By a missionary recruit, fundraising to serve in East Africa
We have walked a path as traditional as apple pie and baseball in the summertime
Change terrifies me. I prefer to live my life in a bubble, surrounded by familiar comforts that are tested and time-honored. I avoid risks, living a life of relative safety. I never imagined myself writing about becoming a missionary, and I certainly never expected it to be my own story.
I married my high school sweetheart, and together we have walked a path as traditional as apple pie and baseball in the summertime. He’s an architect; I’m a high school English teacher. Our jobs provide us with financial stability, allowing us to live in a nice home and take needed vacations during summer break, looking forward to an easy retirement with my (safe) pension. We have two dogs and two kids (one boy and one girl).
Our story is like that of most other people we know, except we have decided to take a risk I would have thought unimaginable—before Jesus asked us to go all in.
The Question
On a Sunday morning in October, my husband Jack and I were leaving church. I had served in kids’ ministry that morning and had missed the sermon preached by our pastor. Jack gave me a sideways glance and proffered, “I have an idea. It’s not a real suggestion, anything that could ever happen, but I had a thought during the message today.”
“Okay.”
“So, there is like a less-than-one-percent chance of this ever happening, and I know that. This is something we would probably never do. But what if we just decided to move to another country to help people?”
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
I didn’t realize the Holy Spirit was moving in my husband at the time. I thought his question was part fantasy, which is why, in the moment, I responded with such ease and enthusiasm. I knew that, like me, Jack wouldn’t give up a life of relative ease for a life of adventure. We were just not risk-takers, in any sense of the word. Becoming a missionary just wasn’t something we would do.
The Dream
The question didn’t go away. Each night, after the kids were tucked snugly in bed, Jack and I would talk about the idea of moving overseas. The less-than-one-percent idea became a one-percent idea the more that we talked.
At this point, we were not exactly model Christians. We thought about Jesus on Sundays, sure, but the rest of the week, we were more concerned with work. Jack was third-man-in in a growing architecture firm, and I was in a principal preparation program with an eye toward school administration.
We weren’t really missionary material, we thought. We both quickly dismissed the idea of becoming a missionary, instead fantasizing about working for an NGO.
The Seeds
Food, faith, and family were all beautiful to her, and I vowed to find the beauty in all my students.
The previous April, Jack had been in the audience for keynote speaker Francis Kere at an AIA convention. Kere was from a small village in Burkina Faso, and his village had paid for him to attend architecture school in Europe. After earning his degree, Kere returned to his village to build schools and other civic buildings to better his community. Jack had been deeply touched by Kere’s story, and he envisioned a life lived promoting civic-minded architecture in places in need of community development.
At the same time, I had felt convicted to build deeper relationships with my refugee and immigrant students. My hometown has a sizable refugee community, and several refugee students were in my classes. One student, in particular, had inspired me with a single conversation the preceding school year.
Hani was a high school sophomore, a Somali refugee who I thought spoke no English. For an entire year, I barely communicated with her, aside from giving her simple vocabulary assignments. Then, on the very last day of class, she sat down in front of me and started talking—in English. For ninety minutes, we discussed siblings, favorite foods, Muslim holidays—whatever popped into Hani’s mind. I realized what an opportunity I had missed by not developing a better relationship with her. This bright, funny teenage girl sat in my classroom for an entire year, and I had all but ignored her.
Hani kept saying, “It is so beautiful!” Food, faith, and family were all beautiful to her, and I vowed to find the beauty in all my students, especially including my immigrant and refugee students.
The Sermon
Both inspirations informed our conversations about this (now) five-percent plan. We had decided that we would move across the world so that Jack could build schools that I would then run. We would build communities like Kere, and I would help girls like Hani.
We had a lot of fun in these conversations; it’s fun to dream about what we could do with no obstacles, no constraints on our freedom. Plus, in the back of my mind, I knew neither of us would ever have any reason to uproot our lives and move across the world. I operated under the assumption that we could dream as much as we wanted, but we were probably never going to take any real risks.
One November morning, we realized these dreams weren’t just dreams, but that the Holy Spirit had begun to move within us, without our realizing it was happening.
Our missions pastor delivered the message that day.
He spoke about needs all around the world, both physical and spiritual. He talked about human trafficking, extreme poverty, and the lack of water. However, he also spoke about people’s greatest need: Jesus.
I learned that over three billion people had no access to the Gospel, to the good news that I had taken for granted all my life. I learned that no matter what I tried to do to help people, I don’t have the power to do that—only God has that power. However, God can use me. That Sunday morning, I felt a jolt of recognition that despite all of my shortcomings, God had been preparing me for becoming a missionary overseas.
The Call
Jack and I both walked away from that sermon knowing we were being called not just to help people, but to be missionaries. We also recognized that even though we had not been living a life following Jesus, the Holy Spirit had been grooming us for this moment.
The Holy Spirit had guided me towards a career in teaching. I had gone a roundabout way, but once I found my way to the career, I fell in love with it. God had then directed my path to a school where I was teaching students from all over the world—El Salvador, Myanmar, Somalia—and where I was learning how to love people from other cultures, like Hani, who had so inspired me the year before.
God had directed Jack along a path that gave him usable skills, allowing him to gain entry anywhere. The Holy Spirit had planted a seed of love for community development in Jack when he heard Kere speak the year before. In addition, Jack had recently developed a love for woodworking, and craftsmanship has become a spiritual gift Jack intends to use in missions.
God had been directing our lives for this very specific purpose, but He also knew that ten years ago, we weren’t ready for the call. Continue Reading >>
Continue to Part Two of My Unexpected Story of Becoming a Missionary >>
