Through Christ Who Strengthens Me

“Y’all should move to Mexico and come serve with us in mission,” Shannon joked, as my eyes widened in response. I had met Shannon and her family only months before, on our family’s first weeklong mission trip in General Cepeda. It was a beautiful Thanksgiving week in Northern Mexico with several other families from Acadiana, led by Frank and Genie Summers.

Our van was loaded to the brim for our long drive to and across the border, caravan style. Upon arrival, our children (at that time ages 10 months to 11 years) immediately found the cement slide, soccer balls, a hacky sack, a donkey, and plenty of new friends. Twenty-five years later, it remains easy to recall entering the Spanish Colonial style courtyard of the mission house for the first time: the smell of Fabuloso and of Marta and Tonia’s cooking wafting from the kitchen, the sound of birds chirping and donkeys braying, the beautiful bougainvillea, and palm trees peaking over the courtyard walls.

We were ushered with our bags to the back area of the house into a large dormitory bunk-style room that we would be sharing with another family that we had only just met! Ms. Genie’s words from our orientation meeting came back to me immediately: “No grumbling,” and my personal favorite, “All it takes is everything.” Both families worked together to rig up a sheet that would serve as a “privacy wall” dividing the room, though I’m certain it did not block the sound of our youngest crying in the night. Our “roommate family” was so kind and gracious—it seems they were paying attention during orientation as well.

As the week progressed, awkward introductions quickly turned into mission trip standard routine: praise and worship and family style prayer, adobe house building, home visits with fellowship and delivery of household essentials, and prayer services in remote ranchos. Struggling with our limited Spanish language, we knocked on rancho doors and repeated the phrase we had been taught to invite locals to a prayer service: “Les invitamos a la capilla.”

We encountered Christ in each other, in the missionaries, but especially in the people that we served. When we packed up the van to leave, my husband and I both had the sense that we had found a home and we would be back.

This mission trip had followed years of difficulty in young marriage, which thankfully led to spiritual direction and a renewal in our marriage and family. After we had attended weekly Mission Formation night out at Big Woods for a couple of years, we felt the Lord calling us to this short-term trip. When we departed Mexico for home, we felt Him calling us to more.

Months later, when missionary Shannon knocked on my door unannounced while visiting stateside, she was unaware that we had been in prayerful discernment about entering full-time missions. She was unaware that, just the day before, I had asked the Lord for a sign.

I had told my husband, “I want someone to ask and invite me directly to serve as a long-term missionary.” I needed to be sure. And well, the Lord delivered.

By the next Thanksgiving, we were full-time missionaries in General Cepeda, serving the poor and hosting short-term mission trips that had been so transformational for my own family. Life in missions was beautiful and hard, fruitful and lonely. It was demanding, rewarding, and filled with support—and it was right where we knew we were supposed to be. It was the greatest and holiest duty of the Church. ALL IT TOOK WAS EVERYTHING!

The boldness of the Great Commission buoyed us, the people that we served witnessed to us, and the virtue of perseverance made His grace evident in our lives. This would be a virtue that would prove fruitful time and again.

In the years since we returned from full-time missions in 2003, our family has grown in both number and age. We are blessed with wonderful family and community, jobs, plenty of opportunities for service and spiritual growth, education, and five grandchildren (so far). We have also experienced multiple military deployments, business challenges, family challenges, mental illness, grief and loss, and have often felt far from the graces of mission.

The suffering and struggle has often been the very hinge in which our story turns.

Despite “knowing that we know” God is good and proclaiming it as missionaries, we have, like many, wrestled with doubt in times of trouble. Like St. Peter walking on water, when we took our eyes off Jesus, we began to sink. As I reflect on these times of difficulty when I could not clearly see how the Lord was working in our lives, I can see it now: He was in the perseverance! Perseverance requires grace. It is only through the very presence of God in our lives and His grace that we can continue to keep striving for the good instead of abandoning it.

The Lord promised St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” The suffering and struggle has often been the very hinge in which our story turns. Perseverance has produced character. Suffering has awakened a depth of compassion that unites me closer to Christ, and has created a greater awareness in the suffering of His people, of the poor and the forgotten. It all comes back to the Gospel.

As I begin my tenure as Chairwoman of the FMC Board of Directors, I feel overwhelmingly grateful. Grateful for the “yes” from each of the missionaries past and present, grateful for all that living in mission has taught me and my family, grateful for all those we have served and will serve.

In reflecting on life during and since our time in missions, and more than two decades serving on the Board, I am grateful for the gift of perseverance. With His grace, we will keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. I trust, with the Holy Spirit and the promise of the Great Commission, that we will “persevere in running the race that lies before us” (Hebrews 12:1). All it takes is everything.