If your goal is to develop relationships through the mission and ministry of your organization, you might get caught up in evaluating your efforts based on how many people involved "stay in touch" in the years following the event.
That's probably OK, but we shouldn't discount the long term nature of relationships that can develop after one and only one encounter.
Someone that you meet may have an impact on your life and your faith if you are attuned to other people and their stories. If you are ready and willing to take these experiences to heart, you may develop a mystical long term relationship without exchanging an email address or finding them on facebook.
It would be no doubt really cool to have the mission team get together for a meal and have a conference call with the group that they worked with in Costa Rica several months after the trip.
The youth group that looks forward to the annual trip to Appalachia because they will get to see the progress of their peer group working through the growing local church in its own ministry outreach is a great outcome.
But it may serve as well to go in hoping for an encounter between two people who haven't seen each other before and won't probably see each other again. If these two people or two groups of people share something about how they live or why they believe something that they believe, that may be enough.
"How do you overcome tragedy. How do you live in tragedy? This is how I do it. Maybe you'll remember this the next time you experience tragedy."
Maybe once that happens, everything else will fall into place.
Long term relationships can happen in a singular instant.
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