So what did you choose?

I get a text message right after posting number 18: Bury the Seed. You know, the one where I mention that God gave me a moment of clarity and then didn’t say anything else about it.

“Tell me! Where are you going?”

I also get an email the next day. “We’re dying to know! What exactly was the moment of clarity that you wrote about? Can you tell me?”

Even my mom called. “About your blog. I know that the whole point was about the spiritual truths and all, but I would still just like to know how God gave you clarity in that actual moment of decision.”

This final post is really the whole story in one comprehensive narrative. The previous twenty posts have been the layers that occurred between the lines and in the spaces between paragraphs. This post is the lyrics put on paper. It sounds nice when it’s read. But the previous posts are the ten pages of sheet music that tell the story of the song with its staccatos and crescendos, repeats and fermatas. It’s only when you read the sheet music that you hear the song as it is intended, and you will hear its message through the multiple movements, the changes in tempo, the chords and dissonance, and the silence that speaks in the rests. If you read the sheet music, four short stanzas are spread out across ten pages of musical masterpiece, transforming mere words into poetic lyrics that create a story-song. And the deep of you is stirred and the way you feel comes out like tears when you hear the wonder of what happens when words are put to music.

For those of you who are wondering what decision I actually made and how I made it, it’s a fair question. And it is a story worth telling since God’s fingerprints are all over it. This final post is that story.

