Author Lindsay Sills Miller with a congregation member

World Service Corps Volunteers Plant Seeds

When you are leaving to serve in ministry far from home in Blue Springs, Missouri, people frequently ask, “What on earth are you going to do in Australia?”

I can’t say I had the answer when I boarded a plane to Sydney as a World Service Corps volunteer in July 2008. Now, if I could go back and explain, I would simply respond, “I’ll be helping the church to plant more seeds.”

And I did.

My year in international preaching, teaching, and listening made me more compassionate and a better conveyor of the gospel. Now I more easily see opportunities to plant seeds. I can’t say Community of Christ will reap and harvest them all, but planting is a start.

In Newcastle, I met a fifth-grader named Dylan while co-leading a church program one Sunday. He lived next door and had accepted someone’s invitation to church. Dylan didn’t know anyone in our congregation, yet he never missed a children’s Sunday, and he joined us for worship with ease.

I’m not sure if I would have the courage to walk into church every week by myself, but Dylan must have known he would receive a warm welcome. I can’t say what Dylan’s future choices in Community of Christ will be, but I feel lucky to have made him feel part of our Newcastle church family.

When it was time for me to say farewell to Dylan eleven months later, he gave me a special present wrapped neatly in newspaper. A note attached said simply, “I’m glad we got to meet each other.”

I am too!

—Lindsay Sills Miller reporting