Amazing Missionaries

Being a missionary in Africa always seemed exotic and exciting to me - oh yeah, and you would be telling others about God too - so it would be all around GREAT.  I have a cousin who is a missionary in Africa - and her stories sound sooo interesting and exotic and wonderful (except when she got malaria).  I was able to go and BE a missionary a few years ago and it was very exotic and exciting and also kind of eye opening, perspective changing, revealing. 

While I was in Africa we were able to go door to door a little bit and share the gospel, but for the most part we ministered to people who were already in the church - already connected with or seeking the Lord.  We ran a VBS, we talked to a women's Bible study group, we went to baby dedications.  We did normal stuff.  And my cousin the missionary - the one with the exotic and exciting life - she homeschools 3 kids for a mission family - hmm - sounds sort of familiar - only she fights off large insects and butchers chickens while doing so.  And the family there?  They have jobs - they work in offices - they shuffle papers - they run administrative things. 

More and more I realize that there isn't an exotic and exciting mission field that God has called me to - he has called me to THIS mission field - and it is just as good as any other!  The problem is perspective. 

Let's see if I can put this another way.  When I was preparing to go to Kenya I wrote letters to my friends asking them to pray for me, asking them to pray God's protection over my life, asking them to pray that God would open doors for me to be able to share the Gospel, prayers all the time - that God would ordain the chance encounter, bless the ordinary, and reach the lost.  I need those prayers as much today as I ever did in Kenya!!  I need God to turn the odd circumstance into a blessing, I need God to bless the mundane in my life, to guide and affect the chance encounter. 

I also put back a ton of money - I mean a TON!  I wanted to make sure that if an emergency came up I would have everything I needed to handle it.  It did not phase me in the least to pay dearly for a plane ticket, for shots, housing and food while I was there - heck I spent more on that trip than Drason earns in a month, and it didn't bother us at all - in fact we were HAPPY to spend it - because we knew it would be helping the kingdom.  How is what I do today any different than what I did there?  Shouldn't I be just as open to spending money now as I was then?  If 50 bucks helps a support group operate more smoothly - should I cringe? 

This is something that God has been saying to me a lot - this is my mission field.  Do not disdain the ordinary or dread the everyday - your life is as exciting and exotic as you want it to be - you just need to see the fields that are before you rather than the ones half way around the world.

Goodnight,
Amanda