GOOD NEWS ARTICLE - June 1998
Wendy Ludovici
THE ROAD TO THE MISSION FIELD
Part One: The "Call"
As I experience my first real furlough after becoming a
full-time missionary I have fielded many questions from
people on many different levels about what it's like to
be a missionary and what it's like on the mission field
these days. As I spend time with some of you I realize
that we've never really had the chance to get to know one
another beyond Sunday morning chatter in most cases. I'm
finding that some of you are thinking seriously about
missions as a part of your service to the Kingdom of God;
some of you desire to pray more specifically for my
ministry, and some of you are curious as to what a
missionary does. For these reasons I thought it
appropriate to give you one missionary's story, namely
mine.
Being a missionary in Africa was not on my childhood
dream list. My childhood dream list included being a
professional baseball player, an astronaut, and a band
director. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my
current heroes: Johnny Bench, Neil Armstrong, and Mrs.
Kearney (my elementary school band director). Later on, I
discovered a new hero in the man Jesus Christ. I became a
Christian in a United Methodist Church's confirmation
class in Cincinnati, Ohio and joined the youth group,
which I attended throughout Junior and Senior High School.
As a musician I enjoyed the contemporary Christian music
and choruses that were becoming a more prevalent
expression of worship in the church. I went to a weeklong
Christian music camp in California for two consecutive
summers during my high school years, which heightened my
desire to serve God through music. That, coupled with my
instrumental training in school and private lessons, led
me to decide to major in music in college.
I received a scholarship to North Texas State University,
probably because I was one of the few people who played
the oboe. It was a secular university, but within my
first year I was introduced to a church that helped me to
maintain a growing relationship with the Lord. One of the
extracurricular programs I became involved in was with
international students. I became a conversational partner
to help internationals desiring to join the university to
learn to speak English more fluently. Through that, I
came face to face with several Muslims who challenged my
faith and incited a desire in me to share the Gospel of
Jesus Christ cross-culturally. I started to read books on
missions, get involved in missions prayer groups and
listen more carefully to missionary speakers! Keith Green,
a young contemporary Christian musician and recording
artist, died that year. His wife, Melanie, toured the
country with slides and video clips of a recent trip she
and Keith had taken around the world to see the needs of
the poor throughout the world. After her presentation,
she asked if any of those present would be willing to
stand and commit their lives to serving God's Kingdom
cross-culturally. I stood with only slight hesitation. To
my horror, she asked all those who stood to come to the
front of the auditorium and go to the booth of the people
group we'd like to serve. I had no idea, at this point,
which people group I wanted to serve, nor was I ready to
make that kind of commitment; but I wandered up to the
front and looked at the materials at each booth. I landed
at the booth for "tribal peoples", signed my
name on something and took home some brochures. Little
did I know that 12 years later I would be involved in
full-time ministry to tribal peoples in East Africa!
Now, I'm not sure that this was a "call". At
least not like I hear some people talk about their "call"
to full-time ministry. The way I looked at it is that it
there were some very real needs on the mission field, it
was something I wanted to do and felt capable of doing.
Those, I believe, are the first ingredients of "the
call".
(In Part Two I'll talk a little bit about the training
and equipping I had before I ventured out full-time. In
Part Three I'll mention some of the early hurdles I had
to cross as well as describe life on the field in general.)
Part Two
|
