Editorial:  This letter offers insight and encouragement from a team leader whose youth group recently served and made a big difference.  We're so grateful that he let his "voice" be heard and that he shared his thoughts....enjoy.

Dear Friends,

We met some new friends in Jamaica who we very likely will never see again in person.  But their faces and our experience will be in our memories forever.  We also met some new friends from North Point and the surrounding Atlanta area who I hope we do see again and often.  While there is so much to do in Jamaica, and we barely touched the surface, I still feel that we accomplished a lot.  I was so very proud of our young people in the way they conducted themselves and I’m certain Jamaica made a lasting impression on them showing just how difficult merely surviving can be for so many people around the world.

Sherryl and I met Marla about fifteen years ago.  She had her ministry in Jamaica back then and had been working there for years prior to our friendship.  No matter what circumstance, event, or business you may have with Marla, the conversation will always eventually end up discussing what is going on in Jamaica.  I’m glad we have people like Marla who are willing to devote their lives to missions.  I’ll go occasionally, but I really like the comforts of home.  Frankly, it’s easier to send my money than myself.  I’m not being callus towards missions, only honest.

While we were in Jamaica, I kept analyzing the similarities and the differences of missions to a conventional business.  Yes, Marla’s American Caribbean Experience (A.C.E.) is a business. She has rent, utilities, payroll, maintenance and other comparable overhead just like any other business.  She sells a product just like other businesses, too.  Her product is missions.

For most companies, the more products they sell the more money they make.  For A.C.E., the more missions they attempt the more money that is required. We didn’t run out of time, we ran out of concrete blocks.  Every good deed that A.C.E. attempts in the community requires transportation.  Those rented buses and vans are not cheap.  We talked just a little bit about how we could help financially in our wrap up discussion Saturday night.  I know giving money to missions is like giving money to a black hole.

There is so much to do - how could my small contribution do any good?  Jamaica is a long, long term project.   As Americans we are goal oriented.  We want a time frame that has a beginning and an ending.  We don’t like to start something that we don’t believe is winnable.  We like to win. Men like to fix things.  We want to know when we are finished.  With these thoughts in mind and my comparing missions to traditional business, I blended all these ideas and thoughts together and came up with this idea that might help A.C.E. with their campaign to create funding for missions.

Traditional businesses usually derive revenue from two channels:  new sales and recurring revenue.   New sales provide burst of cash while recurring revenue sustains the business and smoothes out the peaks and spikes when new sales slump.  I believe these same concepts would be effective in missions.  If you feel moved to contribute financially to A.C.E., think about doing so in two parts.  This would simulate the new sales and recurring revenue aspects of a traditional business sales cycle. 

Think of an amount that you would like to send as an initial gift representing the new sale and an amount that you would like to send monthly for the next twelve months representing the recurring revenue.   Whether you send $100 initially and $10 for the next twelve months or a $1000 initially and $100 for the next twelve months won’t really make a great impact.  But when 50 or 100 families are doing the same thing, A.C.E. will benefit greatly.  And while some of us would rather just send one check for the whole thing I think that is a mistake.  Those twelve monthly checks after our initial gift check have a sustaining benefit that A.C.E. needs and it gives us a monthly reminder of our trip and the prayers we need to lift every month for the Jamaicans and others around the world.

Tomorrow’s world will be governed by today’s young people.  That is why it is so important that we teach our young people the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We can’t anticipate the world of the future and the rules necessary to survive that world.  But with the love of Jesus Christ they’ll be able to make their own decisions and to govern wisely.  Thirty four percent of the Jamaican population is between the ages of 0 -14 years of age.  Please help A.C.E. teach them the gospel.

Yours truly,
Kerry Myrick