working initially during my time serving as a missionary in Argentina. Of course, while we often think of sending missionaries to Latin America, we sometimes forget that churches and individuals outside of North America, Europe, and Australia can and do send missionaries.
This morning, Rev. Daniel's church, St. Mark's, commissioned and sent two women, Mercedes and Carolina, out as short-term missionaries to the Wichi tribes in Northern Argentina. They will be putting on workshops for children, women, and Sunday school teachers. He has asked for our prayers, and gives this commentary:
How can we support them from a distance? By remembering that each one of us is also a missionary, that we have an area in which to complete the specific task with which the Lord has entrusted us. We must conceive of St. Mark's as a community of missionaries dedicated to schools, clinics, stores, businesses, police, churches, fire stations, gardens, laboratories, embassies, university faculties, banks, gymnasiums, etc. We have a mission in our families, in our jobs, in our friendship and in the transformation--by way of crisis, sickness, changes, joys and pains-- of our own selves. Ora et labora: pray and work, the best way to support and grow.
Please join with St. Mark's and others in prayer for Mercedes and Carolina for the next two weeks (they return October 26th) as they serve as representatives of their church and, in a very real sense, of our Lord Jesus Christ!