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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.

I am on a bus headed back from the airport with a short-term team that has come to visit. We are standing on the bus talking and getting to know each other, when suddenly I hear something and I notice that the bus has stopped. I look out the window and see that all the traffic has stopped. I get off the bus to see that there is a large cloud of black smoke coming from just up the highway. An explosion. At the next bus stop.

“We could have been there.”

That thought played in my head a few times in the minutes to follow. We leave the area and later learn that it was not what it seemed. A vehicle had caught fire and the fuel tank exploded. No one was hurt, and the danger I thought was close turned out to be something other than it seemed.

Since that experience I find myself thinking, “So this is what it means to live here.”  I heard God call me to this area of the world at a very young age. So young in fact that I didn’t even know what countries would surround me, much less what they would be like. For more than half my life I have wondered what it would feel like to be here, on the ground in the midst of uncertainties and hardships.

“So this is what it feels like.” 

The Gospel is Enough

Now that I have a small glimpse of what it is really like, am I ready? Strong enough? Good enough? I have asked myself these questions again and again and the answer is always a resounding NO.

I am not strong enough to handle everything this world can throw at me. I am not wise enough to understand these situations. I am just me. But I said yes to His call, and I trust that He is guiding me and is walking with me every step of the way.

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ then, I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

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