The excerpt below is taken from an interview with Emmanuel Katongole called "From Tower-Dwellers to Travelers" an interesting perspective on missions.
"That is why we need to learn another model—mission as pilgrimage, which is based on a vision of the Christian life as a journey. This model grows out of the sense of being pilgrims together, pilgrims who feel the dust under their feet and come to know the places where they sojourn.

The problem with the world is not that we do not see others. We do. We know the needs of the world. But to feel the gifts and needs of the world—that means learning to journey with people in different parts of the world. This kind of journeying is slower than mission done as delivery of aid, slower even than partnership. It takes time just to learn the history, for example, of Gulu in northern Uganda, to learn what is happening there. But when we take time for that, it begins to transform the pilgrim. You have learned the names of people and places, these far-flung places with names very difficult to pronounce. You have inhaled the dust.

Mission as pilgrimage is about that transformation. It's not about fixing northern Uganda. You're not going to fix northern Uganda! It's not even about partnering with "northern Uganda." How can you partner with all of northern Uganda? Where do you begin? Instead, the pilgrim begins to know, to feel, that northern Uganda, with all its tragedy and terror, is a Christian story. That it is not just their story, but that it is our story." Emmanuel Katongole

Being yourself with God

God has been working on my heart to show me how I've created these walls around my heart and myself as a defense and way to keep myself "safe." They have kept me moderately safe by keeping people out and, consequently, keeping God out as well. I'm realizing that I wasn't accepted for "me" and that hurt so I locked myself up and transfered people's rejection of my whimsy personality onto God. So as I was reading my devotions this morning and came across this passage I was stopped dead in my tracks. God wants me to simply and honestly be myself with him. And I can't truly worship God unless I am being my true self. What a radical concept for me. Truth breaking through a shroud of lies that would keep me bound and tumbling the bricks of the fortress walls around my heart. The movie Bridget Jones probably wouldn't seem to connect here considering how smutty it is, but my favorite line which makes my heart ache just thinking of it is: "I like you, just the way your are." What girl doesn't want to hear that, especially from a dashing charming man like Mr. Darcy? I particularly long to hear that affirmation. And wham-o here it is, in the the scripture, a declaration from the true lover of my soul that He wants me to come to him, that he invites me to worship him, that he likes me - just as I am.

clipped from www.biblegateway.com 23-24"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."