I’m cleaning out my garage and going through old scrapbooks and papers, so don’t be surprised if many of my coming posts relate to things I’ve gleaned from the past. As a person who kept just about everything, it’s very easy to piece together my life’s journey. As I looked back at it through letters, pictures, and assorted keepsakes, I became aware of just how God had been growing me and preparing me, step by step, year after year, to the point of full-time cross-cultural service. Here are some highlights of the ways he guided my steps in ministry.
Church-related missions organizations
As a young child and growing girl, I participated in my local church’s mission organizations. Other Southern Baptists will recognize words such as Sunbeams, Girls in Action, and Acteens. These were the missions-focused groups that molded my mind and heart in those early years. I still have some of my projects from those days that encouraged me to learn about and pray for missionaries.
Through these meetings, I learned about other countries and gained a more intimate look at the peoples of the world than through a regular Social Studies or history class in school. I saw their faces and learned their names. I read about individuals who had put their trust and faith in Jesus and how that changed their lives. Through mission organizations, I learned that not only was the world much bigger than my small Tennessee town, but that God was actively involved in the lives of people in the remotest of places. I learned that other Christians, because of their love for God and his love for the nations, were willing to go to the ends of the earth, in my young mind, to tell the good news of Jesus.
Seeds were planted in a young girl’s heart.
Church-sponsored mission efforts
As I thumbed through my scrapbook, I also found an itinerary for a youth mission trip to upper-state New York. This, along with our local outreach to a newly immigrated Laotian population, helped me to see that I had a part to fulfill in not just mission-learning, but mission-action.
Mission trips and local outreach pulled me out of my insular, introverted shell as they made me part of a larger team. Whether it was singing in the choir at a state park, helping with a VBS in a New York church, or teaching Laotian children on a Sunday night, I learned that missions is not done in isolation. We work together with others to fulfill God’s Great Commission. These opportunities to work with others as a teenager and college student helped me to work with overseas mission teams later.
Summer Christian camps
After my graduation from high school, I worked a summer at a Baptist conference center in North Carolina. It would be the first time I was away from home for any length of time, and as I looked at the keepsakes from that summer, I could not help but smile and even wince a bit at my naïveté. I had the best time that summer, and of course, had love interests, but I also know that I made mistakes and didn’t always serve with integrity to what I knew was right.
By God’s grace, I got through it all and can now look back on that summer as another opportunity God used to prepare me for overseas service. What better way does he use than waking us up to our own fallibility and sinfulness? I would still have a long way to go on that score, but I saw this as not only the chance to understand what it feels like to be away from home but also to be with a LOT of people different than me. They were from different states, countries, and backgrounds. Now I wasn’t just on a team with people like me and from the same town—I was having to work with like-minded strangers in a strange land, even if it was North Carolina. Baby steps in the Lord’s plan for me.
Short-term missions.
As a Southern Baptist, my missions trajectory took me to the Journeyman program—a two-year missions opportunity for college graduates. At the time, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to “get my feet wet” in real overseas service before committing long-term. As I looked at my scrapbooks, I found postcards from fellow journeymen from all over the world—a stamp-collector’s treasure trove! Their cards reminded me that I was just one of many in this endeavor to impact the world for Christ.
I have many keepsakes from my journeyman years in Ivory Coast, West Africa. I found myself even watching a movie that is now available on YouTube (which we didn’t have in the 80s). It was produced in the media house where I worked in Abidjan, and I loved seeing my African colleagues acting in the film.
There are not enough words to share how much I learned during those two years, but suffice it to say, God used that experience to solidify my call to career missions. Step by step, he had been growing me, guiding me, and giving me opportunity after opportunity to learn what it meant to serve his Kingdom purposes. Also, in looking back at those keepsakes, I learned that each time I served, no matter my age, no matter the place, God was pleased. My overseas service was not more important than my service with the youth group. It’s all to his glory and all for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. That’s the ultimate lesson.
Grace and Peace
If you missed the last Mission Monday post, click HERE, or check out these other posts service: New Devotional for Missionaries, Don’t Forget the Church, Faithful Saints, Skilled Workers, and Work While It Is Day.