Leaning forward, Somchai,* a devout Buddhist, looked at us earnestly. “What is Jesus’ most important teaching?” he asked. The moment felt sacred. Time slowed as I glanced at our three children who were rollerblading nearby, and my mind flew back over the events that had brought us to this moment.
Rewind two years, and you would have found us living in a little home that my husband and I had built together in Montana as newlyweds. Both our parents lived nearby; we had a wonderful church family, a large garden, and plenty of space for our children to run and play.
One warm summer evening we were visiting with some missionary friends who were on furlough from Thailand. During the conversation they mentioned rather offhandedly that because Thailand has great internet, it would be totally doable for my husband, Matthew (who worked remotely as a software developer), to work online from there. Matthew had never expressed serious interest in being a missionary overseas, so I expected him to blow it off. Instead he started asking questions. The more specific his questions became, the more my mind began to spin.
As soon as the conversation was over and we had gone to our room, I cornered him. “Are you seriously considering missions?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, I guess so,” he responded. I was shocked. Looking back now, though, I really shouldn’t have been. Because, unbeknown to him, I had been praying for this very thing for the previous 10 years.
The DNA
I’ve always been interested in missions. In fact, missions is practically in my DNA. When my family moved to a tiny Micronesian island when I was 3 years old, I became a very small fifth-generation Seventh-day Adventist missionary. My sister and I grew up eating pounded breadfruit, building cooking fires in the jungle, and catching geckos by their tails (you’ll never forget it if you’ve tried it!).
My parents ran a mission clinic, and some of my first and most vivid childhood memories were made there. I remember drawing up syringes of lidocaine, translating for visiting doctors, and watching my mom painstakingly put in 40-some stitches on an eel bite. I still remember my little heart pounding as I anxiously watched her perform CPR on a tiny infant, and listened to the parents’ agonized cries when the baby died. When my little world was rocked by a move back to the United States at age 8, I knew I wanted to be a missionary when I grew up.
If everyone with a reason not to go didn’t go on missions, no one would go.
Matthew grew up in the Midwest, and while he was fully vested in the mission of church planting when his family moved to a dark county during his teens, he had never seriously considered being a foreign missionary. From the time he started working in software development he knew that not only did he enjoy it and have an aptitude for it, but there was also commercial demand for it. Over time that last justification shifted to a realization that there was also a great need for Adventist developers who were willing to use their skills in God’s work. He had spent the next 15 years doing app and web development for ministries and church organizations. That was his mission field.
During the weeks after that visit with our friends, Matthew and I had many late-night conversations and prayers. Was this the right time to take our children overseas? Were we the right ones to go? Could we bear to leave our families?
Who Will Go?
As we continued to discuss, pray, and research, all we knew about the needs in Asia began to grow into a mountain of conviction that God was calling us there. Although neither of us felt qualified to go to the mission field, we realized that there is always a reason not to go. Safety, family, work, money—the list goes on. While there certainly are cases in which God is not calling someone to a life of service overseas, in every case—called or not—there are reasons not to go. And if everyone with a reason not to go didn’t go, no one would go. We could look at others we felt were better qualified than ourselves, but they probably had a reason equally as (in)valid as ours.
Six months later our plane touched down in Thailand. We spent the first year working on visa approvals and struggling to master Thai, which we found to be a difficult tonal language. There were hard days as we adjusted to life in Asia. But there were also wonderful moments as we became acquainted with the gentle, friendly, and fun-loving Thai people, and slowly acquired the ability to communicate with them in their own language. Eventually we settled in the city of Nakhon Sawan (meaning “heavenly city”). This city lies at the center of a province in the Central Valley with a population of more than 1 million people. The province has very few Christians and no Adventist churches or schools.
Pulling my mind back to the present, I looked at Somchai. Only a second or two had passed, and he was still looking at us expectantly. This is what we are here for! I thought to myself. Summarizing Jesus’ answer to a seeker with a very similar question, I replied, “Jesus’ greatest teaching is to love God with all our hearts and to love others as much as we love ourselves.”
Somchai’s face brightened. “That’s very good!” he exclaimed.
Although visible evidences of God’s work, such as our encounter with Somchai, have given us so much joy, we praise Him even more for the ways that His Spirit is working yet unseen on hearts in this city. Our experience of being led to Thailand has given us a greater awareness of the fact that even though God’s work in the heart may remain invisible for years, His Spirit is working still.
* Not his real name.
