There’s a way to start this blog post that comes across very feminist, saying, “How come when people think of missionaries, they mostly think of men? What about the women?” It’s perhaps the most obvious way to start, given our modern perspective. But it ignores the biblical view on women in the Great Commission.
As Bible-believers, we ought not take on a worldly perspective in any regard. We know that God has established the role of men to represent Christ’s headship, which is why they are often at the forefront of these kinds of discussions. But we can also clearly see the value of women in scripture, particularly as it concerns evangelism and foreign missions.
We can look to women like Priscilla, who partnered with her husband in the spread of the gospel, often traveling alongside Paul. We also see women such as Phebe and Lydia, who were valuable laborers in ministry, and who appear to be single. We see that, biblically, all women can be used mightily in the mission of reaching the world with the message of Jesus. As long as biblical ministry structure is maintained, we’re able to appreciate and learn from the examples of both men and women on the mission field and see the unique ways that God speaks to and uses them.
As such, I recently spoke with a handful of missionary women from throughout the Living Faith Fellowship to hear their stories. They shared with me the beginnings of their missions journeys, their experiences on the field, and their advice to the next generation of missionaries.
PERSUADED / PREPARED
When God calls, there’s often a wrestling with the calling that takes place. Most of the women I spoke with testified that there was a period of time before they were sent out when they had to be convinced by the Lord that it was what he was calling them to.
Astrid Schaffer tells me about how it took her several months to come to terms with being sent to Tampa as part of a church-planting team. She and her husband Mark (along with their three kids) moved to Kansas City after 9 years of living in Ocala, FL. She remembers feeling torn when Mark first told her he felt God was leading them to move again, after just a year in KC.
“I said, ‘You’re crazy, we’re just getting settled,’” Astrid says, laughing. “But I said to him, ‘Please pray for me, that God would show me, too. But even if he doesn’t, I’ll go.’”
Astrid says it wasn’t an issue of submission, but rather being conscious of the hard times ahead.
“I wanted to know for sure,” she says, “because I knew there would be discouragement and I didn’t want to feel like my husband made me do this. I wanted to know that God was doing it.”
After months of prayer, a message on a Sunday morning solidified it in Astrid’s mind. A visiting missionary was sharing a story of when he and his wife were riding their bikes as transport through China in the freezing cold and questioned bringing his family to that hard place. But at the same moment, he realized the reason he and his wife were so outside their comfort zone was because they followed God’s call to preach the gospel.
“That really hit me,” Astrid says. “I could stay in Kansas City, be comfortable around my family, be comfortable getting a home and getting settled. That would be the easy route. But I saw that it wasn’t about me being in a comfortable spot. God was calling me, and I would maybe go through some hard things. But that would be okay, because I’d be there to do God’s mission.”
Lucy Akins, who is also on the Tampa team, testifies to being persuaded prior to being sent. She’d had a desire to be a missionary to Africa since high school, and after a few years of being at Midtown Baptist Temple, she spoke with her pastor about it, who encouraged her to wait and get fully equipped before rushing out anywhere.
“Through that growth process, the Lord slowed me down and sobered me a bit,” Lucy says. “But when the Florida thing came around, I thought, ‘Why is this not Africa?’”
While her time in the word and counsel from leaders were both lining up over time, she still had reservations. But after wrestling for a few months, God hit her over the head with a two-by-four, as she says.
“One day, the Lord said to me, ‘Lucy, are you going to pursue what you want, or will you pursue what I want?’” she recalls. “I kept trying to justify why I couldn’t go to Florida, even though the Lord kept telling me over and over again.”
She’s thankful for this time of wrestling, because she was able to go being fully convinced, even in difficult seasons.
“In the times it’s been really tough, I haven’t questioned my call to Tampa,” she says. “I’m all-in even when I don’t feel all-in. That commitment and knowing my call and not doubting the Lord has been very important in remaining faithful.”
A thread that was woven into several of the women’s stories was the desire to be a missionary from a young age, like Lucy above.
