In December of 1996, Jayne and I spent the week after Christmas in Urbana, Illinois,
about the farthest you could get from temperate California weather. But we weren't
there to enjoy the weather, we were there to find out more about Missions. As it so
happened, the vision for our lives was completely changed there. For it was there
that God confirmed in us that we were not only to support missions, but we were to be
missionaries. And in many ways, that's exactly how we ended up here in Singapore.
Urbana wasn't our first experience with Missions. I had been on two trips myself
to the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Eastern Arizona. It was there that I
found that being a missionary isn't all evangelism, but sometimes it's just being a
friend. God calls on us to love Him with our whole selves, and to love others as
ourself. If people can see that you truly care about them, they should also be able
to see that the love within us comes not from ourselves, but from God. In fact, I
think I learned how to be a friend by going on missions. It's about not relying on
yourself but relying only on God. And in the missions field, you can rarely rely on
yourself.
Singapore itself is not a big missions field. In fact, a great deal of the
educated people are Christians, which puts a lot of resources in their hands.
Singapore is more of a home base where people can move into other large missions fields,
like China, Indonesia, India, or Japan. For us, Singapore is a place where we can
get used to the Asian way of life, learn new languages, and of course, study the
Bible. When or where we are going is not important right now. When we are
ready for the field, we know that God will give us a gentle nudge.
Here is a little information about Missions and the people we know who are involved in
this exciting field. More and more of our friends are taking time out of their busy
lives to go on short term missions. We hope their stories and experiences will
inspire you too.
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