Next month Derek and I will have the opportunity to speak at Link, a three-day event at Mission To the World’s Atlanta office designed to help people explore what it would look like to become a missionary—an event that Derek and I attended ourselves, eight years ago.
In 2012 we had been married for three years, were actively involved in our church, hoping to start a family soon, and passionate about global missions. Since the beginning of our marriage, missionary service had been something we’d talked about, and it seemed like the time to start investigating further what God might have for us in that regard. We knew what our own skill sets were, but we didn’t have a particular sense of where in the world God might be calling us or even what missionary agency we should connect with. We weren’t sure what the process of becoming missionaries would look like aside from the understanding that we’d probably have to raise some funds.
We reached out to several different missionary agencies and learned everything that we could about the process, how the agencies operated, etc. We attended a couple different informational events, and browsed a lot of different websites. In many ways all of this was reminiscent of university shopping. We were assigned recruiters and added to mailing lists. It was all quite exciting but also a bit confusing. Since we were members at a PCA church, it made sense to reach out to Mission To the World (MTW) among other agencies, and we soon found out about Link.
When we attended Link it was the first time that we really began to be able to envision what our lives might look like serving overseas. In addition to hearing from MTW’s leadership and members of the home-office support crew, we heard and interacted with actual, current MTW missionaries. Men and women of different ages and stages (some closer to our age and others older) shared about their experience as missionaries in different parts of the world. They shared about the needs on their fields, and then they took time to sit and eat with us, get to know us, and answer our questions.
There were question and answer sessions where we and others like us were able to ask about the nitty-gritty details of missionary service and about MTW in particular. Hearing the questions and concerns of others attending the event helped us to think through aspects of missionary service that we hadn’t thought about. We also got to interact a little bit with some who were just beginning their journey with MTW, going through orientation to begin their support-raising journey. Link often happens simultaneously with MTW’s new missionary orientation, making this type of interaction possible.
As a result of attending Link we were able to connect with a couple different missionary teams in different countries and also spent some face to face time with our recruiter who discussed other potential fields that could be a good fit for us. We began having conversations over Skype with several different team leaders. After 6 months or so we had received an invitation to visit a field and get to know the team and ministries in Cusco, Peru. We sensed God continuing to propel us forward and so in the spring of 2013 we spent 10 days in the city that we now call home.
Our missionary journey has had its ups and downs, as all journeys do, but looking back it’s so reaffirming to see how God has led us gently every step of the way. The path to becoming missionaries was methodical and required gradually increasing steps of faith. I can honestly say that the years since we took that first step have been some of the fullest and best of my life, and I’m so thankful to be caught up in God’s plan to bring His kingdom to Cusco, Peru. I’m also quite excited about being able to come alongside others at Link and share some of this amazing journey with brothers and sisters in Christ who are seeking God’s path for them regarding missionary service!
“Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.” – Oswald Chambers
 |
| Find Out More About Link |
