When "I Do" meets "We'll Go"
Gospel Family Ministries is honored to share a Family Missions story from Jonathan & Esther Schinzler, who went on a mission trip last year to partner with missionaries serving there.
Gospel Family Ministries asked them, "How was your marriage impacted by serving together overseas"?
Here's what they had to say:
"We had the chance to serve together in Gdansk, Poland for a week during the summer of 2013. We’ve served in several ways locally, but this was our first experience together on an international mission trip.
We’ve seen that the times in our marriage that we feel closest to each other are those when we are both relying on God as well as on each other. This is what we experienced in Poland. A mission trip together to a different country, different language and different culture takes away all the distractions of our American culture and brings new challenges that are best tackled together. When tired, we leaned on each other for encouragement to keep going. When frustrated, we drew new ideas from each other to accomplish things with a new approach. When processing things we learned, we discussed and prayed through them with each other.
When participating in missions together, you also have the chance to see your spouse in a new light. We both saw strengths and characteristics of each other highlighted in Poland that we had only seen glimpses of before. It’s encouraging to watch your spouse exercise their gifts and demonstrate their love of the Lord in new ways.
Often, coming home after a mission trip brings feelings of letdown and discouragement because your everyday life doesn’t measure up to how you served constantly overseas. It makes things here seem meaningless. But the blessing of going on the Poland trip together was that we had each other to share these feelings with and to support and encourage daily. We greatly appreciate the memories we made and experiences we had and look forward to our next mission trip together."
