By: Eric Hoffman
My first international mission trip was in high school, and that is where God’s invitation became unmistakable. Up to that point my faith was not really my own, one foot in youth group, one foot in the chase to be more popular at school. It took being far outside my comfort zone to finally hear God inviting me to follow him with all that I was.
About a year ago I sat with a few dads whose kids are the same ages as mine. We were talking about raising teenagers in Williamson County, where our kids can grow up surrounded by Christian language and activity and never have to decide anything for themselves. Then someone asked what shaped our faith most as teenagers. One thread ran through every story. Every one of us had a milestone moment on an international trip in high school.
That conversation sparked an idea. What if we took our sons?
We partnered with a church in Luquillo, Puerto Rico, one of the earliest ABC Baptist churches on the island, more than a hundred years old and led by Pastor Samuel Santiago Ramirez. We visited homes, worked on the church property, and part of our group jumped into the church’s annual VBS. One night we even played against members of the Puerto Rican youth sand handball team, several of whom attend the church.
At one home, the family sent the team back with mangos picked right off the tree, the freshest we have ever tasted. “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!” (Psalm 34:8). We ate them as a team at dinner at the Church, juice running down our chins; we experienced the goodness of God during that dinner together.
At night we made space for team time and worked through intentional conversations from a resource I had wanted to beta test called Raising Disciples. What I did not expect was how quickly relationships went deep, ours with that church and ours with our own boys. What we valued most as dads was slowing down enough to ask our sons what they were noticing, and then actually listening. The boys loved the students of the church, the work, and discovering what the body of Christ looks like far from home. Each of them walked away with a moment that was his own.
None of us can manufacture that moment for our children. We cannot hand down a faith through pressure or proximity alone. Only the Spirit gives a person a heart of his own, and Jesus is the one who does that work from the inside out. What we can do is place our kids in the presence of people who are already following him, and then get out of the way.
That is what relationships make possible. These trips are not about projects; they are relationships that change us as much as anyone. We hope to build more trips like this, so fathers and sons can follow Jesus with their whole hearts and help others do the same.
