The beating of African drums sounded across the otherwise silent African countryside. Scores of natives chanted and swayed, stirring the dust and dirt beneath their feet. I listened in amazement to the words of their songs: “Jesus is sweet, but we never knew it...” and “We will follow God’s ways and turn from our ways.”

This is the village of Jombogong, a village that before this night had never heard the Gospel message. I was thrilled to watch as they welcomed God’s words. As we sat on wooden benches taking it all in, it became more than just an interesting cultural experience for me. God was working, deeply driving His vision for lost souls into my heart. And while I welcomed that vision, I did not view it lightly, for I saw how it would affect the rest of my life.

The six weeks serving on the team were amazing for me. God was confirming over and over different truths about His glory, His heart, and His will for my life. The vision began for me at home while seeking Him about missions. What a joy to have His vision realized not only through the lives and conversations of those on our team and the missionaries in Ghana, but through unforgettable experiences like the one that night in Jombogong!

This village and others had conditions and foreign cultures that made me examine my willingness to serve God unconditionally. Through it all, however, God gently pressed the cry of His heart into mine: “Who will go to these My people? My glory is at stake.” And my heart responds, “I am willing, Lord; send me!”

Joseph Kleinsasser

I continually pray that my life will never be the same after being in Africa. There is a sense in which the American culture can lull me to sleep and leave me forgetting about all the more important things of life. In Africa, God had to take my life and shake it up a little to show me the selfishness of my own heart.

I remember one evening when we were sitting with Daniel Kenaston and having a discussion. He explained to us that because he is a missionary, we expect to see one who is living his life for the sake of the Gospel. But aren’t we all called to be ambassadors? I was deeply challenged with the thought that no matter what we do or where we are, we are representing God. The Lord taught me to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and to make everything in life subject to that one passion to follow Christ with all my heart.

I had never seen before so clearly that to live for Christ will cost absolutely everything. At the same time I experienced such grace being poured into my life when I was obedient to His authority. The cultural differences had a wonderful way of driving me to the Lord in utter dependency. It is quite the experience to go to the schools and even up north into some of the villages and to see that God has pressed eternity into the hearts of men and women. Truly, God went before us preparing the people for the Gospel. I found that the Bible rang true. One example would be Romans chapter one, where it talks about our world knowing from the creation that there is a God.

My experience in Africa is challenging me to get involved in the Lord’s work, whatever and wherever that may mean, and to do it with all my heart. May the Lord receive glory from our lives.

Paige Leibee

God pressed an experience from the Zanduwa village deep into my heart that characterized my mission’s experience. We were on our way back from the market to the compound that was our temporary home in Zanduwa. We walked the hot, dry and dusty road beneath a relentless sun. Children came crowding around us, each trying to take my hands while I looked across the village trying to soak in Zanduwa: sounds of chattering market noises, chickens and goats foraging around for something in the dust amidst the circular mud huts linked one to another by the walls that divided the village into the many compounds—all below a blue, blue cloudless sky. I loved Zanduwa. But how was this an answer to my prayer that the Lord would open my eyes beyond a romantic view of missions?

I had prayed to see through the eyes of one possibly living in a place like Zanduwa for the rest of my life. The Lord was answering me during my walk back from the market that day. I began musing on how easy it was to enjoy a few days visiting a village like Zanduwa with her interesting people, food and culture. But then I began examining the reality of missionary work here. “What about living here for five or ten years?” I wondered. “What about times of sickness, loneliness and discouragement when the Gospel isn’t being accepted and I just don’t seem to be connecting with the people? What would I do then?” God had an answer.

God wouldn’t call me to the people of Zanduwa simply out of my love for them. My simple love and burden would fade in the face of difficulties. However, a burning passion for God, a heart that beats with God’s for the people of the earth, a driving vision to lift up the name of Jesus among every people group, and an unquenchable, never fading, passionate love for my King—THAT would drive me to the ends of the earth to give every breath that I have in service to my Lord.

God answered my prayer along that dusty walk back from the market to Zanduwa, and it broke my heart. I don’t love God as I should, or as I want to. With every breath that I take, I want to love my heavenly Father lavishly. My missions experience all boils down to this renewed desire to love God and serve Him with more of my life.

Alvin Esh

Let there be praise; give Him the glory! God has been very good to us—more than we deserved. Six weeks worth of culture shock after getting away from my American comforts was worth it. God has used this experience to begin to show me what it really means to “lose my life in order to find it in the end.” It has also been a very humbling experience for me. God reminded me many times that He didn’t bring me over to Ghana for what I could get out of it for myself, but rather for the glory that He could get out of my life. It is not about me, but it is about His name and His glory! I saw many other young souls being convicted of their sins and repenting as we ministered in the schools across Ghana. This was perhaps the greatest reward of my whole experience.

We were able to join our reapers over in Ghana as kingdom seekers, seeing their hidden sacrifices as well as share with them joys and rewards for their labors. My vision for souls has expanded, my burden is stronger, and my heart beats closer with God’s heartbeat for the world’s souls that Jesus died to save. Oh that the love of my dying Savior would beat more in my own heart! By the grace of God, I shall “lose my life to find it.”