Hazel Salazar — from Costa Rica, married to her husband, Carlos — was determined to be a missionary from the time she was a young woman, regardless of where.
“The place isn’t important,” she says. “There are people who think being a missionary is moving from one place to the other, but if you’re not a missionary where you’re at now, it’s hard to be a missionary somewhere else.”
Because of that, she got to work preparing herself for ministry wherever God called her to be. When Carlos began talking about planting a church on the other side of their country, it was a no-brainer for Hazel. She was ready to go.
Rosie Fyffe shares a similar testimony. She married her husband, James, knowing that he was called to foreign missions.
“In saying yes to him, I took that calling on for myself,” Rosie says. “I never had a big ‘moment’ where the Lord was saying, ‘Hey Rosie, I want you to be a missionary.’ But I knew I’d submit to wherever my husband goes.”
This meant that when the opportunity to go to Pakistan arose, Rosie had no reservations in praying about it. After seeking the Lord through prayer and the word and receiving counsel from leaders, they were fully persuaded.
“God gave this incredible peace,” Rosie says. “There was no worry and there was no fear. It was just peace that that was where we were going to go.”
After the call comes preparation. Even though some had been preparing prior to the call, they still had to prepare in specific ways with their future field in mind. Others started the bulk of the preparation when the call came.
For Erla Bartell, the preparation for her part in a missions team came in a unique way.
In 1992, a group of men from a church in Alabama came to Albania on a mission trip. On that trip they met Erla, who was serving as a translator for the group. She had never heard the story of Jesus, and from the first day the pastor began sharing the gospel with her.
“Deep down in my soul, I was searching for something eternal, even though I didn’t know what it was or where to look for it,” Erla says. “Being raised in an atheist country, I didn’t know anything about the Bible or Jesus or heaven or hell. The fact that I was a sinner was not a mind-blowing thing. But the fact that somebody died for me and was offering me eternal life, and it’s free, really resonated with me.”
By the end of that day, she had accepted Christ as her Saviour.
The trip went on for two weeks, and though Jeff was there, they didn’t work together much. But by the end of the trip, he had decided he would move to the country to pastor the people who were accepting Christ. So, rather than preparing for foreign missions, Erla was the direct result of it and was there from the inception of God’s work in Albania.
“It wasn’t that I was joining something, because I was the first convert on the trip,” Erla says, “It was just continuing.”
Joni Weaver’s story is unique yet again.
Joni and Chris, her husband, visited Malawi in 2008 when a friend invited them to see what God was doing through an orphan ministry there. Joni accepted Christ later in life, and this was her first mission trip. She loved it.
After that first trip, more people, including Mark Trotter, started getting involved in the ministry in Malawi, and every year Chris and Mark led teams on two-week trips. After about five years of these trips, Chris told Joni he felt God was leading them to move to Malawi full time.
“Of course I had fears around it, but the calling made sense to me,” Joni says.
Though there was time with the Lord required for getting further prepared spiritually, Joni feels that a lot of their preparation had already taken place.
“I thank God for the baby steps,” she says. “We went for two weeks for several years, and then God moved us. I know of missionaries who’d never been on the field and God would send them. But God gave us baby steps, and I appreciate that.”
PROVED / PERSEVERED
Once on the field, there are always times of proving — seasons where hardship comes your way and God has to teach you difficult but needful things.
Some time after the work in Albania began, God led Jeff and Erla to get married. Over the course of time, the country went through two civil wars and a genocide happened on the other side of the border. They raised two girls amidst flying bullets. But all this wasn’t too much of a concern for Erla.
“Obviously the physical part was hard,” Erla says, “but our church was very sound. The believers would find rest within the church family. The world is the world, and it was very clear who the enemy was.”
The hardest part for Erla came when their family returned to the States — which also happened to be the first time she was living in a foreign ministry field.
“The enemy is very, very subtle and works in the church,” she says. “He tries to put believers against each other and make the church no longer a refuge.”
After a few years in their new church, discord arose in some of their relationships, the pain of which Erla is still working through five years later.
