by Sami Gutierrez on June 23, 2025
I had the opportunity last week to sit down with the people who introduced me to missions. My high school youth pastor, Marvin, and his wife, Barb, were visiting the area, and we all had the chance to have lunch together. Before they came to pick me up, I was surprised at the nervousness that I felt. It had been quite a few years since we’d had the chance to have a full conversation, and I wasn’t sure what we were going to talk about besides the normal “catching up.” As we sat down over burgers, Marv and Barb did ask all the expected questions about my job, my friends, soccer, and all the things going on in my life. But as we moved past the small talk, I felt my nervousness fading.
Hearing Marv’s voice again reminded me of my very first mission trip. I was 13 years old, starting high school in the fall, when I went on a short-term trip with my church’s high school youth group to Sucre, Bolivia. Marv was leading the trip with a handful of other adults. I remember a lot of nights staying up doing daily debriefs, discussing all the good things and all the hard things we had seen. For the first time, I had the privilege of getting to know kids and adults who lived and grew in incredibly different circumstances than my own. I watched as my peers spent their time, sweat, and energy working in a community for the sheer love of its people. Not because they were especially virtuous or anything, but because that love had been modeled to them.
Over the next four years, I was a part of Marv’s high school ministry. I got to see firsthand how high school youth group works. I was shown unconditional love and friendship by my leaders at a time when I really needed it. I was baptized in a river in a public declaration of my faith. And yes, I made it back to Bolivia another few times. I got to benefit from the ministry Marv had built in obedience to God and all the unconditional love that was shown there.
I wondered, as we sat there eating our burgers, if the man sitting across from me could see the carryovers of his influence on my life. Student ministry is a seed planting place. The nature of it is that you don’t always get to see the rest of the story. But as I laid out all the reasons I love my job doing student ministry full time, I wondered if he was recognizing the vectors my life was falling along. In my excitement (and stress) over the Alaska mission trip I’m leading 8th and 9th grade students on next week, does he see the 13-year-old who was never the same after that first trip? Who has spent her life trying to model that unconditional love for other students in other communities all over the world?
A perfect model of this cross-cultural love lies in John 4. It’s the story of the woman at the well. In it, Jesus has an incredibly interesting conversation with a Samaritan woman who comes to draw water while He is resting at her town’s well. It ends in her believing in Jesus and telling everyone she sees about Him. It’s definitely worth a read if you haven’t gotten the chance to do so yet, or if it’s just been a while. While Jesus is finishing up the conversation with her, His disciples walk up. They ask if He’s hungry. He responds, “I have food to eat that you do not know about. My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.” Jesus drew sustenance from obeying His Father, who loved the world so much that He gave His Son to know us. All our love for the people of the world is derived from that. In every mission trip and in every night at TSM, this is the love that we aspire to receive and pour out.
Jesus goes on to tell His disciples, “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
The fields remain ripe for the harvest. There were youth ready to encounter Jesus when Marv was doing ministry. There are youth ready to encounter Jesus today in Windsor and Fort Collins, in Alaska, and in Bolivia. I am the product of much planting and watering, and I love taking part in building God’s kingdom by doing the same.
When you look at Jesus’s ministry, there are a lot of “wow” moments, but there are also a lot of moments of quiet, relational discipleship. You see Jesus change the life of an extremely unlikely convert, but you also see it immediately followed up by this teaching moment with His disciples. I think missions, and especially missions involving students, is really quite similar. You build this team of students you’ve been spending time with all year, and you hope that they have a “wow” moment that makes the whole trip “worth it.” What’s trickier to remember sometimes is that mentorship and discipleship are so often where the real life-change happens. A mission trip is an opportunity to take all the unconditional love they receive and give it an outlet. To take their place in the great legacy of seed planters and harvesters who have gone before them.
I would encourage you to take some time today to look at your own life. Who were the people who made you who you are today? How are you taking part in this legacy? What seeds are you planting? Who are you investing in, and who is investing in you? Being a part of building God’s kingdom is not only a great privilege but also a calling that’s given to all of us. I pray someday you get a moment to sit down with someone who made a difference in your life, and with someone you made a difference to.
