by Paul Nielsen

Eddie Landreth and his wife Rhonda are pointed towards the long-term mission field. They presently volunteer in many different ways at University Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but their hearts are aimed at cross-cultural missions

Propel: Do you remember when and how this passion, this interest for world missions began for you?

Eddie: Rhonda and I felt God’s call on our lives at First Baptist Church McAlester, Oklahoma, in June 2002. It was during a missions festival we attended just a month after my first mission trip to Malawi, Africa. I knew that this was my purpose in life. God confirmed it by calling us both at the same time.

P: In what ways were you involved in missions this past year?

E: I went to India with the Washington-Madison Baptist Association last May to help with Tsunami relief work. We went to help build a “vocational/lifestyle rehabilitation” in Vidjayawada. I have taken the IMB’s Thessalonica training course taught by the author and IMB facilitator Bruce Carlton.

P: What obstacles have you encountered as you have pursued your interest in world missions?

E: My wife and I are currently and persistently working towards becoming debt-free so that we may pursue our calling to serve God wherever he sends us.

P: What would help you overcome the obstacle, the debt?

E: An outpouring of God’s abundant grace in providing a way for this debt to go away!

P: How has God used other people or resources to help you along as you continue to pursue missions?

E: We often find ourselves discouraged because we don’t see things happening fast enough. I personally get dejected at times. However, when this happens and never without fail God puts someone in our path to bring missions to the forefront of our thinking. I can be in a poor frame of mind and will come home to find that I have received emails from many friends in four different continents, eight different countries. This is my silent confirmation from God. He has called us to this undertaking. Why should I doubt that he will not provide a way to make it happen? I must remember to remain in Him and we will receive these things in His time, not ours.

P: How would you like your missions involvement to look ten years from now?

E: I fully expect to be on the field. If not we will continue to serve locally, wherever He leads.

P: You’re a member of a Southern Baptist Church, correct? How has this influenced your missions vision for good or bad? Or has it influenced it at all? I’m interested to know your thoughts on the IMB, the way they function and the work they are currently involved in abroad, perhaps in particular where you see yourself serving with them.

E: As we are Southern Baptists, we will apply as missionaries to the IMB. If for some reason the IMB doesn’t share in our being sent, then we will simply find another sending agency. We believe God has called us and that He is currently preparing us. He will send us out. I believe that the The Cooperative Program that is currently in place is a wonderful way for all churches in the Southern Baptist Convention to participate in God’s plan for missions. I also can appreciate how IMB missionaries are allowed to spend all their time serving in the field. Most other sending agencies require that their personel spend up to half of their time raising their own support. I think that would be most distracting and disheartening as I can see that this might require a lot of time and energy that could be spent on assignment. It is our prayer that God would use us wherever and however He sees fit.

Eddie on a mission trip, in the back with the straw hat

by Paul Nielsen

Casey and Traci Letellier are on a mission to serve with Innovista. For the past four years, Casey — a Minnesota native — has been the graphic designer for a mission organization based in Denver. Traci — born and raised in Arkansas — is a writer and folk musician.

Propel: You are in the midst of fundraising for a term in the United Kingdom. Did you receive any type of training before beginning the funding process?

Letelliers: Yes. It was fairly informal training. Jason Lane, the director of Innovista International, spent a day with us to help strategize a fundraising plan and an initial time table. We’ve also received lots of good advice from our missionary friends and acquaintances along the way — something we really value.

P: How has the support raising process been different than your expectations?

L: We didn’t fully realize how many missionaries were already being sent from this area [northwest Arkansas]. Many of the people traditionally interested in missions work are already giving to their capacity and are unable to help anyone new. Some of our most generous support has actually come from people about our age who are just getting established in their jobs and are interested in missions. But then again, one of our most generous supporters is a World War II veteran.

P: From your experience, what word of advice or encouragement would you offer to others preparing to begin the support raising process?

L: At times we felt the expectation (and have received advice) suggesting that to be effective we needed to approach our support raising as we would a political campaign, and use carefully chosen emotive terms throughout our presentation. One time in particular, we received this kind of advice and went away really discouraged because taking an approach like that would be completely inauthentic to who we are. While the support-raising process is almost certainly going to be stretching, and some serious hard work no matter how you go about it, it seems to us that support raising shouldn’t require you to be people that you’re not. We’re still figuring out how this looks for us. One thing that we have found is that we usually connect better with individuals or small groups, rather than a crowd.

Another thing we would encourage other missionaries to do is to present your vision with excellence and sensitivity to the audience before you. There is an old stereotype that identifies missionaries as a certain hyper-spiritual sub-group of believers who tend to look a certain way and talk with their own insider jargon. This stereotype does a disservice to the Church by pigeon-holing a certain group and alienating Christians who might excel at some mission-related work but just don’t fit the look. Do your part to help do away with this dated missionary stereotype!

Obviously, any missionary raising their own funds would like it to be finished as quickly as possible. We initially hoped to leave for the field in January, so we found places for our stuff and moved out of our home in December. It is now April. We’ve been living out of a suitcase without the privacy of our own home for about four months. This has been hard at times, but we still think it was a good decision. We think it was a clear demonstration to our community of our determination to go as soon as possible. It has also been good to make a clean break from our ‘former’ life and focus on support-raising full time.

Neither of us are big risk-takers by nature, so embracing this time of transition as an adventure has been incredibly helpful. The word “adventure” does such a great job of communicating the feeling of discomfort and occasional peril, but also of joy and occasional triumph. As silly as it may sound, it has really summed up our experience so far.

Finally, as you embark on this adventure, make your plans and set your time-frame — but beyond this, trust God. When things don’t go according to your plan or time-frame, try not to lean on your own understanding or limited perspective. Like we’ve been discovering, you can’t know exactly what God has in store for you. No matter what kind of successes or set-backs come your way, acknowledge that God has not left you to wander aimlessly. He has a purpose for you — even now — even during the times of transition.