“That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “I never imagined I would fight with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I would have traded it for the civil wars we went through in a heartbeat.”
But even in the ongoing process of reckoning with what happened, Erla knows God will accomplish his purpose through it.
“God has allowed this for a reason,” she says. “I don’t understand why, but maybe someday I will. The Lord has seen me through some very dark times, and as I’ve grown and seen his faithfulness, he’s trusted me with harder problems.”
Erla takes comfort knowing that God is for us, not against us.
“There were many times I’ve thought, ‘Lord, I think you got this one wrong. I can’t handle this. It’s too much,’” she says. “But he knows exactly what’s right. He allows hard things, but they’re not to break you. They’re to make you stronger.”
Others testify to wrestling with the loss of “normal” life while on the field. Mindy and Brian Clark moved to London as a young married couple, and most of their big moments happened abroad, including the births of their children. Notably, the day before she gave birth to their first daughter, Mindy broke her leg. They had to navigate this over-complicated situation not knowing how the country’s health system functioned.
“One of the hardest things is yielding to God what you think life is supposed to look like,” says Mindy. “When you come to a foreign mission field, it doesn’t ever look like what you think it’s going to look like. Medical issues, relational issues, major life moments. No matter where you live, you go through hard things. But being in a foreign field adds to the hardness.”
“You learn that it’s not about the issue, about it being hard,” she says. “We always remind each other to ask, ‘Who are we going to worship through the problem?’”
While the losses of going are often the hardest, sometimes there are great losses in returning. During their time in Pakistan, the Fyffes continuously dealt with the government regarding their visas. After four years, they were told they had to leave.
“It was a partial relief,” says Rosie. “We were thankful that we finally had an answer, because we’d lived for four years without knowing. We didn’t know if we were going to get a letter telling us to leave, if we’d get a letter telling us we had a visa.”
The back-and-forth of the unknown had been high-stress, and they’d been praying that God would make it official one way or the other, even if it meant leaving. So when the answer to leave came, they were okay with it, though it was still painful.
“We went with the mindset that we would spend our whole lives there,” she says. “We wanted to be there, and we wanted our life to be with the people there. It was hard to say goodbye, because we had friends we’d made. There were local pastors and families we were close with.”
With the sadness of leaving their relationships behind also came a sadness for the local Pakistanis. The Fyffes’ ministry was centered on a hospital compound, where a blend of foreigners and local families lived and worked. But with many of the foreigners being made to leave, the staff of the hospital had to be cut, and many of the locals were let go.
“If you don’t work on the medical compound, you can’t live there,” Rosie explains. “So we felt a great sadness for the Pakistani people whose jobs and homes, that security, were gone.”
“It’s hard when you think you’re going to spend your whole life doing something and it gets ripped out from beneath you,” she says.
Not all hardships are external, however. Often, they come from within.
For Lucy, she’s had to learn how to find contentment without the richness of a large church family like she had before being sent.
“The loneliness has been really tough sometimes,” she says. “I have people around and am close with my team. But I don’t have a peer group that’s my age, and that leads into some depression, which I feel like I’ve been climbing out of for the last couple years.”
“Ultimately,” she continues, “it came down to me holding onto dreams for my life that weren’t going to happen. I was holding onto those things and wallowing in self-pity, and during that wallowing you get farther from the Lord.”
One challenging aspect has been being single on the field. Lucy says that while she was content to join the team as a single woman, since moving it’s been something she has to constantly surrender to the Lord.
“This sounds super hokey,” she says, “but there will be things I’m desiring of a husband that I realize I’m not going to the Lord for. It’s hard to come home from ministry and not have someone to talk things through with. But I need to go to the Lord for those things, and not wallow in the fact that I don’t have someone.”
Whether external or internal, the difficulties of life are heightened while on the field — something to be expected, as the enemy attacks hardest when victory is on the horizon.
PRAISE
Though on-field attacks hit hard, it would be a dishonor to talk about the hardships of being a missionary and ignore the ways these women praise God for his work in their ministries.
