Today’s task involves remembering someone who has left your city for a designated amount of time and doing something nice for them. You have two options for today.

The first option is to think of someone you know personally from your community who is serving in the military. If you don’t know anyone in the military, think of a local family who has a friend or relative serving in the military. Tell them you’re interested in writing a note of encouragement to that person and ask for an address where you can contact him or her.

Your second option is to send a note to a missionary. This can be someone your church supports, or it can be someone you know personally who is away on a missions trip. Some missionaries you know might be serving in countries where sharing or even acknowledging the gospel is illegal. If that’s the case, they can use your support and encouragement even more as they deal with deeper spiritual warfare and are around groups of people who don’t know God. Let them know you’re praying for them (but be careful of the language you use if they are in a country where Christianity is illegal) and encourage them in the work they're doing.

I studied Japanese in high school, and one of the ways I practiced my writing and vocabulary was by writing to one of my church's missionaries in Japan: Ben Hirotaka.  It was a great exercise not just for my language skills, but for my faith as well.  Staying in contact with someone so far from home can be a challenge, but it can be rewarding to.  And it's important to remind them from time to time of the support they have at home - knowing someone somewhere supports what you're doing makes it harder to work through adversity and trials.

So today I chose to write to another missionary my church supports.  Lynn Ragsdale visited our church some months ago and talked about his work with Christian's Haven, an organization specializing in outreach to the Philippines.

Lynn's sermon was very powerful.  I actually listened to it multiple times.  He explained how missions work involved consistently stepping out of your comfort zone to do God's work.  The message spoke to me as a particular challenge, and while I haven't taken the opportunity to perform international missions work yet, I set personal goals to provide support and ministry for those here at home.

I'm hoping my note to Lynn will help encourage him to continue doing amazing work.