This is a response to a letter written to a missionary about what life is like over there.

Is mission life what I expected? I guess I’d say
yes it is. I don’t really remember what I expected, but I had enough
exposure through biographies and missionaries to know that mission life
would be tough. Spiritually tough. My parents went to the field before I
was born, but didn’t have any training on spiritual warfare and
cross-cultural problems and so ran home. Their training and rearing of me
was full of demonstrating a real walk with God, a trust of Him, and it
imparted to us their missionary hearts. My parents aren’t perfect, but they
grew a lot as I was growing up, and they were transparent with us kids. We
saw God miraculously provide for us for an entire year when my dad was out
of a job. All that was “training.” I knew my calling early and prepared
myself as much as I could through Jr. High, High School, and my two years of
college.

So, I have found missionary life as the most fulfilling work, but it is very
slow! It means plugging away day after day at learning a language and
culture (with no one but yourself to motivate and push you). It means
getting out of your comfort zone to talk to people daily (I’m kind of shy).
It means getting out and making friends. It means loving people no matter
how they treat you (or others). It means feeling like you’re not getting
anywhere in language and like you can never get your stuff done as planned.
It means a constant flow of interruption. It means boredom. It means
adventure (which is not very nice when it’s happening, but makes great
stories afterwards). It means seeing people die. It means helping to try
to save some lives. It means understanding their thinking and communication
so that when we share truth, it’ll make sense to them. This may be kind of
vague.

More specifically, my language learning was supposed to be something like
this before I got married. I study by myself for a few hours preparing my
lesson and a topic of conversation. I go to a little girl’s house and get
her to help me learn 20 or so words (with flashcards or objects or motions).
She says the word and I respond (by pointing or motioning or whatever). We
repeat until I’m sick of it. I tape her saying the words in context. Then
I go home for lunch (I lived with a X people group family) and hang out and chat
with them and drink tea. Later, I go visit a house or two and try to make
conversation. After, I come home and eat and chat until I go to sleep
shortly after dark. That’s my ideal, but it’s never been exactly like that.
I get sick. I have visitors at the wrong time. I have someone to take care
of–a sick family member or friend. I’ve spent weeks taking care of a child
in the hospital, only to have him die later. “Interruptions” to language
learning include funerals, weddings, baby naming ceremonies. But I’ve
learned that the interruptions ARE life, ministry and language learning.
Yet, sometimes I still feel I’m not doing what I’m “supposed” to be doing.
It’s our American training. Do, do, do. But being a missionary is like
being a Christian, it’s BEING that is most important: Being close to the
Father, hearing his word and following His plans. Demonstrating the
character of Christ in our everyday interactions. Resting in His grace and
being who He’s made us to be–in front of the people. Being transparent.
Being bold. Being the Mouth of God for His word to flow through.

The best experiences ever are just knowing you are the apple of His eye,
doing what’s closest to His heart. I love when I get to share the good news
to someone who’s ready to hear it but has never heard it before. (These
times are few so far.) We have had to work slowly and carefully, learning
the language and trying to understand the people first. Then we will have
to work chronologically and build their understanding of God. But one time
my teammate and I met a man at the airport who wanted to know why we wore their
X people group clothes. We told him. He wanted to know if we were Muslims. One
thing led to another, and he kept drawing us out with questions until we had
laid out the entire gospel except the Solution. He seemed to understand
then that we all are sinners and deserve death and that there is no way we
ourselves or another sinner could save us. We went over it to make sure he
understood, and then we shared Jesus. He was so impressed. He said that
this is so important. He said “We muslims hear about Muhammad a lot but we
never hear about Jesus. This is very important.” It was his first time to
hear about Jsus and he was so interested, but we didn’t feel it would be
right to press him for a “decision” at that time. We lost contact with him
since then (that was 4 years ago), but we know we are just part of God’s
plan to bring that man to Himself. That was the most awesome thing-someone
who has never seen, seeing for the first time. Tell you what, that’s
awesome! Most of what we have done so far is leading up to that moment
among our own village. We don’t know what God is going to do, how He’ll
lead us, but we see Him at work, and we mostly just watch! So many people
are into reading Genesis and Exodus that we’ve lent to people who beg for it
(not many can read, but those who can are eager to read the Bible.).

There are definitely rough times, but I’ll try to be brief (this letter is
getting very long). I can say I love my life and job way more than the
little work experience I had in the US! So I don’t know if it’s rougher
than life in the US, but anyone who seeks to serve and obey God will suffer.
Sickness and now injury are some of my biggest problems. We are often under
spiritual attack (lies from Satan about who we are or about who God is can
lead to depression and discouragement if we listen to them). Satan also
attacks our relationships with each other. These attacks are because Love,
Hope, and Joy are our motivation and strength, so if he can cut us off from
those, he can cripple us. Cultural stress was also rough especially in the
beginning.

Well, we’ve been here about 4 years (I arrived Christmas Day 2001 and my now
husband 8 months later). We are not in our village we work in right now. Normally we live in a village 20 kilometers from X city, which is another small town
where we have our team base for worship, meetings and an office for
computer and internet work. X city is about 8 or 9 hours from The Other City,
which is the capital and the biggest city. Don’t feel bad about not knowing about mission life. I didn’t know X country existed before I joined a team coming here.

Until Christ returns,
Missionary pioneering a church among an unreached people