P: What has discouraged you the most in the fundraising process?

L: We’ve been discouraged to encounter many people who are just too busy and their schedules too full to even take the time to hear about what we’ll be doing. This is especially discouraging because we’ve pretty much dismantled our former life in order to go. Sometimes we’d just like people to get excited with us about this adventure God has us on, even if that’s as much as they can offer right now.

P: What obstacles have you encountered as you have pursued your interest in world missions?

L: Since our missions focus is Europe, we’ve occasionally encountered a traditional view of missions that doesn’t quite know how to categorize us. Britain is not a third-world country or a tribe without a written language. Our roles will also be professional in nature: graphic design, writing and editing primarily to develop relational evangelism training material and resources geared toward 16-30 year olds. On the surface, our field and focus just aren’t what people think of when they hear the terms “mission” or “missionary.”

P: How have you overcome these obstacles?

L: Once we get the chance to sit down with somebody and explain the nature of our work at Innovista, they usually get it. I think a lot of people enjoy and are even encouraged by having their idea of missions and, even more specifically, their idea of evangelism expanded.

P: How would you like your missions involvement to look ten years from now?

L: Ten years from now we see ourselves on the sending end again — praying for and giving to other missionaries. The whole experience of being one of the sent has been so valuable for us! We’ve discovered just how vital it is to have a team of people who are willing to stay on the home front and do the work of sending others.

by Steve Shadrach
Director of Mobilization for the USCWM

After college, I was in a self sufficient “survival mode” stage of life where I dared not ask anyone for anything. My buddy and I lived in a $56 a month ($28 each!) second floor room, sharing a bath with two other rooms. It was so low rent we took a marker and wrote above one door the number “2”, above another door “2B”, and above our door “Not 2B”. Bringing visitors upstairs, I would point to the door numbers, and proudly proclaim, “2B or Not 2B, that is the question!”

The question we ponder today is whether or not Christian workers who raise their support should ask others to invest in them and their ministries. I am puzzled, though, why some Christian workers feel free to ask people to pray, but not to give. Where in the Bible does it say “prayer, good; giving, bad”? If I went into an appointment, laid out my ministry vision, and “the ask” was just to pray, and not to give, I think it would be dishonest — even manipulative. Isn’t it obvious to all parties the missionary needs support to go do their ministry?

In my years in church, I have heard many more sermons on giving than praying. Why would it be acceptable for churches to challenge us to give, but a “no-no” for missionaries to? Are we still living in the 1800’s, still exalting George Mueller as our role model? Mueller technically never asked for a penny, but instead spent the final decades of his life preaching every night to packed out audiences all over the world. He told story after story, all with the same punch line: “And I have never asked anyone for one single penny!” So much money was pouring in he had to give away huge surpluses. Now — unless you have a worldwide pulpit ministry like Mueller — you might want to use him as a model for faith, prayer, or preaching, but not necessarily fundraising. Two passages might help:

We have not because we ask not. James 4:2

Could it be that if we really got in touch with our motives, we would find that a basic fear of asking has colored our theology and our approach? There is a reason the root word “ask” is found 147 times in the New Testament. God wants us to ask Him and others. I believe it takes more faith to pray and ask, then simply to pray.

Where your treasure is, there is your heart also. Matthew 6:21

You may have a different experience, but I have never had someone I sensed was praying for me who chose not to give to me. If they are willing to give to me, they are more likely to pray for me too.

Donors are not mind readers. I heard one of my long time supporters recently tell someone, “Unless the missionary asks me, I assume they don’t need any support.”
Having said all that, once in a blue moon, I seem to hear a small voice say, “Don’t ask right now, just pray and love.” Discerning whether that is God’s voice or my fears is the secret. E

by Paul Nielsen

How much can you know before going overseas full-time? How much Bible, first aid or culture should a person master? The following are a few iotas other full-time missionaries wish they’d known before heading overseas*:

• I would have gotten more cross-cultural training, especially focusing on the culture to which I was going.
• I wish I had known more about my relationship with God and about spiritual warfare.
• Language learning is a long process!
• My standard of living is drastically lower in a developing country.
• Their customs are not wrong, just different.
• In their language, is it what you imply with your words or what you say with your words what they hear?
• More nuts and bolts skills in: church planting, opening a business and obtaining visas in a creative access country, shipping of goods, obtaining housing and transportation during furlough, and so on.

It is impossible to be completely prepared, but you can learn a lot before leaving on your assigment. A people’s or region’s history, their language and customs, their diet: In today’s internet age, all of this can be researched to some degree, even for a lot of unreached peoples.

A lot of things are best learned by being immersed in the culture. The apostle Paul, for instance, while in Athens noticed an altar to an unknown god. He used that as a stepping stone for the Gospel among the Athenians. There will always be things that we can only learn by being a part of the culture - in particular among unreached peoples.

That said, a good rule of thumb is to know as much as you can. As soon as you sense the nudge to go, begin to consider where you will serve: continent, region, country and right down to people group. Begin learning the region’s languages and customs. Read up on their history and politics. Cook their food and listen to their music. If possible, befriend someone from the region or people group, someone who might be a student or refugee.

My wife and I have a heart for China. So, for Christmas, she asked for a book, a book intricately linked to Chinese culture. Not only was this translation difficult to find (the 5 part epic goes by three titles), it will likely be a thick read. Thus far, she is through the introduction, which is 40 pages in length. By no means can we know everything about China. But my wife’s book (The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin), the stir fry we cook and the Chinese movies we watch all prepare our hearts and minds for the opportunity to serve God among the Chinese.

Study hard!

* See more at AskAMissionary.com.