What’s the most important thing you’ve ever done? Perhaps you have never thought about it, and perhaps you have thought about it and can’t think of anything important that you’ve ever done.

I’m not really sure what is the most important thing I’ve ever done. Maybe it was becoming a father. Maybe it was going to Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. For that matter, maybe it was dropping out of the seminary. I have no idea if those things were actually important, or just significant in my life. Maybe something I didn’t even notice—a word of encouragement or a compliment, a quiet example, a small act that I didn’t even notice doing—will turn out in the end to have been my most important contribution to life on this planet.

But maybe, just maybe, the most important thing I’ve ever done happened on my first mission trip to the desert of Northern Mexico.

An unexpected challenge

It was the second day, sometime in the early afternoon. Little kids were showing up by the dozens at the Children’s Center in Sasabe, and the students from Wisconsin Lutheran High School, Milwaukee, Wis., that I was chaperoning were getting really excited about their first big teaching gig. My job was to videotape everything for posterity. We had just rounded everybody into a huge circle to sing, when the other chaperone came up and tapped me on the elbow. I paused the tape to see what she needed.

“Chris,” she said, “about a dozen teenagers just slipped in. Do you think you can do a Bible study with them?”

I swallowed hard and said sure, mostly because I never say no to anything. Of course, I had no idea what to do or say. I had led only a handful of teen Bible studies in my life. For that matter, I only had participated in a handful of teen Bible studies in my life, and all of them were in English and had important things like lesson plans and teacher’s guides and books and . . . well, preparation for one thing. Yikes.

So, very slowly, to buy myself time to pray, I gathered up the 10 or so Bibles at the Children’s Center and brought them to a small classroom at the back of the converted house. Then, just as slowly—since I hadn’t thought of anything to do yet—I gathered some metal folding chairs. Finally, I took a deep breath. Enough stalling. I asked the teens standing in the back, who showed expressions somewhere between amused, appalled, and bored stiff, if they’d like to go in the back room and chat for a while. Sure. Why not? They followed me.