“If your shoes are stolen, then report to the police in slippers.” I had spent about six years in Turkey before I could say that in Turkish. I can also say, “Excuse me, but your apron is now on fire,” and “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sit on your cactus.”
For this ability to speak in tongues, I owe AFM a huge thank-you. Not so much for the chance to use those particular sentences but for the chance to step up to what I call “Kingdom influence in a cross-language dimension.”

Incidentally, I did have to go to the police station in slippers on the day I had three pairs of shoes stolen! As the policeman was writing his report about the stolen shoes, he mumbled something about a child’s grave. At the time I thought it was very sympathetic of him to compare my plight with the tragedy of such an event. Later, I learned his comment was a common Turkish idiom, and he was really saying my shoes were so big they were like a baby’s coffin!

Kingdom influence has many dimensions. People go on short-term trips and influence through the dimensions of service, love and smiles. But to go and live in the mission field long-term and break through to what people actually are saying, what they believe and think and mean, is a different dimension of mission. It is into this realm of words and the ideas and beliefs behind them that we must continue to press. A message is only as good as the understanding of the message.

We are a people with a very important end-time message. But the joyous gospel is appreciated only in the measure that it is comprehended. Poor language skill often garbles the message. I was talking with a foreign friend who told me in English that I should take some “horrible tea” to resolve my throat problem. That sounded unnerving—an ancient local remedy? Where was I to get “horrible tea?” Come to find out, he meant herbal tea! Another time, my Sudanese friend told me emphatically in English that they “don’t have black mamas in Sudan.” After about five minutes of confusion, I realized he meant black mambas! A Turkish friend asked me in English to pray for his father who was going to get catamarans removed from his eyes. A very urgent medical situation indeed! A Czech friend told me when he was first learning English he left a home after Sabbath lunch with a polite farewell of, “Thanks for your hostility. It has been wonderful to be your ghost.” I always smile when I remember my own Polish wife blurting out shortly after we got married, “Help, I think I sprained my uncle!”

And oh the parade of stories Turkish people must tell about me! I once got the words “deer” and “crocodile” confused and told a wide-eyed audience about how many crocodiles get hit by cars on the roads in my home state of Nebraska!

The remaining unreached people groups in the world will not be reached without word specialists. As former AFM trainer John Kent always said, “The unreached are unreached because they are hard to reach.” The remaining unreached people groups are imprisoned by Satan’s craftiest worldview cages. To break into some cultures takes years of thought and carefully chosen words, because words have the power to spark belief. If God can save man by the unseen human fire of belief, how precious is the right formation of ideas! And I am thankful to have been part of the team that has for decades made the beliefs of its converts a mission priority.

Our family has enjoyed working with AFM for 19 years. Within those 19 years we have loved being loved by so many people! From donors to fellow missionaries, from AFM staff to native people in the church we helped establish in Turkey to other Turkish friends we made who are still Muslim, being AFM missionaries has put us at the focal point of a lot of love.

Though we are departing from AFM, our family is not leaving the mission arena. We will be moving to another Middle-Eastern country to work directly with the Adventist Church. Our daily work will be to broaden tentmaker influence and to work with students and young people attending universities throughout the region. I am enthused about the work, as the students whom I will work with all are learning the local languages and making friends among the future thought leaders in these countries.

Many thanks to all who have helped us to establish AFM’s tentmaker ministry, GoTential. I now will pass that work to our friend and co-laborer Paul Massey. Having worked with him in Turkey, I can say with certainty that he will do an excellent job. Please continue to support GoTential through the Massey family.

It is hard to write this last article in Adventist Frontiers. 152 articles ago, I started writing here. Some of you have read every article! It has been a privilege to reflect deeply and craft words that stimulate thoughts for thinking people month after month. May God continue to bless you as you pray and give to AFM. If you would be interested to hear from our family from time to time, you can sign up for our email blog at www.bit.do/HopeFamily.

Ellen White says, “What speech is to thought, so is Christ to the invisible Father.” Wow! So Jesus is “the Word” (John 1) because God wanted to make His precise thoughts able to be grasped. He sent His thoughts as a person. In essence that’s what AFM does—it sends people as a message from the Father. Thanks, AFM, for sending us!

I was a seminarian in the hot deserts of Luxor Egypt and wishing for some mint chocolate chip ice cream. I wondered if King Tut ever sat on the banks of the Nile longing to hear the bells of an ice cream truck. I drank the last of my water from a hot plastic jug. Then I found a small corner market and stepped inside. I quickly scanned the store. Marlboro, Camel, Coke. Canned fish, canned fava beans, mesh baskets with onions, figs, dates and Ray-O-Vac batteries. Two men in traditional linen robes were sitting behind the counter talking over tea. One of them stood up and said to me with heavy accent, “America?”

“Yes,” I nodded.

His black eyes smiled at his detective work. “Christian?”

“Yes,” I said again.

His mustache lifted an inch as he grinned. Then he did something that I will never forget. He stared straight into my eyes. Holding my gaze, he laid his tanned arm on the counter palm-up. Then he slid his silver watch band a half an inch down his wrist exposing a small blue tattoo. It was a cross. He put the watchband back in its place and pointed upward. “Jesus Christ!” he proclaimed emphatically, and then he pounded his heart with his fingertips.

Though he and I lacked words in common, our hearts were bridged by one small symbol and a name—Jesus Christ. He and I had a secret bond—we had met and loved God’s thoughts. It is for those who don’t know God’s thoughts that missionaries learn words to unpack the mystery and beauty. Please pray for the hundreds of Adventist young people who are now struggling in the Middle East to lift Jesus up. We go to lead and help them.

And Jesus said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.” 

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