[column width=”1/6″ title=”” title_type=”single” animation=”none” implicit=”true”]

[/column]

[column width=”2/3″ last=”true” title=”” title_type=”single” animation=”none” implicit=”true”]

Have you heard the expression “Boots on the Ground?” Well our Live Dead Missionaries are the boots on the Silk Road. Here we’d like to take a moment and allow one of them to share a snapshot of their life with you. Some names and details have been changed, but this is a true story from this colorful, vibrant, and sometimes surprising region.

This morning my team leader fielded another proposal for me.

We used to laugh about them more, but I think today we were both a little fed up.

As a single woman in her twenties living along the Silk Road, they come pretty often. And I know I’m not the only one. Wide-eyed dreamers who decided to follow the call to somewhere far away. Teachers, health-care providers, members of church-planting teams.

We have come to a part of the world where the amount of respect we deserve is automatically determined by our gender. The highest way value could be assigned to us would be to become someone’s wife. With our perfect English, love for foreign cultures, and shiny blue American passports, we are the perfect candidates to be someone’s plus one. Or plus two or three, depending on where you are.

It shows up on all sides, sometimes sweet and well meaning, other times horrifying and degrading.

“My grandson is very handsome, and he will be a doctor soon!” says an old grandma over tea.

“These boys are perfect for you! Yes, they’re a different religion than you, but they don’t practice, so it’s basically the same, right?” a neighbor offers enthusiastically.

“Hey Sexy! You very beautiful! You need boyfriend?” cries out a young man leaning against a parked car.

I smile and shake my head.

I explain the truth of my faith.

I fix my eyes forward and try to pretend I didn’t hear.

Today I could see the pain in my team leader’s eyes.

“You have no idea all the things I had to listen to today,” he says of my hopeful suitor. I hope he will never tell me.

Working Together

I know he can see his daughters in his mind’s eye, wrapped up in their pajamas, protected for now by their smallness and innocence. I too, am someone’s child, but my father is far away, separated from me by an ocean. Instead I watch this man of God, my brother in Christ, struggle to protect me in this place that is foreign to both of us.

As I walk in the streets of our city with the young single men on my team, I can see the weight of it on their shoulders. When they choose not to treat it like a joke or ignore it but sacrifice their comfort to help me. When they acknowledge the creepiness and the leeriness and the things I would rather not talk about.

This is a day when the ugly side of serving in these countries shows its face.

We are all learning how to show grace, how to work together, how to be brave.

I am so thankful for these men of God who stand up for me. For their wives who create safe spaces where I can learn and be nurtured on this difficult ground. For my unmarried brothers in Christ who choose to show their maturity by protecting me, even when it costs them something.

He is Worth it

Tonight I sit on my bed and quiet my heart before God. I am not angry with the man who proposed this morning, regardless of what ignorant or disturbing things he may have said.

Lost people will act like lost people.

Because of this, my heart breaks. Whatever pain I feel in my isolation here, however vulnerable I am, it is nothing compared to the isolating vulnerability these people are living in. They have no access to the gospel. They don’t know that God has ascribed to them infinite value by sending Himself, His only Son, to die for them and take away their sins.

That’s why I’m here. That’s why there are so many more young women like me, who have decided to go to the farthest reaches to share Jesus. He is worth anything.

We brave the catcalls and the proposals and the crazy dress codes that His story of hope would go forward.

Before we part ways for the day my team leader and I snap back into business mode. My roommate and I listen as he goes over the schedule for the next day. We confirm all the details, but a heavy air still hangs over our conversation. He went to bat for me, and his sacrifice cost him something.

Feeling Thankful

It’s a beautiful example of the gospel we are here to share. I am so thankful for him, and for all the other men on my team who make sacrifices every day so I can be safe in this country. Who lift me up and encourage me as an important part of our effort here. Who show me examples of what it is to love their wives fully with dedication, and give me hope that a life of serving God overseas doesn’t necessarily have to mean a life of singleness.

This morning my team leader fielded another proposal for me. In a moment of ignorant darkness making jokes about bride prices, I caught a glimpse of the price Jesus paid for His bride: everything.

For that and the amazing people that are here to proclaim that with me, I am so thankful.

[/column]