Jody Brown

OneNewsNow.com editor-in-chief

February 2015 – Living conditions were uncomfortable, the heat and humidity were unbearable, the food was unfamiliar, and the schedule was unrelenting – just right for learning a few lessons.

I’m talking about an eight-day mission trip, my first, to the tropical island nation of Cuba in early October. Traveling as part of a 10-member team, I was excited to see how God is working in that communist country through churches, their pastors, and their people. Typically, mission trips focus on sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with the unsaved, but this one had a different twist. The Cuban pastors and congregations we hoped to minister to made it crystal clear that by simply setting foot in their country, we encouraged them more than they could express.

Our team was comprised of five from my church – a Free Will Baptist church in Tupelo, Mississippi – and five representing Bridge Builders for the Cross, a ministry that traces its roots to the Cuban people in and around Pinar del Rio. While in Cuba, the pastor of our host church kept us hopping as we boarded an old, non-air-conditioned, diesel-powered, 50-passenger bus destined for a different location every day. If we weren’t headed for Havana, it was Pinar del Rio, the tiny village of Las Martinas (at the far western end of Cuba), or Matanzas (two hours east of Havana).

People who have traveled to Cuba typically describe it as a “step back in time,” often in reference to the old American cars that are in great number. And while I certainly experienced that feeling, I also found the surroundings surprisingly familiar. 

In fact, I felt transported back more than 40 years to a precious time in my life when I lived on the Pacific island of Guam with my parents and older brother. The tropical environment, the vegetation (coconut, banana, avocado, and mango trees), the simple but brightly colored homes of cinder-block and corrugated tin roofs – it was, indeed, a step back in time for me.

For you see, Guam is where I spent my high school years and “came of age” in some respects, primarily because of personal relationships and cultural differences there. So as I took in the surroundings in Cuba, I began to consider that maybe God had permitted me to make this journey for similar reasons – not to convey any great spiritual wisdom to my fellow Christians, but to learn something from them and their culture.

Joy, hospitality
What, some skeptics might ask, could American Christians learn from fellow believers living under a communist regime? For starters, how about joy, hospitality, and stewardship?

As we traveled across the island nation, we found ourselves stuffed into that hot bus in the company of Cuban Christians who obviously and sincerely enjoyed being together. They sang worship songs as the bus rumbled down the road. They loudly greeted family members and friends when the bus stopped along the highway to pick them up. 

And when we reached our work destinations, they laughed and joked and poked fun at each other as they welded metal, mudded stone walls, and made do with whatever materials and tools they were able to scrape together as they worked in hot, humid, dirty conditions. They knew how to “count it all joy” (James 1:2).

Most of the homes we visited in Cuba – usually those of pastors and their families – made government-subsidized housing in America look regal. We found walls constructed of Styrofoam blocks covered with a thin layer of flaking stucco, wooden slats where windows normally are, and air-conditioning a rarity. One wouldn’t expect those living under such conditions to have much to share. But our team was greeted with the best the Cubans had to offer. 

Wherever we went, meals were served family style to accommodate our unpredictable schedule and almost always included fresh fruit (pineapple, papaya, avocado), rice and beans, and, of course, the dark, rich Cuban coffee that we came to enjoy during our brief stay. We were treated like royalty by people who really had no business expending their limited resources on us. They gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability (2 Corinthians 8:3).

Stewardship
And speaking of resources, if there was one thing we learned about our Cuban brothers and sisters in Christ, it was this: They are a creative bunch of folks. On numerous occasions, we witnessed how much they were able to accomplish for God with such limited resources. In comparison, I realized how little we American Christians seem to get done with so much available to us. Items we toss in the trash without a second thought, they see as useful – from using discarded PVC conduit to construct church pews, to salvaging the front half of an electric fan cover to use as a sifter for mixing concrete. 

This lesson, I suppose, is that when you have very little, nothing is of “no use” – and that those of us living in a land of plenty often overlook the value of the mundane and disposable. They exemplify the principle established by the resourceful wife in Proverbs 31, making the most of everything at their disposal. 

God used these experiences to pierce my heart, compelling me to share with one of the Cubans possibly why God had allowed me to go there. Perhaps, I explained, God wanted me to learn how to rely on Him instead of the multitude of “things” back home. His response amazed me: “Perhaps we Cubans need to go to America so that we can learn to rely on God in the midst of plenty.”

When it came time to leave, we were eager to return to our families and to the land of hot showers, hamburgers, and air-conditioning, yet we didn’t want to leave the Cubans who had opened their homes and their hearts to us. 

That’s probably why I left a part of myself right there in Havana. But I brought home much more than I left behind. I brought home life lessons on joy, hospitality, and stewardship. Lessons on the love and grace of God.  

Looking for a short mission opportunity? Find out what your denomination has to offer, or use the resources below: 
▶ shorttermmissions.com – 479-524-9110
▶ Adventures in Missions – adventures.org, 800-881-2461
▶ Bridge Builders for the Cross – bbftc.org, 580-436-1302
▶ Global Outreach International – globaloutreach.org, 800-961-9244 

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Jody Brown is editor-in-chief of OneNewsNow.com, AFA’s online news outlet. Above, Jody and a new friend in Cuba. Brown’s mission to Cuba came just weeks before Pres. Obama initiated renewed diplomatic relations with the island nation.