Lisa Weaver

Night has settled itself around us. The mosquitoes are out in their droves. So for protection from their torment, I tuck a net around my straw mat as I turn in for the night. Sweat trickles down my neck as I whisper a prayer to the Lord. Soon sleep comes, and I am oblivious to all. But somewhere around 1 o’clock something awakens me. It’s not the noise of the lizard’s night song, nor is it the waves crashing against the rocks, but rising above them, out in the darkness of the night, a voice. Soon I begin to hear the words, pleading with God against sin and the devil, praying for the Clarks, interceding for us with great earnestness. Alone out there in the darkness, unaware of a listening ear, someone is meeting with God. Awe and conviction sweep over me. This national brother knows something of sacrifice and the value of prayer that I haven’t realized, and it means so much to him that he is willing to forfeit his sleep for it.

Tears trickle down my cheeks as my heart joins in with the prayer, but also wells up with a desire to know this same thing in my own life.

“God, You have a lesson for me in this. You call us to a sacrificial living, to a fellowship in Your sufferings. You call us to pour out as You did. How many nights did You spend in prayer with Your Father—and is the servant greater than his Lord? If You needed it, how much more do I? And what is it that you seek to do through a life rightly related to You that You cannot yet do through mine? Oh, teach me this truth and reality in my life!”

David Loewen

After this six-week mission trip to Ghana, I realize there is no excuse for me to avoid God’s call of spreading the Gospel. I was praying that the Lord would send forth laborers into His harvest. I don’t know why, but I was not considering myself to fulfill that call.

“If our Master returned today to find millions of people unevangelized, and looked to us for an explanation, I cannot imagine what explanation we would have to give. Of one thing I am certain—that most of the excuses we are accustomed to make with such good conscience now, we shall be wholly ashamed of then.” (Biography of J.O. Fraser)

When I look back now, I see that it was myself that was leading my dreams and ambitions. I was not completely allowing the Lord to do so. May the Lord have every part of our lives, that we may not be ashamed when we meet Him on that day!

It is clear that I must pursue and stretch towards the goal of reaching the lost. This stretching and fighting to fulfill God’s call is vital for my own spiritual welfare. As an athlete runs with all his might to win the prize, he also strengthens his body. It is my desire, therefore, that God would grip me with a complete vision to make His name well known among the nations, while at the same time being made worthy to fulfill that vision by grace.

How wonderful it was to see God’s faithfulness and His hand of protection on each one of us. He is worthy to be praised!

Barbara Stoltzfus

While we were with Daniel and Christy, Daniel took us to an unreached village called Jombogong. For two days we lived with the villagers, staying in one of the compounds. The first night was beautifully clear with the full moon above, our only light. We all sat on benches outside of a dancing circle of villagers. There were men, women carrying babies on their backs, and small children all dancing around drummers in the middle, rejoicing that the Gospel had finally come to their village! Many other villages under the same moonlit sky, however, still had not heard the Gospel. Who will go? “How shall they hear without a preacher?”

God was asking me, “Barbara, are you willing to live in a place like this, live like these people, and live where it’s not as easy to live as it is in America, giving yourself instead for the sake of the Gospel?”

The next evening brother Daniel preached. This time the villagers were absolutely still as they heard the Word of God: “And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them” (Isa. 42:16). The light had finally come to the village of Jombogong!

While in Ghana, I also experienced a lot of sickness. Though I was lying in bed many days while the team was out ministering in the schools, God was always right there for me, and I felt His grace upon my life. God taught me to be joyful and to have a sweet spirit, even in times of sickness. Although self-pity and discouragement crept in at times, I chose to rest in God, being reminded several times that “...all things work together for good to them that love God....” God is good all the time. My time was not wasted. Though I wouldn’t have chosen to be sick in Ghana, God taught me lessons through it all. I knew I was exactly where God wanted me to be in this time of my life.

Billy Waldner

My trip to Africa was life-changing and a tremendous blessing. The weather, sights, smells, and the color of the people’s skin are all very different. However, God showed me that the needy souls over there are not different. The Bible says, “He fashions their hearts alike,” and truly all peoples of the world are the same in many ways.

Furthermore, whether living in Ghana or America, God is calling us to live the same sacrificial life. While traveling in Ghana and spending time with our missionaries, I sensed God speaking to me about living a sacrificial life. We here in America expect our missionaries to live a sacrificial life, but God used my travels to ask of me: “What about you Billy, are you living in a sacrificial way? Do I expect you to live differently than the missionaries on the field?” What a blessing to learn that it doesn’t matter where I live—I am called to live in a self-denying way.

One of my greatest challenges in Ghana was to come home to America and make a radical stand against the flow of this prosperous land. By the grace of God, He can help me to live in such a way.

Elissa Waldner

As I reflect back on the time I spent in Ghana, my heart is thankful that the Father of compassion arrested my mind with two truths. The first truth was seeing the desperate need for the name of God to be lifted up by being glorified in all the earth and made beautiful in all the nations. I was pricked in my heart for too many times of having had a humanistic view that salvation was for the happiness of man, and not for the glory of God.

The second truth came while I spent time living with those who are “white unto harvest.” As I ate their food, observed their ways, slept in their homes, watched them receive the Word and struggle to understand it, I could not help but realize the Father’s longing for vessels to share more of His Word with them. My way of looking at missions has changed; I must personally go forth and proclaim that glorious Truth, Life and Way. I realize now more than ever the need for the Lord of the harvest to send forth other laborers as well who are jealous for that name, the name He rightfully protects. Surely it is not God’s fault that the ones He so loves are still living in darkness!

Now that I am home, I often turn to God and implore the One who understands all things: “Father, where are Thy workers?”

The answer continues to come upon my soul, and I pray it will come upon yours also: “What about you, redeemed one, salvaged one? Will you make yourself available to pour out your life in any way that Thy Father has need of Thee?”