Beyond the Plan: Andy & Vesper’s Trip to El Paso

When my daughter and I joined the 2024 Family Mission Trip to El Paso with our church, I had a plan. Vesper had just finished third grade, and my hope was to widen her world—to show her life beyond suburban Grapevine and teach her the joy of serving others in gospel-centered ways.

I wanted her to see the Great Commission lived out: the call to go, serve, and proclaim. But the Christian life is rarely about what we accomplish for God—it’s about what God graciously accomplishes through us in the ordinary and often unglamorous work of loving our neighbor. My well-intended agenda quickly gave way to something deeper: the recognition that God’s mission doesn’t need my strategy nearly as much as it requires my surrender.

In the days leading up to the trip, I tried to make it sound “fun,” hoping to stir my daughter’s excitement. But the Christian life isn’t about packaging obedience as entertainment. It’s about entering the tension between joy and sacrifice—between being deadly serious and playfully alive.

The laughter we shared and the sweat we poured out weren’t competing experiences; they were both expressions of grace. In moments of exhaustion—when Vesper’s small hands helped set up for the festival on a very hot Texas day, memorized and acted out a gospel skit for the community, or prayed over a stranger—I saw in her the joyful seriousness of the kingdom: a child at play doing eternal work.

It was a reminder that God’s power is made perfect not in our intensity, but in our dependence.

The trip became less about exposing her to “mission” and more about exposing us both to grace. In El Paso, I was reminded that the Great Commission isn’t a heroic sprint across borders—it’s the daily dying to self and rising to new life in Christ.

I saw how the gospel frees us to labor with conviction and laugh without pretense—to serve without ego and rejoice without demand. We sought to be “seriously unserious” people, working for the kingdom of Christ that embodies a faith that works hard, loves deeply, and rests joyfully in the finished work of Christ.

The question is not if you’re called, but to whom and to where you’re called.

Join us for Sending Sunday on November 9 as we unveil our lineup of 2026 trips. After both services, stay for an interest meeting in Annex 2 to learn more about each trip and how you can get involved.