To be a Missionary: a Journey

By Bertram Inglesmit

Do you yearn to go out to the world to tell them about Jesus? Do you wish that you could reach people who have never heard about Jesus and give them the hope and love we are so privileged to enjoy?

Maybe it’s not possible or advisable for you to go now. However, you can prepare for the day that the Lord calls you. Waiting for the Lord’s call is not a matter of idly doing nothing. One prepares for it by taking active steps so that when the day comes we are ready and able to go wherever He leads us.

I heard the call to serve God a long time ago. Today I work in India among the Tibetan Buddhists, and I’ve been here for the past five years. It’s my dream come true. However, it was not an easy path to get here. I hope that you might learn from my journey and also get ready to go and make disciples of all nations.

  This article tells of my journey and how I prepared for the missionary call. Your journey will look very different to mine, but there are sure to be many similarities. Maybe my story will help you.

  When I met Jesus at age 19 my immediate desire was to tell everyone about what I had received, but immediately becoming a missionary did not seem viable. As a young believer I had a lot to learn. Besides, I did not know of any missions organizations and I had no financial support anyway.

  However, I did not let the vision of going to the mission field die. I nursed the dream in my heart to become a missionary even when it seemed that there was no hope. I well remember when the missions pastor told the congregation, “Get your passports ready!” My passport was always up to date just in case the Lord would call me at any time.

  I was ready, but the Lord did not call. Time went by, but it seemed that the Lord had forgotten me and that I would never go. I waited, and waited, and waited. I sometimes wondered where the Lord would send me, but I never had any word as to where I might be going. It all seemed so discouraging. In the end I waited thirty years for the Lord’s call, but when it came it was so good! Every minute waiting was worth it.

  The first secret of waiting for the missionary calling is to have a constant desire to serve the Lord. When I met my wife, we dreamed about a life serving the Lord together. This is very important: when choosing a life partner, be sure that that person is passionate about serving the Lord and is willing to go anywhere to do it. It is very hard for people who have set their mind on living, retiring and dying in the same place to wrap their minds around the vulnerability of not having a fixed income, not having a home and being far away from loved ones. 

As a couple we kept constant contact with missionaries in the field, and devoured their newsletters. We prayed for them, supported them financially, helped them raise supporters and met them whenever they returned for home assignments. We sent them messages while they were away. These were not very deep or amazing, but it seemed to encourage the workers that someone back home cared for them.

  We were constantly on the lookout for ways to reach out both in my community and further afield. One of our favourite activities was going to the jobless and the homeless. We did this through my local church and through community organizations.  In addition, we tried to go out on short-term outreaches (anything from a weekend to two weeks) to communities a distance away from our own. We also volunteered at various missionary organizations and shared in their vision.

  When our children came, we constantly built in them a love of God. We also taught them the importance of serving God through serving others. We included them in all our work, and let them take part as full members of the team. In time, they joined teams of children that went on outreach under supervision without us, and they did magnificent work. My eldest daughter was 10 years old when she went on a prayer journey to China, and that was one of the highlights for us as a family.

  The second secret of waiting for the Lord’s call is faithfulness. Even though we weren’t at the place we wanted to be, we worked hard at the tasks that the Lord had given us. I worked in a secular environment, but I tried to do my work diligently and with excellence. Moreover, I used every opportunity to witness to people around me about God’s goodness and His love, firstly by living a blameless and caring life, but also by sharing God’s love whenever the chance occurred. 

  We attended church regularly and took part in the church’s activities. We volunteered for acts of service and gave a part of our income to the church. We were members of the church’s small groups, and led them. In time I received various leadership roles in the church and tried to do them to the best of my ability.

  Most importantly, however, we tried to live a spiritual life close to God. We spent time in prayer and in studying the word. In my day-by-day life I tried to constantly experience the presence of God and enjoy Him every second of the day. I intentionally prayed, meditated and worshipped in the quietness of my heart at every opportunity.

  Practicing the presence of God is the best preparation a missionary can do. However, if you have an understanding of the Lord’s calling (for example as a worker to a remote unreached people group) you might take tangible steps. Find out everything that you can about the people and the country they live in, think about what you can offer them, and work out what you can do, such as sharpening up your electrician skills or training as a language teacher.

  In addition, we did personal evangelism training to tell others what we believe. Being able to share Jesus effectively is a vital skill for missionaries.

  Whilst waiting might seem painful and pointless, it is a very important training ground. While waiting, we learn about the Lord’s provision for all our needs, we grow spiritually and we build a testimony that we can share to those in need. Missionaries are not like encyclopaedia salesmen who tell unwilling people what they themselves do not fully understand. Instead, on the mission field they live out a mature, powerful spiritual life that draws others to the beauty of Christ. This maturity can only be achieved in one way: faithful day-by-day living in the power of God.

