(Photo: Missionaries in Ecuador that my team and I spent a month with in November 2019 on the World Race)
When I was a kid, I loved missionary stories. Out of all the historical figures I read about, the missionaries were my favorite, and they still are. I was inspired by their courage, their faith, and the way God provided for them in incredibly miraculous ways. George Mueller. Amy Carmichael. Nate Saint. Incredible heroes who lived their lives, and some even died, for the opportunity to share the love of Jesus with another human being.
Building on this fascination for missionaries, as a child, my mind created the assumption that since being a missionary was the best job in the world, it must be the thing that every Christian aspired to be. And to explain the fact that not all Christians were missionaries, my child brain came to the conclusion that while every Christian desired to be a missionary, most couldn’t because it financially didn’t work out. That was my assumption verbatim. It wasn’t until my teen years that I realized that being a missionary wasn’t on the top of every Christian’s Christmas list. And that was also when I realized that maybe the trajectory of my life was going to be a little different than many other teenagers.
For example, I became fascinated with maps and photos that pictured all the far away places where missionaries traveled to. Later, in college I filled my electives with classes about culture, anthropology, and counseling. When missionaries from Thailand came to speak at my church, I was so excited to have lunch with them and hear their stories. And I spent Christmas break my Sophomore year of college visiting missionary family friends in Nicaragua.
In October 2017, a good friend of mine went on the World Race, an 11-month mission trip, traveling around the world and partnering with different organizations each month. I was still in college, yet I closely followed her trip, reading all of her blogs and praying for her team. Pretty soon, I decided to follow in her footsteps, and so I started fundraising and launched on the World Race in October 2019 with the most amazing team of people, only to be sent home five and a half months later due to COVID-19.
While my trip was unexpectedly cut short by circumstances outside of my control, I am immensely grateful for the five and a half months I did have. Not only did I meet some incredible people, both my teammates as well the missionaries and locals in every country we went to, but also the life experiences and opportunities to see the way God is moving through people all around the world are all things that I will never forget.
One of the most incredible experiences I had was getting to meet my heroes: the missionaries serving overseas. I got to walk with them, ask them questions, hear their hearts, and see their lives. The more time I spent with these missionaries, the more I realized something. Missionaries are just normal people living normal lives. The only difference is that they have given God their ‘yes’, and God has chosen to send them somewhere radical and do something radical through them. Not one of them were doing what they were doing to be famous, rich, or liked. In fact, most of what they did was very ordinary. They raised children, cleaned their houses, made hard decisions, and choose to show up every day and love God and the people around them the best they knew how. It was so simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy.
When you open yourself up to love the people around you, you open yourself up for heartbreak. Heartbreak over those who are suffering from sin, heartbreak over lack of resources or an inability to change the situations of others, heartbreak over those who have maliciously abandoned or turned against you, and heartbreak over the normal disappointments and tragedies of life. To be a missionary is to have heartbreak. To not have heartbreak would be to not choose to love people, and that would mean fulfilling only half of the greatest commandment, which would disannul the whole thing. (Matthew 22:37-39 and 1 John 4:20-21, see below).
Discovering how normal missionaries are is both encouraging and terrifying. Encouraging because it doesn’t take anything special to be a missionary except giving God your ‘yes’ every day, and letting it speak louder than all the doubts and fears. But also terrifying because there are now no more excuses. There is no magic formula or special test to become a missionary. There are no restrictions regarding country borders. To be a missionary is to give God your ‘yes’ and to love Him and others as His representative, in any country you many find yourself.
CGA (Center for Global Action) is a discipleship course focused on doing just that – living every day with a ‘yes’ in my spirit to loving God and loving others. Saying ‘yes’ is a choice, but it also takes practice. And like every part of our walk with God, discipleship and community are very helpful in strengthening and solidifying that ‘yes’. This is what I am hoping for at CGA, a community of believers to help spur me on in giving my ‘yes’ to the Lord as a lifestyle.
CGA starts in mid-January, less than a month away, and I have $4,500 yet to raise to in order to attend. If you would like to donate to help me reach that mark, I would really appreciate it. In addition, please keep me in your prayers that I would continue to hear from the Lord as I seek Him and would have the obedience to follow where He chooses.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-39)
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21)
