Sometimes a little anonymity is necessary.

We are choosing not to use ours or our children’s names in part because some of our children are planning future work in areas more hostile to the gospel, and we do not want to jeopardize those opportunities. If you are a parent or a young adult contemplating serving as a missionary, we hope you can see yourself in our story. If you are wondering if short-term student mission projects are worthy of the time, effort and money invested, we hope to encourage you to answer positively.

My husband and I were college students when we first heard of Adventist Frontier Missions. Brad and Cathie Jolly visited our church just before their launch to Mongolia in 1991. Although mission work was on our minds, we never did overseas work longer than short-term mission trips with ADRA, Maranatha and others. As we raised our six children, they were constantly exposed to our well-stocked library of mission books on far-away places, Mission Spotlight at church, and, of course, the Adventist Frontiers magazine arriving monthly in our mailbox. The magazine was filled with stories from missionaries who became our friends, of our friends who became missionaries and others we will only meet in Heaven. As our little children sang in Sabbath School, “The plane goes flying to the mission land,” we were praying for those already there. It is with humble awe that we now contemplate that our children are those missionaries. While all of our children have some short-term mission experience, two went as student missionaries with AFM.

Our oldest son told us during his senior year in college that he wanted to go with AFM as a student missionary following graduation. We supported his desire to serve before getting a job or going to grad school. We raised our children with the goal of them learning to seek wisdom from God and not from us. Although he asked us for our advice, we pointed him to God and the biblical values we instilled in him to enable him to make the ultimate decision himself.

Our family found his time in the field to be an interesting challenge. Between his remote location and the time difference, we had to wait for him to contact us. He did, nearly weekly, but when we had not heard from him in a while, we tried not to worry if he was sick in the hospital or just busy. Both cases happened, but we knew God had him in His hands.

God loves and cares for our children more than we ever can. That truth is an important reminder when our children are across the world sharing the gospel. Phone calls were usually brief, but we saw him grow in maturity and trust in God. He had trials and tribulations with the new culture, language, and social and political conflict. All we could do was lend an ear and pray. Experiences became his that he had previously only read about—witchcraft, death and cultural differences—but out of those grew an increased trust in God, new ways to share the truth of eternal life, and an understanding of living as a family of God. We marveled at the ways God had led us to raise him, which contributed to his mission projects and conversations with the locals, but we knew it was God sustaining him day by day.

After two years as a student missionary, he returned to the States and worked for a year as a teacher before returning to the mission field in a creative access country. Yet another culture and a different set of challenges, but we knew he was serving and being sustained by the same God. He is currently in the States again with a wife and growing family, but they anticipate serving in another creative access country in the future.

When our son was contemplating serving in what is considered one of the more dangerous parts of the world, he was told that he should discuss it with his parents first. As his Mom, I shrugged my shoulders, knowing that there is no safer place than in God’s hands. His earthly safety had no greater guarantee while crossing the street in our town than it had halfway around the world. If it was God’s will that he should serve anywhere, that is exactly where he should be.

One of his younger sisters heard me tell that story, and thus, when she heard God’s call several years later, she knew she did not have to pause to wonder what Mom and Dad would think.

Due to an old injury flare-up, she was not sure she would be able to launch as planned. While her service was delayed, eventually she was able to work in a different aspect of the mission project. Unable to utilize her nursing training as she had envisioned, she was initially frustrated. But from this frustration grew flexibility and trusting in God. She also experienced things she had not had to deal with before, such as preventable death and suffering. Through these experiences, she gained a deeper longing for spreading the gospel to the unreached and teaching them how to live healthier lives and to trust in God. She was able to help people in ways she had not considered before, such as using crafting skills to build equipment her patients needed.

Our daughter also currently resides in the States, expanding her education and experience to better equip her for the mission field. She is glad for having had the opportunity to serve as a short-term student missionary, gaining knowledge of what to expect and how to prepare for the future. She has seen firsthand that there are still people who have never heard the name of Jesus or what He has done for them, and she has a greater sense of how she can help reach them.

Children are a heritage of the Lord. While this is obviously true of our six children and the quickly growing number of grandchildren, we also count the number of God’s children being led into His Kingdom through their influence.

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