Divine Voyagers

Patty

I saw this post a while ago on instagram, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. 

The algorithm would mean that people I like (or think like, apparently) are thinking this about missionaries, maybe even people who know that I am planning to be a missionary. A few days ago we stepped into the first stage of our survey mission, and in the first half an hour I was convicted again. 

For the first leg of our journey, we are in Tirana, Albania, where the team runs a community centre for the local Romani people. On Friday, we just happened to be in the crosshairs of three different groups – the our organisation’s missionary team, a visiting group from a church in California for two weeks, and a group from an organisation called YWAM, here for three months. The minister who gave the devotional spoke from Mark 9:36-41, and said that it was amazing that no matter what group we were from, we were all there under a united purpose, to serve Jesus and spread the good news. We were all ‘missionaries’ on the same ‘mission’. 

The term itself stems from Jesus’ last words to

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

(Matthew 28:19-20a)

This is known as the Great Commission, which Jesus said would see even greater than anything he did during his time on earth. After he died, rose and ascended into heaven, Christians believe they are given his Holy Spirit, which was first represented by people from all over the world suddenly understanding each other’s languages (Acts 2:1-13), as a symbol of God beginning to gather and equip his people globally. 

The groups had been working together to run a three day holiday program, which involved songs translated into Albanian, crafts, games, and a short talk translated by a local, after which kids got morning tea and some goody bags. However, from week to week, the team runs a pre-school out of the building, which fills a need for the community who had no-one to take care of their kids while they were at work, and they can also use the washing machine, get help with local government and come for the mens’ and womens’ groups. 

After the Great Commission, Christians started spreading across the world with this good news. News of a purpose, a hope, and a great love in the form of Jesus. I will not say that everything done in the name of Christ was good, but I also think it’s harsh to ignore the good done as well. In the name of Christ, early Christians shared what they had as a church with the poor, taught a different approach to caring for women and children, cared for the sick. Since then, public schools and hospitals have been started by Christians and missionaries, including in Australia, and continuing around the world even today. 

I want to highlight a beautiful symbiosis here – in Albania, there are good deeds which are just good deeds, which is rare for a people living post-communism, fascism, and wars, and in the midst of poverty and the disillusionment attached to discovering capitalism and rediscovering religion. There is a practical side to mission work, which includes regular Christians taking their trades overseas to be of actual help to people, like myself with teaching, a group starting up to teach job skills to people who may not be able to read or write, or didn’t finish high school, another man who is a dentist and extracted teeth even here just on a short survey mission!

However, these good deeds are done because of our faith, because we want people to know that there is actually something greater which is driving our love.* There is still a need for modern missionaries because so many people don’t know about Jesus.

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

(Matthew 9:37-38)

In Albania, that is largely in part due to communism, which fell within the last 30 years and is still a deeply felt wound in living memory, where religion was illegal and punishable by imprisonment or death. Every church you see and every testimony you hear has mostly only happened within the last 30 years. It’s even smaller within the Roma people, as many Albanians will not reach out to them to share the gospel due to deep cultural rifts. 

Good deeds done for their own sake are fine, but don’t provide lasting hope for the receivers and are hard to sustain for the givers when there isn’t much clear fruit. However, giving from a place of faith creates sustainability because the prize, and the source of our energy, is greater than ourselves. 

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

There was a group in East Asia for a few years running an orphanage for children with severe physical and intellectual disabilities. 
A lot of them had been abandoned, especially as there was very little support for new parents who had a disabled child, and people weren’t sure how they could raise these kids. The orphanages also weren’t sure how to best help them, so many of them were being, often unintentionally, neglected. A friend of mine went over to join and help out, and she recounted being on a train with another woman who was heavily pregnant, late at night, two white women, and having someone ask if they were missionaries.
When she replied ‘yes, how did you know?’, they said, ‘because there is no other reason you would be out here.’ 

I have been reminded over the past few days to keep sight of the hope I have. 
It has the power to change lives, both practically in the here and now, but also eternally. Christians can care for the marginalised, lost and forgotten, because we are forced to acknowledge on the path to salvation that we are those things too. Don’t be fooled into feeling uncomfortable to share your faith or work out the Great Commission in your day to day through fear of coming across as a ‘white saviour’** or of joining a list of ‘missionaries’ who ranged from awkward to evil. Fix your eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, and live it out however you can, wherever you are. 

(Please also consider supporting those doing mission in an official capacity 😁)

Prayer Points

• Pray for the Roma kids. 🍌
  I would suggest every time you eat a banana – we were giving them out for morning tea, and I learned that the Albanian word for banana is … banana (to be fair, the Albanian word for strawberry is luleshtrydhe, so don’t think everything is easy). 

Pray that they would feel the love and care of the team here, and that they would connect it to Jesus.

Pray for the start of school tomorrow, as many Roma kids don’t go to school because they are discriminated against, which leads to generations which can’t read or write, can’t go to uni or get jobs, and so the cycle continues. 

• Pray for the team and their own children, as pre-school and regular school begins again tomorrow. Their community centre is called ‘House of Hope’, and you can watch a video about it here.
• Pray for some other members of the team who are starting up an organisation, also having its first day tomorrow, to teach adult Roma job skills in order to help them become more financially independent. Pray that it gets off the ground and they can make some strong relationships through it, leading to sharing the gospel. 
• Pray for the local Albanian church and the ministers. While the Roma community is still mainly unreached, there is a small community of evangelical Albanian Christians.

Thank you for being with us as we start our journey, and we can’t wait to update you on the next leg. If you have any questions or want to share some thoughts and prayers, please feel free to contact us through this website or slide into our DMs 🥰

*I felt that it was important to note that not everywhere which needs the gospel is a place in need. China and Japan are both on the Joshua Tree’s list of the top 100 unreached people groups, which can be accessed here. France also only has a 1.23% evangelical population, and these are great mission fields where the impact may look less ‘practical’ but is still so necessary for modern missionaries.

** I also really feel the need to note that the concept of a ‘white saviour’, which is so strong in the post I initially referred to, is super outdated. According to Lifeway Research, 3 in 5 evangelical Christians live in Asia or Africa. After the U.S., Brazil and South Korea are sending out the most missionaries, which is insane when you consider their sizes. If you want to read more about it, you can do so on Tim Challies’ blog here.