  The third secret is to be constantly ready. A key component of this is financial stewardship. I cannot say that we got this completely right. We were very discouraged that we never seemed to be able to save money. In fact we sometimes had to go into debt, for example to buy a car needed for work. However, we always made sure to buy as frugally as we could and not to make unnecessary expenditures. We took our holidays in places that were relaxing, but which we could afford.

  We bought a house, and while the mortgage payments were hard to cover, we were able to make a nice profit when we sold it. Buying a house can make a lot of sense financially, but this needs to be done under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as it is possible to make a big mistake if buying the wrong property.

  Living inside our means was a very important lesson that we had to learn. Today we receive a fifth of the income we had when we were in secular occupations, but the Lord has always taken care of all our needs. 

  We also took care of our bodies. When my wife needed surgery we took a deep breath and spent the money to get her the medical care that was needed. This made a deep hole in the little savings we had managed to accumulate, but this worked out well: if she had taken the surgery the medical insurance had offered she would never have been able to undertake the strenuous activity required in the mission field we are engaged in. Yes, we believe that medical insurance is important in order to ensure that when you go to the mission field you don’t have any physical burden that prevents you from serving God to the full.

  The fourth secret is to be constantly listening to God, and asking Him, “Is it time yet to go yet?” If we do that, God is faithful and gives us signs about next steps that are needed on our journey.

How we finally ended up going

After serving the Lord for more than thirty years and not receiving a call, I was at a point of giving up. I thought that maybe the Lord had not really called me. Maybe I was destined to stay at home until I died. I was in a difficult, stressful job with no future prospects. I felt disillusioned with the work and felt that I was wasting my time. However, I kept doing my best in the hope that the Lord would somehow change my situation.

  And so my wife and I went on holiday in December 2014. We agreed that the situation then was not sustainable and that I should make a complete career change. I thought that maybe I could become a lecturer, an English teacher or a journalist. For each of these jobs, it would have been necessary for me to undergo training. So my wife and I sat down, and together we dreamed about how we could do the change and what we would need to do to make it happen. We put together a concrete plan of action for the change, including everything we would need to do after I had completed the studies. We carefully saved it in a special place and went on with life.

  One of the things on our plan was to find out about what opportunities there were to sell our property.  My wife was supposed to do this, but she really loved our place and could not imagine letting go of it. We were both heavily emotionally invested in our beautiful miniature house, so she did nothing about this point.

  However, in January an estate agent gave me a cold call out of the blue suggesting that she would look at our house and give us a valuation. I accepted, and we made an appointment for the first Monday in February.

  That Monday turned out to be a turning point in our lives. At work, I was told that I was redundant and that my services would no longer be required. This was a huge surprise and so I spent the day starting the process of finishing my work.

  When I arrived home, the estate agent was there. She looked at the property and informed us that it was worth double what we expected. We were flabbergasted.

  So my wife and I sat down again. What were we to do? We spoke for a while about possibilities, but nothing seemed appealing. Then she had a brainwave: maybe we could do an All Nations training course, Church Planting eXperience. We looked on the web, and discovered that there was indeed a CPx coming up. We applied, and the next day we were accepted.

  The Lord had opened the way for us. Where we had thought that we did not have enough money to go onto the mission field, we suddenly had enough money to last about a year and a half, maybe two. We reckoned that God could take care of us after that.

  We asked our friends and family to pray with us whether this was God’s direction for us. Everyone agreed that it was something that we should explore.

  In a thousand ways everything came together. We had a cottage on our property that we let. However, our tenants had moved out a week before and we had not been able to find new tenants. This might have been an obstacle, but the Lord knew what He was doing. Our youngest daughter had received her pay check the week before too, so we did not have to take care of her financially any more. We took out our plan for exiting the work environment and found that it covered everything we had to do – there was nothing missing and all we had to do was follow it step by step. Given the speed which we had to move, it was a great confidence-booster to know that we would not forget something and leave it undone.

  In this way we saw how the Lord had prepared us for this change before we knew what was about to happen. It is truly a great adventure to serve the Lord!

  In addition, we had a very small home, so we could move the few things into storage at our middle daughter’s house a distance away.

  With some quick work, we were able to put our house on the market, move everything out, sell one car, finish our work and be at All Nations 1,500 kilometres away by the next Sunday.

  We had no idea what was to happen after the training. We thought that perhaps we would return to secular work, enriched by the training. At the training, we heard the Lord’s call to mission and we were happy to follow Him.

  It may seem that the Lord takes a long time to change things over night, but we have learned that God is most at work when things seem to be most quiet. 

  And so, if you want to go to the lost but are not ready, be active in making this happen at the Lord’s time in His way. Dream about your call, be faithful in what you have to today, always staying ready and listening to God for what His plans are.

  May you soon be thrust into the harvest field!

Find out more about being trained and sent to the nations through All Nations Cape Town here.