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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.

When we first began this journey to serve among the unreached we were given some advice. “Hold loosely to the specifics of your calling as reality on the ground changes rapidly.” I didn’t want to hear that. I knew where we were called.

Yet six weeks into that new home, we were packing our bags and leaving as the promised visas never materialized. We found ourselves in a place we never imagined we would live and we found God’s plan was for us to be there all along. Though we were surprised, God was not.

Three and a half years later, we found ourselves wondering if we would be kicked out of our adopted home. The government was cracking down. We wondered if our time was coming to a close yet again. But this time, things settled down. We were not kicked out of the country and we began again to look forward to what God would do. We were going to the U.S. for a year of furlough but we would return, ready to work. Things were falling into place.

Another Curve Ball

Now at the end of our furlough, we again find ourselves reflecting on that early advice as we prepare to begin serving in our third country along the Silk Road in just four and a half years. We were not looking for another move. Yet we find ourselves having to leave a land we love and learning to love a new land and a new people. We wonder why we had to begin in point a, move to point b, and now find ourselves looking at point c. Yet we clearly hear the Lord leading us to yet another location. It still hurts, leaving your home. But we look expectantly at what God has in store for the future. We look forward to what lessons He wants to teach us at our new point c.

We understand that our service on the Silk Road is often as much about us becoming more like Him, as it is about us sharing Him.

Sometimes it hurts but it is always worth the price.

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