Walk in the shoes of one woman’s journey to the unreached
Ruth is a young woman well on her way to giving her life to the purposes of Christ. We are blessed to be a small part of her journey as she continues mobilizing others to embrace unreached peoples and preparing herself to be a missionary to the nations. This is her story.
Ruth* Female | 30+
One Way to True Joy
Growing up in a Christian home, I was taught the truths of the Bible from a young age. However, I lived two different lives – kind and mild-mannered at church, and strong-willed and self-centered at home. I fought to be the best in everything I did, yet my life felt empty and without purpose. I wanted intimacy with God, but I had not turned my life over to Him in surrender at that point.
While studying in Canada in 2005, I attended a weekend church conference outside the city just so that I could have a holiday. That decision turned out to have a dramatic impact on my life. As I heard the pastor recount the gospel, I finally began to understand the depths of His grace. That conference also turned out to be a simultaneous call for me to surrender my life completely to Jesus as Lord, and to join Him in His work to bring His truth and love to people who have little or no access to the gospel.
Surrender and Submission
Even while the Lord was doing His saving work in me, He was also developing my interest in missions, and I started going for short term trips. Some of the places I went to were Thailand (2003), Himalayas (2005), East Asia (2011), Vietnam and Cambodia (2013).
After truly surrendering my life to the Lord, I knew straight away that it would be committed to Him in a way it had not been before.
I prayed, both personally and for the nations. I sought out a mentor. I committed my life to worship and a passion for the word. I made short-term trips and attended conferences, prayer meetings, and talks. I practised evangelism and discipleship wherever the Lord had placed me. I made big decisions with missions in mind. I plugged myself into a like-minded community. Based on the advice of my mentor and my Missions Director of my home church, I was introduced to the WEC Singapore Mobilisers, who willingly journeyed with me to explore my fit in missions.
Preparing for the Field
Having professional work skills does help to open doors in the mission field, as I had seen through my career in occupational therapy. It enabled me to bring hope and healing in the physical realm, which helped to build bridges towards the spiritual realm for the holistic care of the whole person. But at the same time, I felt that I also needed a time of more intensive and focused preparation before I went to the field.
Submitting to the Lord’s will and guidance, I left my full-time job as an occupational therapist in 2016 and began an internship with WEC Singapore as a way of preparing for long-term service. This internship would help me learn more about cross-cultural mission work among unreached peoples and provide exposure to mission fields while on short-term vision trips.
Through the internship, I shadowed the WEC Mobilizers and was also able to participate in God’s work among unreached peoples in a practical way by mobilizing Singaporean Christians for missions. The work involved engaging local churches and Christians with God’s work among the unreached peoples around the world. I came to a better understanding of WEC as a missions agency and gained insight on possibilities for long-term partnership.
Partnering with the CMM for Further Impact
During that time, I also embarked on a Perspectives on the World Christian Movement Course, which literally helped me put everything I was learning and was exposed to during my internship in WEC into perspective.
It was also during one of the Perspectives classes that I got to meet the people from Center for Mission Mobilization. They introduced to us two booklets called Xplore (Discover God’s Word, God’s World, and God’s Work) and Go Mobilize (inviting others to join you in living out God’s global purpose), which I found to be very useful material for the small group discussions that I was involved in. I shared this resource with the WEC Mobilizers, and they have since incorporated some of the materials into their training sessions, too.
It’s truly exciting how partnerships are formed and information and resources are shared across different mission agencies and churches, as we all work together to see the nations reached.
It’s truly exciting how partnerships are formed and information and resources are shared across different mission agencies and churches, as we all work together to see the nations reached. In fact, everything that I have learned from WEC and Perspectives, I could also bring it back to be used in my home church.
Placing the Future into His Hands
The path ahead is not without challenges. Besides managing parental expectations, doubts may arise regarding my decisions about my career, my path in life, or singleness and marriage. I struggle to trust God with my wellbeing and often worry that I’m not good enough. When facing such temptations, I have to remind myself that I have to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ and feed myself with truth from His word. I’m currently pressing on in my language studies in East Asia, and I know that God will lead me on to the unreached people group that He wants me to reach with the Gospel, trusting Him each step of the way as I step out in surrender.
* Name has been changed to protect her identity.
Oftentimes CMM staff and affiliates use large-group trainings as one of the many ways to mobilize the global Church toward a missional lifestyle, but in doing so we must learn to trust the Lord with the outcome, because we may not always see the direct fruits of our labor on the individuals, pastors, churches, or organizations who are being trained. But other times, we do get to hear or even see the work Jesus is doing in these people’s hearts, as He is doing in Ruth, through our small but purposeful steps in the process of a person’s walk toward surrendering their lives to God’s mission. Ruth is simply one of hundreds, even thousands, of people whose hearts are being impacted by God’s grace and through the efforts of our staff across the world, and we are simply humbled to play a role in seeing more and more people go to His nations.