Trusting the Good Shepherd

For two decades, Dennis Sewell attended worship services at Mt. Bethel Church, heard sermons about the Great Commission, prayed for and supported missionaries the church sent out, and participated in local serving opportunities — but he never went on a mission trip himself. 

He watched friends travel on mission trips throughout the years, and some invited him to go, but he didn’t think he was qualified. He saw himself as less spiritual, less equipped, and less prepared than others. 

“I’m not like that,” Dennis remembers thinking when friends first encouraged him to go on a mission trip. “I can’t reach out and touch people and just talk to people all of a sudden or just pray for them like that on the spot.” 

One of those friends, Gayle Alston, kept inviting him to serve with her at Deborah House, a safe house in Romania that Mt. Bethel Church supports through MissioLink International for girls who’ve survived abuse and exploitation. 

“That year there was also a mission trip to West Virginia,” Dennis recalled. “And so, I thought if I went to West Virginia, since it was here in the states, that might show me if I was ready to go abroad.” 

His first mission trip to West Virginia stretched him in ways he didn’t expect and showed him that he didn’t have to have everything figured out before God could use him. 

So, he agreed to go to Timișoara, Romania, with Gayle that summer — and was amazed by the young women he met at Deborah House. 

“I’d worked some with troubled teens here at home, and many of them had behavioral issues, but these girls were nice. They were grateful we were there and wanted to be our friends.” 

He left Romania eager to return. 

Two years later, in early August 2026, he traveled to Romania again — this time with a team of eight to the Alpinis Leadership Retreat Center in the Carpathian Mountains. There, the team hosted a weeklong summer camp for the girls of Deborah House and the children from the Lupeni orphanage. 

Even with two previous mission trips under his belt, Dennis still had some anxiety about what the week would hold. 

Trusting God With the Unknown 

“I was nervous about working with the kids from Lupeni since I didn’t know them,” he admitted. 

He was also worried about his specific responsibility at the camp. Each mission team member was asked to choose a game, craft or activity they would lead, and Dennis chose a Bible-themed BINGO game. 

However, a couple of weeks before the trip, Scott Harward, the Mt. Bethel team leader, received a concerning message from one of the Romanian mission leaders who would be at the camp. 

“Apparently, BINGO is associated with gambling in his country, and he felt like it wasn’t appropriate to expose the kids to that,” Dennis relayed, adding that the message discouraged him because he didn’t mean to offend anyone. “So, I ordered some jigsaw puzzles from Amazon just in case.” 

With that concern weighing on him, Dennis and the team made the trip to Sibiu, unsure of what the week had in store. 

He remembers being restless on the flight and not sleeping well the first night after arriving. Then, the next morning, while walking onto the balcony of the retreat center, he heard something in the background. 

“When I looked over into the field, there were all these sheep,” he described. “And there were two or three dogs, and I saw two shepherds guiding the sheep together.” 

At one point, Dennis watched as the dogs ran off toward something else while the shepherds stayed with the sheep. 

“The shepherds would say some words and the sheep would do whatever was said. They were following his lead. Those sheep were absolutely safe and secure; they could graze and eat even though the dogs were running off after something — probably a coyote — the sheep didn’t appear to think anything about it.” 

“I’ve read in the Bible about Jesus being our Shepherd and us being sheep, but I’d never really felt anything from there,” Dennis admitted. 

But as he watched the Romanian shepherds, something clicked. 

“I was absolutely amazed.” 

Dennis finally understood the picture he had read about so many times in Scripture. The sheep didn’t need to understand everything happening around them. They simply followed their shepherd. 

And Dennis felt as though God was reminding him of the same thing: he didn’t have to know exactly how the week would unfold. He just needed to follow. 

God Was Already at Work 

When it was time for Dennis to lead the BINGO game, he was surprised by how much the kids enjoyed it. 

“I would pull a card, which had a picture from a Bible story, let’s say it might be a cross, and as they looked for that picture on their BINGO card, I would say, ‘can anyone tell me anything about this cross?’ And they loved getting prizes for knowing about the Bible stories.” 

The activity Dennis had nearly abandoned became an opportunity for the children to engage with Scripture. 

He was even more surprised when, later in the week, the man who had originally been against the BINGO game asked Dennis to lead it again. 

“His wife and three daughters had played the first time and really got into it,” Dennis shared. “He saw how the kids were reciting Bible verses and stuff as we played.” 

God also answered Dennis’ anxiety about working with the children from the Lupeni orphanage — first through an older boy named Denis, with whom he bonded because of the similarities in their names, and later through a little girl on the day the team took all the campers to a nearby rope course. 

“I Got You” 

“One little girl was having a difficult time, so I offered to walk with her,” he said. “I had noticed her before during other activities during the week and she had been really energetic. But on the rope course, she was a little bit apprehensive.” 

Because of the language barrier and because she was being so timid, Dennis said they didn’t speak much. When they arrived at a part of the course that required crawling across some swinging logs, Dennis offered to hold the logs still for her. 

“She was so happy after crawling across, she squealed in delight,” he recalled. “After that, every time she would make it through a difficult part of the course, she’d look at me, throw her hands up, and say ‘woohoo!’” 

“She felt like she could finish the course because I was right there with her, which I knew must’ve been God because when I watched her earlier in the week, she had not been trusting of other adults.” 

Dennis had gone to Romania expecting to focus on serving the girls he already knew. Instead, he found himself forming relationships with children he had never met. 

“I ended up spending more time with the Lupeni kids than the girls from Deborah House!” he exclaimed as he looked back on the week. 

Trust and Obey 

God meeting his fears and exceeding his expectations on this mission trip has convinced Dennis that the Lord was calling him to go deeper in his faith. 

“You know, I was ready to throw that BINGO game aside and not worry about it again, but God clearly wanted me to trust Him.” 

That lesson is what Dennis hopes others take away from his story — not just the importance of going on a mission trip, but the importance of trusting God when He asks us to take a step beyond what feels comfortable. 

“What I want people to understand about missions is that it’s not about us,” Dennis said. “It’s about doing God’s will and God’s work.” 

For anyone who has ever thought they weren’t qualified, spiritual, or prepared enough to serve, Dennis has a simple message: 

“You need to go,” he stated. “No matter what you think you don’t have, don’t worry about it. Even if you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, or if it’s not clear what you’re going to do, it’s okay. God will be right there with you. You won’t be alone. He won’t leave you.” 

For Dennis, that may be the greatest lesson of his journey so far.