I stood in the receiving line at the front of the church as dear friends and a few acquaintances filed by to shake my hand, hug my neck, and congratulate me on surrendering to the call to head overseas to engage Chinese Muslims for the sake of the Gospel and their salvation. The phrase that kept reverberating in my head that every third person would say: “What an adventure!” They’d follow that by promising their thoughts and prayers. I do covet their prayers.
Here I am seven years later and that phrase still echoes in the dark recesses of my brain. Adventure? Is my life an adventure? I feel like I can say that there have been moments along this path that have definitely felt adventurous. Taking a train across the country to live in my friend’s hut and shoo the chickens out of her bathroom so I can use her squatty potty – That’s an adventure. Not a glamorous one, but it makes for a good story to tell in my newsletters back home. These moments are exciting, and the potential for kingdom growth in these small villages is invigorating! And these adventures I’ve accumulated throughout the years.
But what I’ve come to realize is that it’s not a myriad of adventures that I’m called to; it’s life. Just the simple doing of life overseas. And for me, it’s the doing of life among the Hui. Taking my daughter to attend her art class in the Hui quarter of town to hopefully connect with a Hui family. Riding our bikes over to the Hui barbecue place for dinner, to engage them in some sort of conversation, so I can leave them with truths about Christ. Buying tomatoes from the fourth stall on the right halfway down the street from Mrs. Ma and building a foundation of a relationship with her so I can introduce her to my Savior. Purposefully showing up at the women’s mosque around 1 p.m., the call to prayer time, so I can hopefully meet a woman who’d like to talk about religion and hear more about the freedom found in Christ. These aren’t glorious adventures, they’re just life. Life among the Hui.
It might be easy for the friends and family back in my first home to think of my life as one big adventure. Life overseas, an adventure in buying vegetables, in figuring out how to pay the electric bill, in finding ways for my children to engage locals and build friendships with kids their own age. No, not adventures, just normal life, in a Hui context. So rather than seeing my life as surrendering to a calling of an adventurous life overseas, I see it as saying yes to doing life in a different setting, culture, and language. We’re not called to adventure, we’re called to obedience in proclaiming His name. And most often for me, that’s done over a cup of tea in my living room or while buying onions and tomatoes at the market.
So as you pray for me, for foreign workers, or for the girl who is preparing to leave her home in America to make a new home overseas, pray He’ll be our strength in the mundane. Pray we’ll be diligent to use these small nuances of everyday life to bring glory to His name. Pray we’ll be sensitive to the Spirit when we’re buying eggs from the Egg Man and to His calling to share the truth of Christ in ordinary life.
Pray for more who are willing to do life overseas. Pray for hearts of obedience to pick up life in their home country and move it to a different culture and context. Pray for more workers among the Hui who can share Truths with them in everyday life, and that His workers will see Him working even in the smallest tasks.