For security, I left out specific names of people, places, and organizations.

~~~~~

I’ve heard it said and I’ve seen it to be true: when a person falls in love, they start to revolve all their life decisions around the pursuit of the other person. If that’s true, then I had fallen in love with Burkina Faso and the people there that gripped my heart.

I absolutely loved being a maternity nurse in Togo, but I never saw it as a long term commitment. My entire term of serving there was to help out with the nursing shortage while keeping me close to Burkina Faso in the hopes of returning. Every time I had to postpone my return date because of increasing danger, I clung to the hope that maybe by the spring...maybe by January...maybe by next year...or the next… until I realized that I could no longer put my entire life on hold while waiting for the stabilization of a country that could take decades. 

That’s when I found myself in Greece in the fall of 2018 on a rooftop overlooking the sunset over the Aegean Sea, and the Lord told me to set my sails. I had said I would not leave Burkina Faso until the Lord called me out, and I felt that leaving because of terrorism was not holding my end of the bargain. Until this moment. That was my call out. That was the Lord’s permission to board the boat, set the sails, and go somewhere new with him. 

Recognizing that the door had closed on Burkina Faso and grieving that loss was one of the elements prompting the initiation of a season of prayer and fasting in 2019. Another element was acknowledging that as much as I loved Togo, I did not want to commit to it long term. The pace in the hospital was not sustainable for me. I wanted more time for ministry outside of the hospital. I also sensed a deep desire for unreached peoples who don’t have access to such a bright witness like the mission hospital. In other words, I believed so much in the effectiveness of the hospital that I trusted they didn’t need me, and I set off to look for somewhere that didn’t have a Christian witness like what the hospital provided. 

It would help to explain the statistics I had been learning about the great commission and the unfinished task. The great commission is a command to make disciples of all nations, which does not refer to countries but to people groups. There are roughly 17,094 people groups in the world today and 7,165 (42%) of them are considered unreached, meaning evangelical Christians comprise less than two percent of the entire population. Approximately 3,000 of these are also called unengaged, meaning they are unreached and that no one is going there to reach them. Yet. 97% of unreached peoples live in 10/40 window, an area of the world stretching across North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Southeast Asia where all the strongholds of the dominant living world religions — Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity — exist. Only 3% of missionaries are working in that window. (joshuaproject.net)

A little less than half of the world’s population lives in an unreached people group. 97% of those unreached people groups are in the 10/40 window. And 3% of missionaries go there. 

If you came across a team of people trying to move a fallen log, and there were ten people on one end and one on the other, which side would you go to help? 

We are getting closer and closer to the final frontiers of getting the gospel to all nations, but the hardest and most hostile places remain. At the same time, God is doing an amazing work among Cousins, raising up discipleship movements like never before in history. Working in Togo and visiting Greece allowed me to see this firsthand. Watching documentaries and listening to podcasts increased my knowledge and passion for the hardest areas of the unreached world. At the same time, I was learning about creative access countries and how to be a strategic player. God was preparing my heart for whatever would be next. 

I did not initially set out to pray and fast for a year. I set out to fast and pray until I received a word from the Lord. And I boldly did something I had never done before, I consistently asked him for a sign.

I reached out to a missions mobilizing agency as my first step in November 2018. They helped me identify several organizations that I started conversations with - five to be exact. Initially, I weighed all the organizations the same and no one single organization stood above the rest. I was just generally impressed and encouraged that so many organizations existed that were focusing on unreached people.

At some point in the spring, one of the recruiters from one of the organizations sent me an email and a document out of the blue about a medical opportunity in East Africa. I looked at it, but it didn’t immediately impress upon me as a perfect opportunity, so I let it sit in my inbox. Over time, I found myself randomly reconsidering it, until I decided that it might be beneficial just to go for a site visit since I was already in Africa. I immediately dismissed the idea, reasoning that you probably have to go through some process with the organization before you can just show up on the ground for a visit. But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask, so I pedaled my bike to a place where I could get internet and open up my email.

I hadn’t corresponded with the recruiter since he had sent me the document weeks ago, but when I opened up my inbox to write to him, lo and behold, I saw that he had already written to me that very day. He wrote saying that it would be a long shot, but he wondered if I would consider a site visit to East Africa since I was already in Africa. My mouth dropped open. Is this the sign? The one I’ve been praying for? I felt like Gideon putting out another fleece. I decided to go for the site visit because I sensed that God had opened the way. But I still needed another sign (something bigger and more obvious maybe?) to convince me.

My vision trip was wildly wonderful. I loved the village and the team. The missionaries there challenged me spiritually and showed me what it looks like to live like the early church of the New Testament. I felt no extraordinary or particular burden for the people group there, but I loved the model of medical missions that the mission team exemplified. The hesitations that I had were 1) the isolation I would experience, 2) the idea that a national could fulfill the role and the local church was in a position to provide that, and 3) this tribe had had Christian witness among them for thirty years. Meanwhile, there still exist people who have never heard and have no one going to tell them. At the end of the trip, my missionary hosts told me that they trusted God to lead me, but they wanted me to know that they saw me as an exact answer to their prayers. You can’t take things like that lightly. I paid attention to that.

I shared my impressions and hesitations with the organization after my vision trip and explained that I would consider going back there if I had someone to go with me, and so they began to look for me a teammate. I had heard wind of a Canadian nurse, but they could not connect me with her since I had not yet joined their organization. Now I only know three people in Cananda, but one day out of the blue, a friend that I met in Togo, who is a Canadian midwife, left me a random WhatsApp voice message saying she had a friend who was a nurse and considering going to a country in East Africa. “She is talking about this organization and a potential American nurse that sounds like you.” She paused. “Is it you?” 

So that’s how I found my potential teammate out of the entire country of Canada without the intervention of the organization that we were both separately thinking about joining. I responded to this “coincidence” with the same awe and hesitation: Wait, was that the sign? The sign? And so I put my fleece out again. 

In October at a re-entry retreat for missionaries, I met a missionary couple who had worked in a restricted area of Africa with, you guessed it, the same organization that kept popping into my life. I was impressed with what they told me about the organization, and I was amazed that I was once again crossing paths with people from that organization and having conversations about my growing heart for restricted areas of Africa. It was initially this couple who helped me recognize the potential for serving with their organization in the hard places of Africa — a place where the final frontiers, creative access countries, and unengaged unreached people groups all collide.

By December 2019, I had narrowed my organizations down to three. I fasted on a Tuesday as normal (the one where I threw away my processing sheets and started writing this narrative) and then conveniently had conversations with each of those three organizations the following three days. I did not plan that; it just happened that way. The first two conversations were good, but were filled with weighing pros and cons. Neither one was a perfect fit. Why am I doing this to myself? I began to wonder. I’ve been having these conversations all year and its the same result. I told myself that I would never find a perfect fit, that all organizations were good and I just needed to quit over-analyzing it and pick one. 

With this mindset, I went into my third conversation. I was expecting to leave the conversation with the same level of ambiguity and uncertainty that I had begun to accept as my new normal. Here’s what fits, here’s what doesn’t. How will I ever weigh it and decide? 

I spoke with a couple who had served in a restricted access area of Africa with this same particular organization — the one where I had already received two “coincidental” signs. The one where I had already done a site visit and connected with a potential teammate. They started out by listing six people who had already talked to them about me — two recruiters, the missionary couple on the field who had hosted me, and the couple I had met at the retreat: all people from this same organization that I just happened to cross paths with over the course of this year. He said, “If all these people already speak highly of you, and you are a french-speaking nurse with a heart for Cousins and field experience in Africa...I just have to wonder what we are even supposed to talk about today. There are too many dots connecting! How are you not already with our organization?”

He went on to tell me about the many medical opportunities in the areas that interest me. I was again struck by the organization’s expertise and experience in Africa. They know the history and the strategies. They have a passion for unreached people groups and mobilizing the African church. They are prioritizing the remaining unreached places.

They send in teams, focus on discipleship, creatively use medicine to access closed countries, take care of their people on the ground, and take care of singles. They have a family feel and I was already feeling it. 

I told them about my puzzle pieces - muslim ministry, unengaged unreached people groups, nursing, French, experience in west Africa - and his response was that “in God’s economy nothing is wasted.”

On that phone call, I had the most simple and obvious moment of clarity that I had had all year. I’ve heard it said that if things remain unclear, it’s because you don’t need to know them yet. And that when you need to know, God will make it clear. This was the moment that God just made it so clear. 

On December 5, 2019, after almost one full year of fasting and praying, I chose to join. 

I had been asking my supporters to pray with me all year for 3 P’s: a place, a people group, and a partner. Choosing this organization was the first step in the answer to all three. Although none of those have been specifically answered, all of them have been answered on some level just by choosing an organization. 

It was the Tuesday fast prior to that conversation that I laid out my processing sheets before the Lord and realized that ALL THIS was the point. That this year had not been about a geographical destination but a spiritual one. That the “answers” I had been seeking were documented in my Bible and journal and written on my heart. That Tuesday, I threw away my processing sheets, buried the seed, and started writing this. 

Three days later, God have me clarity and I decided to join my organization. 

Coincidence? Can’t be. It was too tender and personal to be random. 

God’s sovereignty? My choice? It was the intersection point of the two. I was choosing, and yet I saw evidence of how he had already chosen this for me and led me to it. 

It was the anticlimactic answer to the direction I had been seeking, and although I rejoiced in the decision and worshipped God with all my heart for his guidance and faithfulness, it was not the best thing. I rejoiced more and praised him more for the closeness and intimacy I had experienced with him in the secret place, in the uncertainty, in the wilderness of the unknown. It was the countless hours of seeking him, listening to him, hearing from him, drawing close to him, and worshiping Him as I trusted in him all over again. That’s what it was all about. 

Yes, uncertainty and moving into the unknown will be a pattern for the rest of my life, and I’m glad. In fact, I can’t wait for the next crossroad.