Standing behind a podium, I addressed a church with confidence, describing Cambodia and the need for the Gospel there. I presented my credentials: I’m a missionary kid who grew up in that very country. I know the language, the people, and the culture. I expressed my specific burden for children’s ministry, and God’s people responded. In record time I had the support I needed, and I was on the plane headed to the mission field.

In many ways I knew what to expect, even more than most new missionaries do. I was returning to the town in which I’d grown up, where I’d had a front row seat to Cambodian ministry, having observed my parents all my childhood. I had plans. I hit the ground ready to get started.

But then, expectations met reality in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The First Year

Spiritual attack

Doubts and temptations assailed me on a personal level in ways I had never experienced before. One case was a real spiritual attack that began before I left for Cambodia, tempting me with bizarre thoughts of forsaking Christ. I have written about this experience at length elsewhere, but this was a trial that lasted for months and brought much trouble to my soul.

Doubt

My first week in Cambodia had me waking up to the sounds of roosters crowing and Buddhist monks chanting, and it just hit me. This city is full of people with their own lives, pursuing their own goals, in a society with centuries-old beliefs, values, and traditions. They care nothing about me. Who am I to ask people to overturn all that they are and follow Christ? What could I possibly accomplish? Nothing. It could only be a miracle of God.

Thwarted plans

Then on a practical, day-to-day level, I found myself thwarted. I was unable to settle in for six months. I was living in someone else’s house unable to even unpack my suitcases. After years of college and bouncing around from house to house, I had been looking forward to settling down at last. But my hopes were deferred month after month. When I did find a place to live, it was different from what I’d imagined. Instead of being in a community with neighbors to talk to, I was in an apartment building where other renters were gone all day to work. I felt like God Himself was trying to keep me in isolation. Why was the Lord doing this? Wasn’t building community relationships a good goal?

Feeling unproductive

The hardest thing was when I had nothing to do. I’d known ahead of time that I would have to sort of “invent” my ministry on the field. As a single woman missionary with no example for me to follow, I had to figure out what my ministry could look like. But that process takes time, much longer than I thought it would. Maybe from an outside perspective people would say I was already doing a lot, but some weeks I felt like I was accomplishing nothing at all. What was I even doing here? How should I fill my days? My hours? My life began to take shape, but it took several months. 

The Second Year

Finally, my involvement in ministry grew, and I began to feel useful at last. I was busy! My days and weeks were full!

But then I found that no matter how busy I was, my efforts were still often thwarted. Sickness, whether my own or that of others, got in the way of plans. Some Sundays the teaching would go well. Other weeks, key people were missing, and hearts seemed apathetic. There was only one profession of faith, and even with that, there was a waiting to see if it was genuine. My main ministry, teaching children, was a ministry primarily of long-term investment, hoping that God would use His Word in their lives later down the line. It might be years before I could see “results.” I found myself once again facing discouragement. But in what was I seeking fulfillment?   

The Work of a Servant

Paul begins many of his epistles by calling himself a servant of Christ and of the Gospel.

I think about the way missions is often discussed. We talk about what we want to do for God and about the fulfillment of spreading the Gospel.

But it’s one thing to talk about serving. It’s another thing to live as a servant. It’s harder. It’s more mundane than we were anticipating. Sometimes we have to cancel the teen girls’ class because it’s raining. We teach and we love, but we have no idea what God will do with our efforts. What will become of these people in future years. We have days where nothing much happens. We make big plans, and sometimes they come to nothing. Ministering to people means that the work is never “done.” Discipleship and evangelism take place over days and weeks and years of faithful living.   

In 2 Timothy 2, Paul compares us to vessels in a great house, saying, “if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work” (v. 21, ESV).

I came on a mission, but the mission isn’t mine. It isn’t wrong to make plans and set goals, but I am a servant, a vessel of the Lord. My job is to be clean, set apart, useful, and ready for the good works God has prepared ahead of time for me to do. What I accomplish and what that looks like is up to God!

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9, ESV).