You don’t become a missionary by raising money and flying to a foreign country. You do it by being obedient to God. Tell people about Jesus where you live. Get out of your comfort zone. Sell something precious and apply it to your debts. Make a sacrifice. Develop better friendships. There is an old saying: “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” While this is not to be taken literally in this sense, (please, don’t start wearing the national garb of the country you want to go to just yet). However, somewhere in the process, we have to make a conscious decision that there is no going back.
Dan and Joy West have had a rich missionary career, yet at a time in their career when they might be tempted to stay in their comfort zone, Dan and Joy are starting over.
More than 30 years ago, the last evangelical church in the municipality of Bergen, Netherlands, closed its doors, leaving no evangelical witness for two generations. But a small yet passionate group of Christians believed God for a miracle in their community.
For most of his life, one of missionary Rich McLane’s passions has been hunting. His wife Lori enjoys playing the trumpet. When they became missionary church planters in Poland years ago, who would have guessed these passions would converge to reach more than 120,000 hunters throughout the country?
We continued to pray for connections, provision, and miracles. We talked about RFK everywhere we went and networked with many other churches, foster parents, and social workers. Doors began to open, and others began to catch the vision. We began to see miraculous provision. As we prayed for social workers to sign off allowing children to attend, the signatures began to come in.
It turns out that baseball is not just an all-American pastime. Chris and Leneé Oakley found this out three years ago when their family discovered the local baseball club in Budapest, Hungary. Their boys began to play on the team immediately, and Chris was soon asked to begin coaching. Being involved in both playing and coaching has allowed the Oakley family the chance to get to know not only the families of the team members, but also coaches and players from other Hungarian teams. This unconventional opportunity has opened up incredible doors of ministry for the Oakleys to speak into the lives of Hungarians through sports.
As tens of thousands of refugees have flooded the shores of Europe, the Lord has taken that which is a crisis to man and turned it for His glory. People from nations closed to the gospel and in which no one can freely share the gospel are now hearing about Jesus in their mother tongue, through scripture, song and the Jesus film.