The team in Tampa has seen steady growth over the years, and God has grown their small team into a blossoming disciple-making ministry.
The Salazars moved to an area marked by poverty and abuse, but have seen many turn to Christ. People who were once slaves to a broken life are now learning how to put off the old things and put on new life in Christ.
The Bartells saw many won to Christ and trained up in Albania, and were able to leave behind a stable, self-sustaining ministry. They’ve been able to continue the same work of reaching the lost and making disciples stateside as well.
The Clarks have been able to witness the long-term effects of discipleship in their church, from people receiving salvation all the way to entering full-time ministry.
The Fyffes were able to lead people to Christ, as well as help believing families grow in their walks with the Lord. They were able to see and show that the principles of God’s word are true in all cultures.
In addition to ministries within their local church in Malawi, God has led the Weavers to establish a flourishing farm that provides jobs for locals. Not only do they receive provision for their physical needs, they also have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Each of the women I spoke with would agree that the fruit and victories God brings while on the field far outweigh the difficult seasons. While we are called to suffer with Christ, we are also promised the lasting joy that comes from seeing souls rescued and lives restored.
PASSING IT ON
Everything we go through and learn in our relationships with Christ can be used to edify others down the road, and each of these women have learned things they want to pass on.
“If your mindset now is, ‘I’m in a trial; I need to talk to my Bible study leader,’” says Astrid, “then you’re not ready. Your first question should always be to see what the Bible says about it. When your first go-to is the Lord, then you’re more ready than you think you may be. When you’re on the field, I can’t tell you you’ll be 100% ready, but you’ve got to already have your gear on, be wearing the armour of God. It’s not the time to be looking for your shoe or your helmet.”
“Get trained up now,” agrees Joni. “Discipleship, LFBI, whatever your church has to prepare you. Learn how to study your Bible. Because once you get here, it can feel so overwhelming. So prepare as much as you’re able.”
No matter how much you prepare, however, there will still be times when it feels like too much. In those moments, you have to go back to the basics.
“We just keep doing what we know the Lord wants us to do,” says Erla. “There’s not this magic, big thing the Lord has shown me about how to be faithful. Just be faithful in the little things, one day at a time.”
The most basic of the basics, of course, are valuing God’s word and prayer.
“First, take care of your relationship with God and his word, because the Bible tells us to always draw near to him,” says Hazel. “Second, maintain a life of prayer. If you’re praying for something in God’s will, he’ll hear you. Evangelism and making disciples are part of the will of God, so he’ll hear your prayers for them.”
Having that foundation is so important, because Christ and his word are the only things that will never fail.
“The most crucial thing in life on the field is where you’re putting your satisfaction,” says Rosie. “Your husband will fail. Your friends will fail. You will fail. So your strength and supply for everything has to come from your time and personal relationship with the Lord.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean we need to cut out our human relationships.
“Having a Paul behind you is important,” Lucy advises. “Having Deb Molder back in Kansas City and following Astrid here has been really key for me. Having those older ladies I can go to and reflect on things with has been so helpful. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know that I would’ve come to Tampa at all, let alone be successful here.”
And of course, one of the most valuable things someone on the field can do is to regularly reflect on how God called them in the first place.
“Whenever anyone is called to go, however it happens, my advice is to write it down, keep it with you, remember that,” Mindy says. “Because there will be times you think you’re not supposed to be here, that you’ve got this wrong. I’ve kept the verse God used with me always, because I can look at it and say, ‘No, this is what God told me.’ And it surpasses the moment.”
The principles and commands of God’s word are the same for all, but they speak into so many different situations. Though all of these women are pursuing the same goal of reaching the world and making disciples, God has spoken to them in unique ways and accomplished his mission differently through each of them. Examining the faithfulness and fruitfulness of people like Astrid, Erla, Hazel, Joni, Lucy, Mindy, and Rosie shows us that God can use anyone anywhere to accomplish anything he desires.
Melissa Wharton is on the Living Faith Books team, and is a discipler and Bible study leader at Midtown Baptist Temple in Kansas City, MO.