We expected to convert these outreach ventures in a significant input for team member´s faith formation, through encounters, building or renewing  relationships, work together and learn mutually. It is worth to mention that all these ventures also present an ongoing challenge to the participants, who are urged to understand and sustain a way of life nurtured on Mission Trips. This is a desirable goal, which not always is possible to reach!

From time to time, Team Members experience their trips in different ways, even if they belong to the same group and engaged  in common practices like: a work project, worship service, play, have communion, tell stories, reflexions, meetings, friendship and healing. A Mission Trip Leader can find different reactions of the participants, which are really hard to manage. On one trip a team member expresses his disappointment, other didn´t find the inspiration she wanted or some other just try to refocus their own faith. A trip leader may be tempted to view the participants who have a more positive experience as the real Mission Trip, while regarding the other participants as interruptions that have to be managed.

So we can ask ourselves; both the leaders and team members; “Are Mission Trips worthwhile? Must a Mission Trip be adjust or transformed?

Of course, these concerns are well founded. People have the right to get a wider picture of what they have been involved in. It is hard to express with a few words, what Mission Trips do for the communities of the Costa Rican Lutheran Church.

Without any doubt, for our church, the most important benefit is the sense that we are joined together with others in strong bonds of fellowship, which are also depending of both sides and not always this sense is real. By welcoming Mission Trips into our communities, we have the opportunity to share our lives, discuss how we discern the Lord's guidance in our ministries, sharing our mission, pretending enrich the relative relationship that  is one of the main talks we do with delegations. The ideal target is “to enrich each other” during these encounters, but the hosting church never get a picture of what the visiting groups do in their own Mission.  This looks like a one way sharing.

In addition to develop relationships with our communities and congregation´s Mission Trips have made a number of important practical and economic contributions to our church. In fact, the contributions that mission trips have made to the life of our church consist in following matters: BOTH, the up-building of relationships (through renewal of friendships, workshops, liturgical services, meetings), AND the building and maintenance of physical structures by building walls, painting, putting in floors and electrical installations, that could satisfy an immediate need, that give not only a safe place in which to develop their activities, but also it would serve, in years to come, as a very suitable environment for other organized activities for local kids and youth.

These 2 matters must we place in a very specific relation: economical and practical contributions, which interact with nature forces.  That’s why the contributions you do in Global Mission, cover not only an immediate need, also they supply a preventive measure.

The team that worked on these work projects could not know, however, that the floor, sanitary drainages, electrical installations, paintings would also serve to provide a safe haven and a means of defense against the impact of the nature, like floods, humidity, storms  that usually come every year in these vulnerable regions in the country side.
The small example above illustrates how the work of mission delegations goes way beyond solving immediate needs. We agree with those who say that the needs we see around us are too many, and that it's impossible to address them all. We think, though, that the question isn't whether needs continue to exist or not. The larger question is whether we are able to maintain relationships of faith and brotherhood over time, as signs of the kingdom of God.
Mission Trips make the difference in this matter, because they are able to travel and translated the values of the gospel into practical tasks, which reminded us of Matthew 22:39, where Jesus says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We deeply appreciate their identification with our situation. Their presence and involvement have helped us demonstrate what it means to be a living community of love.

Every Mission Trip encourage and inspire us to continue working to address such challenges as discrimination, exclusion, and the impact of natural disasters. To be sure, buildings and structures can be replaced after time, but not the relationships. That's why we must urge ourselves to give maintenance to our relationships too, so that they do not grow rusty, and instead can give each other hope and inspiration. For us, receiving you is a possibility to share how the Lord is guiding us to build a holistic mission of Word, Sacrament and Service, a mission that we; as a Lutherans and Christians, have been called.

The following questions must be answer not only for this article, but also for the readers as well: “If Mission Trips have been doing well or are they really needed in the Global Mission?
Trying to answer from my side; I say that as Lutherans must hold together to share the fellowship and praying and recognizing the Christian way of life, which give us a profound unity to love and solidarity. This affirmation can give the mission trip´s member’s insight in Holy Trinity’s mystery, through “The Father who gives us all creation, Christ all his work and the Holy Spirit all his gifts”.

So, the responsibility for a successful mission trip is not only a matter of the host community, but also a matter of the visiting delegation. God´s grace is for everybody, which is visible (nature), edible (the food), drinkable (drinks) and audible (all the sounds we hear around us).  All these gifts we receive make us truly ourselves, but only if we share and exchange with others. To live a Christian life is to be pulled out of one’s isolation and to be united with Christ and the rest of the humanity, especially with people who suffer of poverty, discrimination and exclusion. Mission Trips also allows us to share joys and sorrows, to pray for one another, and exchange gifts and resources that the Lord has put under our care.

Every Mission Trip, is for the people in the communities, is like a fresh breeze over the humid, rainy forest where the joy and encouragement make it possible to finish with a hard journey across the schedule.  A mission trip more than ideas, meetings, plays, reflections or work projects involves the construction of bridges. It is a project of a different structure, involving two parts with the same responsibility and benefits, where the communication is essential, and both participants are builders and user of the new bridge. A strong and reliable bridge must guarantee a fair participation of both sides and a fair participation of all, both pastoral and lay people.

A Mission Trip Member explains that a: “Bridge must be constructed from both sides towards each other and meet in the middle”