My Heart for Missions

Recently a lot of people have been asking me about how I developed my heart for missions in general and Uganda in particular. I’m usually fairly evasive to them – if they ask about Uganda I’ll usually talk about the drastic need there, which is true, and they usually need to know. But it doesn’t explain how I became passionate about missions in the first place.

You see, I was never going to do missions. On my not serious blog I have a post a few years ago saying how you’d never get me going on a short term mission trip, let alone a long one. And I’ve now been to Uganda, and I’m preparing to go back again for another short term trip (at least one) this year, and then hoping to move there for several years. But that was not my plan.

I had it all figured out. I had a friend who was going to be a missionary, to PNG. She spent some of her childhood years there, she spoke the language, she was comfortable in its culture. She was going to be a missionary, and I was going to stay home and have lots and lots of babies. She would do her work for the faith, and I would do mine.

Then she went on a short term trip to PNG. And met a boy on the trip. Then she left our church, claiming that she never wanted to be a missionary anyway and our church was mean for trying to make her. Our friendship broke up (as did her friendship with several other people in our church). She has since married said boy, and now lives in the outer suburbs.

I remember when I realised (before she left our church) that she wasn’t going to be a missionary. That night I spent a lot of time praying about it. She was supposed to! That was what she had always wanted! And now God was down a missionary (not that He’s wringing His hands for them). I felt terrible. And after a long time of prayer, I told God that while I wouldn’t be anywhere near as useful as a missionary as this girl was, because I only spoke English and wasn’t culturally dexterous in any culture other than Australian / English, He could have me as a missionary, even to a really terrible place, like Africa. But if He wanted me to do it, all He had to do was change my heart to where He wanted me to go.

And He did that. I already had a big concern for the many children who were orphaned around the world (I just planned to adopt a few). But soon I was becoming passionately interested in one country, in the terrible Africa (about the last place I’d want to go in the natural sense), and the beautiful people there. And so I began to make plans to go.

I’m probably not going to be an especially awesome missionary. I’m not even an especially awesome Christian (listen to me talk if you don’t believe me!). But God isn’t looking for that. He wants someone willing. Someone willing to trade their dreams for His. And while sometimes I still want my own way, I am willing.

And so, I go.