We were in for a surprise…
“Let’s go to FaithCamp!”
In 2021, friends of my children invited us to go to “FaithCamp” in Idaho. We met these friends at a family camp, basically a multi-day spiritual conference designed for families, and so I assumed it was just another family camp with a unique name that appealed to me. It was far and so in choosing the trips we would make that summer I figured, “with a name like ‘FaithCamp’, I’m interested! Never having been there the name drew us.
We had no clue about what it was about. The family camps we had been to had a spiritual focus and we were so busy starting a family business, looking for a larger vehicle, considering moving to another state, looking at the purchase of a farm, planning trips, homeschooling, planting a large garden…a lot was going on, and we never thought about what this family camp was about, we trusted the family that invited us and thought it would be a good new experience and destination. In reality, God was leading us there.
The date was set for the end of July. It was a long day’s drive in a car that was way too small. Arriving, we discovered that it was hosted by Jesus for Asia, a mission ministry that we had never heard of. We then quickly realized that the focus of the camp was on mission work in Asia. The meetings were penetrating and gripping! In the meetings, they made video calls to several missionary families out in a number of Asian countries on a large screen and had them share their stories. It was captivating to hear their stories live!
One family after another was presented. Another country. Another family. Another country…I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get away to a quiet place and talk to God. “What’s going on? What are You trying to say? Why is my heart so griped? Why is my soul so rocked? I’m…troubled and I don’t know why.” I secluded myself in a quiet spot to talk to God.
Interest in mission work wasn’t new to us. Fresh out of college I worked in Norway. Married with children, we made plans to move to Costa Rica, but the prospect closed. Then we looked at North Africa or India. Again, the prospect closed. Our fourth child was born and our life followed another direction.
In that quiet spot I struggled with God. I spoke my heart and listened and listened and listened. Sometimes God speaks slowly, like the moving of the clouds. I was getting the impression that God was calling us to go as missionaries.
“It looked like God was leading in a new direction, a major one.”
It was so weird. There were so many feelings. At the beginning of the meetings there was a shocking presentation of the plummeting number of missionaries along with the plummeting amount of money given for the work. We saw that we were a part of that neglect and were crushed that we were so ignorant. This alone made a tremendous impact in us. Then the reminder that God had called his people to go and share what God had done for them was all that was needed for us. We were at a tipping point.
Unfortunately, so many, like we had, think that their call is to fill a spot here in the U.S. that so many other people are competing for. Somehow we as Christians have forgotten the rest of the world. We enjoy the stories from the mission field, but we’ve become lulled into a mindset that somehow those people will be reached by someone else, if we are even aware that there is a need. And most don’t even know how much of a need there is. This was a feeling of bewilderment over our ignorance.
Another feeling was that of distraught by our constricted, myopic focus on our little life. Our eyes were opened to our shallow understanding of who God is and what role He plays in our lives. We are so fashioned by the world, molded by its thinking and behavior. We were a poor representation of God.
Those feelings and more only bent our eyes back on God to rectify our hearts, to create what was missing and to follow His leading. It looked like God was leading in a new direction, a major one, I was still struggling with the first set of emotions and now it seemed that coming quickly there was a new set of emotions to face.
There was a struggle between the call and the resistance to it. It was both exciting and scary. But we had been on a path for the last ten years of putting our lives in God’s hands even when the cost seemed too much or the judgment missing. We went home with foggy heads to pray.