Riley Harris is testimony to the fact that missions are not just for the outgoing. Having first come on a short-term mission to Honduras with her church, Montana Avenue Bible Church of Caldwell, ID, she was encouraged by the efforts of those she met to get to know her, even though they didn’t speak her language. She returned as a three-month intern to fulfill her internship credit requirements in pursuit of an associate of applied science in horticulture, where she found herself pushed outside of her comfort zone in all the best ways.
When Riley returned to Honduras for a three-month internship after serving there for a week with her church, she knew she was taking a plunge of faith.
“In a way, ‘introvert’ is something we use to hide,” she says, “but at the same time, … having to step out there and … talk to people I don’t know, in a language I don’t know very well, was very outside of my comfort zone.”
Even though she was honest about her scruples, she chose not to view them as obstacles, but rather as opportunities for growth.
“You want to hear their stories,” she says, “because that’s part of why you got here, is to get to know the people of Honduras and to understand them. So that was an area where I felt like I was really weak … but also an area where I felt like I grew a lot.”
“It was really good to learn about their culture because you learned more ways that things mattered or things related to them, but then it was also fun to see how much people are people everywhere. The biggest difference really is the language barrier.”
EVANGELISM AND HOSPITALITY
The candor of the culture helped her to open up in ways that ultimately challenged her approach to evangelism.
“One of the big takeaways that I had … was that it’s everyone’s mission to share the gospel,” she says. “It’s not just one person’s, or a missionary’s, or a pastor’s.”
“And having the opportunities to talk with so many people and the openness here has been really good [for] becoming more comfortable with speaking about [the gospel].”
As she intentionally studied Scripture, shared her testimony, and engaged in conversation with those around her, her understanding of the Great Commission was fleshed out, and she developed a greater desire and confidence to follow through.
“Our main goal is to glorify God, and the way we glorify God is by obeying Him and following His commands,” she says. “Obeying Him is following Him in everything, not just the things that are easy.”
A shift in her evangelistic perspective wasn’t the only result of her cross-cultural reflections.
“The way we share our homes,” she says, referring to the United States, “we do certain things and we clean them just such a way or prepare just such a food, but it’s mostly about how people are going to view us.”
However, in Honduras, she says, “You can be walking by their house – they’re not even ready for you – and they’ll still be like, ‘Here. Come in. Get some food.’ It’s about making the other person comfortable and making the other person feel welcomed in that situation.”
Engaged at the time to her now husband, this example set the tone for her future homemaking.
“It was a very good challenge as I’m getting ready to have my own home to … learn how to be hospitable and … how to be generous with my home and my time,” she says.
“The importance they place on relationships, and time, and just getting to be with other people and hear what they have to say was really impactful, because it’s something that I have a hard time with, and knowing as I go back to the States, I have an opportunity to really work on that area of my life.”
CULTURE AND RELATIONSHIP
Serving one-on-one with a seminary family in the rural community of Potrerillos was particularly enriching for her perspective of culture and relationship.
Job Gámez, a fourth-year SEPE student, along with his wife, Adria, and two kids, are missionaries using subsistence agriculture as an outlet for proclaiming the gospel to their farming neighbors.
In reference to Adria, Riley says, “She’d studied the same thing I had, and she had come to Honduras to keep on serving in that way. That was really encouraging for me to see.”
“We got a lot of opportunities to connect and just encourage each other in what we were doing.”
As Riley prepared and planted a demonstration garden and ventured into the community, Job came alongside her to help her positively interact with a culture foreign to her own.
“While I was working with him, he would tell me, … ‘This is how the culture functions here, and this is what we’re doing,’” she says. “Afterwards, … he’d be like, ‘What’s impacted you about this community?’”
“Some of those communities – it was hard to see, but good at the same time. Getting to talk it through afterwards was really good to solidify my thoughts and understand it better.”
HORTICULTURE AND LANGUAGE
Practically speaking, the hands-on experience in a new context tested her horticultural knowledge and expanded her experiential skill set.
“The state I live in is a desert, and oftentimes we’re only taught how to function in that kind of dry land,” she says. “Coming here where it was wet and it’s all mountains, I got to work a lot with areas of agriculture that I had heard of but hadn’t gotten to experience yet.”
“Everything helped solidify my learning and to grow my knowledge, because I got to learn so much more and put into practice things that were only theories in my head.”
Learning the language was another practical benefit she would look forward to applying back home.
“There’s a lot of people from Spanish-speaking countries that work in [my career] and a lot of times, there’s this divide between the workers because some speak English and some speak Spanish,” she says. “I felt like I got to learn a lot of Spanish, which would help me when I got back to the States.”
Although her internship may have stretched her to the limit, she persevered and ultimately came away with a clearer picture of God’s design for His chosen instruments, and particularly its expression in missions.
Riley says it best:
It was really encouraging to see how many people from different places were being impacted by MEDA, and also how many people there were around the world serving Christ.
Getting to come down for the three months … gave me a lot more insight into what it means and what it’s like to be in a different country and how much need there is, and then also how many ways there are to help fill that need.
There were kids, there were young teens, there were adults, there were pastors and doctors, and all of these different people with different skill sets, and everyone was able to serve in one way or another that helped.
It’s not about us being the perfect person or doing things just right. God can use anyone and everyone for His purpose and His will.
