Pray for Missionaries!

This was something I originally posted on Facebook, and I wanted to add a few details and post it on the blog because the more I think about it the more I feel like others need to hear and try and understand the other side of missions.

I promise you that missions is not all fun and rainbows. If I’m being open I have to admit that sometimes I am jealous of the short-term trips I get to observe through social media. Many of those trips look so impactful and fun…delivering beds, feeding hundreds, drilling wells, providing clean water, meeting real needs, putting smiles on faces, having a great time, and then in just a bit, their work is done (at least for now) and they go back home. But I’m stuck, I’m stuck here with the “yuck” or “in the mud and muck” as one of my friends said. I get to see the worst in people sometimes. I watch people make heartbreaking decisions when they know better. I’m taught that no matter how much you give someone, most of the time it will never be enough according to them. I’m taught over and again that the simplest things can be extremely difficult. I’m taught that you can’t trust what others say, especially if they sound like or claim that they are a professional in their field. And let me be clear that this isn’t a situation of one person “wronged” me and now I’m too guarded. This is a "it has happened over and over for the last 7+ years" type situation.

A couple of weeks ago on my way to town to collect items for our Valentine’s outreach day there was an altercation. I was driving and the car in front of me stopped so I also had to stop. None of this was sudden, but the motorbike behind me ran into me (after I was fully stopped) and drove off of the road and down into a drainage ditch. The car in front of me starts driving again and gets to move on with her life. I stay stopped to make sure everyone was okay (I thought there was a female passenger on the bike), only to be (literally) held up for the next 15-20 minutes. Thankfully Karson was with me and he kept his cool, I was planning on taking Joy with me and leaving Karson home to work, but he took a break to go with me instead. Within 1 minute of the “accident” there were about 30 people surrounding my car and motorbikes parked in front of and directly behind my car so I could not move. They were being harsh, speaking quickly, and saying that I stopped too quickly, the accident was my fault, and so on. We asked them to go to the police station with us and let the police decide who was at fault and they told us to call the police to come to us. I tried to call a few numbers that google showed me, but the numbers wouldn’t go through and we do not have 911 here. The whole time they have us surrounded they are demanding money and going back and forth with Karson. The mob is being very harsh and angry and Karson is not. I called Jeff to see if he had an officers’ phone number, but he didn’t. So Karson and I were completely stuck, right there in the road, surrounded by angry men because they essentially had me caged in.

My car is tiny so there was no pushing past or through the motorbikes. They kept asking for money, but wouldn’t specify an amount. They kept talking about the damage to the motorbike and how we can just give them money to fix it. In their eyes them hitting me was 100% my fault and I was supposed to pay them. They asked Karson to get out of the car and look at the damage, which he refused to do. Again Karson asked them to go to the police station, they again refused that idea, Karson asked them if they were scared of the police and they said “no” so he told them again “let’s go talk to them” and they said “you win, just go." Karson asked 3 more times for us to all to go to the police station and they kept saying we could just go (wherever we wanted, not to the police station). So Karson gave me the go ahead to drive away and we got out of there, with several of those men hitting and slapping my car as I drove away.

While things like having your car blocked in and an angry “mob” surrounding your car doesn’t happen all the time, “yuck” happens a lot when you live on the mission field full-time. The newness wears off and helping others gets harder. It becomes hard to keep your (MY) heart from becoming hard because of all the difficult things you see and experience. Pray for missionaries, while we are so blessed to get to live this life, it is harder than we can even explain and we face battles that most people cannot understand. Of course it is easy to come up with “answers” but when your daily life is filled with the same problems over and over again the answers are not so easy. When you’ve tried “that” and it didn’t work it can become frustrating.

You wake up one day and realize that this life isn’t the life you thought it would be. You realize that it is much, much harder than you thought it would be. Family and friends drop off. People don’t understand the things you are saying about the culture you serve. Sometimes it is like you are being “gas-lit”…surely it cannot be that bad they insinuate. The real truth is it is probably worse than we are saying. If missionaries are open with you and share their life, struggles, and experiences with you…believe them. Believe them and understand that you (in most cases) cannot really understand what they are going through or have been through because you haven’t lived in a culture that isn’t your own. You haven’t been treated the way they have been treated, lied to all the ways they have been lied to, or seen and experienced the things they have. They don’t understand the broken culture they have lived in for the last several years and trust me, the glimpses you have seen haven’t given you a full picture either.

Most missionaries I’ve talked to won’t have these discussions “out in the open." When you share your hurts, concerns, fears, disappointments, and questions with others you often get push back that you are too guarded, you get told you sound like you don’t like the people you are working with and for, your experiences get down played…people start to question if you are really a loving person or not.

I’m not saying any of this for a pat on the back, if any part of missions was about “pats on the back” I would have been gone a long, long time ago because even praise from others gets old quickly. This is simply a reminder to pray for missionaries regularly because this life is hard in so many different ways. Pray for our hearts to stay soft and for needs to be met. Pray for missionaries to be able to connect with other missionaries who understand them and what they have been through. Pray for their hearts because betrayal sucks and hurts and definitely happens more often than you would think. Missionaries are JUST regular people who are willing to obey a call (that I personally did not ask for 😂), there isn’t anything super special about us that makes what we walk through easy. We get up and do the next thing each day because we are sure this is what God has for us. It is all about Him and glorifying Him, but it definitely isn’t easy to follow this path He has us on!

Don’t worry, we love Kenya and it’s beautiful people. We can’t imagine living anywhere else, even on the days that end in tears. We are thankful to God for His leading and continual provision here. We are amazed at all He has done here and all the people He has drawn to Mercy Ministries to share in the work He is doing. "Thank you" will never be enough, but thank you for all of your love and trust!

In light of the issues we had going to town a couple of weeks ago and for several other reasons we have set up a fundraiser to purchase a truck that I can drive on a daily basis. Adding a second truck will allow our weekly shopping trips to be a bit easier. There are more details located in the fundraiser here and as always feel free to reach out with any questions you have.

We are hoping for a truck similar to this to make travel easier.

This is our current go-cart :)

This is an old picture, but we were fully loaded in our small car but it didn’t hold much!