Theresa Gazo Bloom went on her first RP Missions trip to Phoenix, Ariz., in the winter of 2004 when she had just turned 16. She helped out on the Purcellville, Va., team in 2005 and went on the San Diego, Calif., trip in the spring 2007. The next year, she served in Karamoja, Uganda. Now she and her husband, Nick Bloom, have 3 children and attend Eastvale, Pa., RPC. Below is what she had to say about RP Missions and its impact on her life.

I grew up in the RPCNA but was in a church distant from other RP churches, so I craved seeing and being a part of that bigger picture of the work in God’s kingdom. In addition to having a fairly solid foundation in doctrine and theology from my parents, my pastor, and my church, I was also raised with an appreciation for hard work, and was taught to be a hard worker. (For instance, while other families had picnics, my dad took the name Labor Day literally—and to our annoyance at the time, our family would use long weekends to work on projects of all sorts.)

In going on mission trips, I figured I could at least use my energy and basic skills to help a church complete physical work and to be an encouragement to their gospel ministry in that way. There’s always work to do! And in each trip, we completed some major projects that would have been quite a large undertaking for the local church or mission on their own. 

I was eager to learn more about evangelism as well. Being outside of familiar contexts helped embolden me to speak well of Christ. Through the studies and evangelism projects we did on the teams, I found that God uses the nitty-gritty of relational ministry quite powerfully, and that has been a lifelong takeaway from RP Missions.

I’m continually challenged to examine how I’m interacting with the people God placed in my life. Am I kind? Am I approachable? Do I always have an answer for the hope that is within me? Do people even know that there is a greater hope within me? How can I better live out the gospel in ways that actually point to Christ (instead of puffing myself up), to both believers and unbelievers? The training that I had through RP Missions has helped me to see the ways that life is ministry, so I’m not off the hook when I’m not participating in some sort of formal evangelism.

RP Missions helped me realize, as I considered whether God was calling me to longer-term mission work, that missionaries are regular people, with regular problems, in an irregular context—and the latter doesn’t glamorize the former, as many might wish it did! It was helpful to see that any human organization, be it a family, a church, or a mission, has hidden difficulties as a result of sin. This helps me to guard against a “grass is greener” perspective about faraway missions. And this has helped me to know a number of real ways to pray about missions and our missionaries.

At this point, my family and I don’t know whether we’ll be called to overseas missions, but we are trying to cultivate a ready-to-work and eager-to-serve attitude in our daily lives as a part of our small congregation. Encouraging fellow believers, trying to pour energy into the life of the church, and seeking to form deeper relationships with unbelievers in order to introduce others to the love God has for us in Christ Jesus is exhausting. The service is ceaseless. But in many ways, missions work is about living with ordinary faithfulness as followers of Christ, regardless of where we are on the map.