Jet Lag is helping me get things done

Jet Lag- “a temporary disruption of the body’s normal biological rhythms after high-speed air travel through several time zones.” -from dictionary.com

Sunday night at 11pm our family flew in to Canada after 2 weeks in Chiang Rai, N. Thailand. Our first night home I went to sleep at 1 and woke up at 11, then I napped from 4-7. Last night I went to sleep at 1 and was woken at 4:30 by our beautiful daughter Abby. All Abby wanted to do was watch cartoons and eat yogurt, which made sense as it felt like 4:30 in the afternoon for her with the time change. So, i got up and twittered, blogged and wrote a 6 page, 1500 work paper for a class I am taking, thanks Jet lag.

Our trip to Thailand was great. More and more I believe in doing Mission as a family, not just as dad leaving his family to go and reach, teach and serve others. What I have found out though is that bringing your kids on a trip you are leading is very inconvenient and robs you of your personal schedule. It takes the trip, or a lot of it out of your hands and puts it into the hands of God. You just can’t do everything you plan on doing because sometimes, usually at the most inconvenient times, your child will need you. Then you have to decide weather you should kill your schedule for your kid, or leave your kid crying in a crazy foreign country to be the hero and leader of the team, when really Jesus should be the hero and leader of the team.

I really want to figure this whole missions as a family thing out. I don’t want to rob my family of a great time while out there, but I also don’t want to rob the participants who payed a lot of money to go on this trip of anything. I want them to learn about Jesus, culture, serving others, family, community, parenting, etc. I will continue to bring my family on trips, not all the time, but as least once a year, but I want it to be healthy, both for them and for the participants.

Have you any experiences in this? Have you done a mission trip with your family? How did it compare with doing one without? What are the pros and cons of doing mission as a family and without?