If you’re a movie watcher, you’ll recognise the title of this blog as a very famous line from the movie, ‘Dirty Dancing’ (if you haven’t seen it, let me assure you the film is not as bad as the title may suggest!) I think for you to understand where I’m coming from in this blog I need to give some context! It’s a great movie, set in the 60’s about a teenage girl trying to find her way in life. She finds herself in the staff quarters after show party and is drawn to the very cool character, Johnny, played by Patrick Swayze. She’s trying to be cool too, but when he comes over to her to find out who she is, she blurts out, ‘I carried a watermelon’ she wasn’t lying, that’s what she brought into the party, but, to the cool boy, it wasn’t the best line to come out with! In case you’re going to watch it now, I won’t spoil it, but I’m pretty sure you already know how it ends!

Anyway, fast forward to a few days ago. We were sat with a few missionaries discussing the hard, but necessary job of fund raising. If you put out an appeal to buy a building, sponsor a child, build a home for a widow etc… the funds role in and we are all very grateful that they do. However, if you send out an appeal to buy food, water, electric etc.. funds do not role in. As we were talking, this line from the movie came to me, ‘I carried a watermelon’ I thought about it in the context of missions giving and came to the conclusion that, generally speaking, not many people want to carry the watermelons. Why? Because it isn’t seen as, to use an up to date word for this, ‘sexy’ enough. People want their finance to go to something that is tangible and, probably, it we’re honest, something that helps us feel good about what we’ve given to. Let’s face it, how many people would you tell if you’d paid the electric bill for a missions base in a far-flung country in the world? Much better if you have a picture of a kid on your fridge, right?

Our missionary experience is about to change as we re-locate back to the UK. We will always be involved in Tanzania, it’s just our location that is changing. Because of this, I feel a freedom now to write about these things in defense of my missionary mates who are still on the field. If nobody takes up the watermelon challenge, there will be no projects to support and no kids to sponsor. That’s the reality. Every mission needs the watermelon carriers! You can’t look after people if you have no food, water or electricity. Seems a very simple thing to say, but the reality is, it’s much more difficult to raise funds for these kinds of things. So, if you support missions, and every Christian on earth should (that’s for another blog!) Your missionaries would love it if you sent them some operational money! Offer to pay the rent, buy some food, pay the electric bill! Sexy? No! Vital? For certain!

Let’s be watermelon carriers!