GYC SE 2013: Called Apart

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC Southeast

GYC SE 2013: International Missions

Steven Grabiner

Dosung Kim

International Missions: Sacrifice or Privilege?

Let's bare heads together for a word of prayer, if that's all right.

Father in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity to come together and to talk about the privilege of mission service.

We thank you so much for the call that you put on each 1 of our lives.

It's a privilege to hear it and to respond.

Well our title for this talk is International Missions, Sacrifice or Privilege?

And I appreciate the little bit that I caught of the previous presentation.

My name is Stephen Grabiner, and I work with a international mission organization called OCI, Outpost Centers International.

And we work with about 90 full-time missionaries in 30 odd different countries, 35 different countries.

My wife and I spent about 10 years, probably close to the best 10 years of our life, in Africa, in the country of Zambia, working on a mission station called Riverside Farm.

And while we were there, we occasionally got to pretty much every year, we'd get student missionaries that would come.

You come short term, and everything's different, as you just heard as well.

But I want to share a little bit about how we ended up getting there, what some of the process was in our personal lives.

And when we first got married, we were working in New York City, which is another mission field for sure.

We were running a vegetarian restaurant called Country Life.

And for lunch, my lovely wife, she was the head cook.

And so we would serve about 400, 500 people a day for lunch from around 1230 to 230.

But people would come in, Wall Street brokers, stock brokers, bankers, just people that worked out in that area.

We were right in the shadow of the Twin Towers.

We did Daniel classes and various different things.

1 of the classes I gave was a stress management class.

And these people that worked down there were prime candidates, as you can expect.

And so in the stress management course, did something that's quite popular these days.

And it's kind of like the 100-year birthday exam, Or what do you want people to say at your funeral?

And I said, what I want you to do for homework this time is to go home and think, you're at the end of your life, it's your 100-year birthday, or you're in the grave, what do you want people to say about you?

Because I wanted them to be thinking, where do they want their life to be going?

But I noticed over the past, excuse me, the following few days, 1 particular customer didn't come back in.

His name was Basil, the tall guy, pretty heavy set.

And then it was about A week and a half, maybe 2 weeks later, he came bounding back in.

He was tanner, and he just looked like really electric.

And he said, well, after the stress class, I went home, and I did what you told me.

And I decided that I just didn't want to work my whole life in New York City.

And so I moved my brokerage firm out into the country.

North of New York City, 50 miles is not really country.

And so when he came back in, I was like, wow.

And so the Lord tapped me on the shoulder and said, well, you know, you should do this as well, that you should think about your life.

I remember going home and kind of thinking, so if I was 100, which I'm closer to now than I was then, what would I want my life to be?

I said, well, I want to be a good husband.

I want my children to have the opportunity to live in another culture.

So we left the restaurant in New York City.

I got a job as a pastor, was working in the city of Boston, opened up a vegetarian restaurant there, starting 2 churches in the Boston area, working for the conference.

11 years of denominational service, and I got an invitation to go to Zambia to work as a self-supporting missionary in the country of Zambia.

But in the back of my mind was, hey, it's on the 100-year priority list.

It's 1 of the things that's really important to you.

And so I'd been a pastor for 11 years, denominational retirement and benefits.

And if I had kids that were old enough at that time, they could have gone to Southern for a discount and all those things.

But those things weren't on my 100-year list.

But giving my children an experience was.

We went to Riverside, the name of the institute there, as self-supporting voluntary missionaries.

But it was helpful for me because I'd stepped back and I thought, what's really most important in the large scope of life?

And most of you here are probably younger than I was when I did that 100-year test.

But I really encourage you to do it, because it helps clarify what's really most important.

And so we were there, as I said, for close to 10 years.

We came back, and I've been working with OCI since then, 2006, first as vice president and now as president.

And I just want to share another personal picture.

About 5 years ago, maybe, I began to have pain, like real severe pain.

And I was ignoring it, because you live in the mission field, you don't have doctors at hand.

So I forgot that we lived here and we had doctors around.

But I just was really trying to get through this pain.

And it was really, really, really, really intense.

Back to Menu

Series

GYC SE 2013: International Missions

International Missions: Sacrifice or Privilege?

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

International Missions: Sacrifice or Privilege?

54m

Sound Doctrine