Mid-Missions Crisis

Upon my arrival to El Salvador, I was frequently introduced as a “missionary”. While I recognized that this was true, something about it just didn’t feel quite right. That’s a title I’ve always associated with other people. They are people that seem to have everything together and are willing to give everything up to go serve God around the world. They have deeply spiritual conversations with everyone they come in contact with. They are “on-the-clock” 24/7. I, Nikki Lindroth, certainly am not deserving of such a title. But yet, if being a missionary means you’re living off of support and doing ministry, I guess that describes me. Our definition of missions seems to have gotten a bit complicated. What makes a missionary a missionary? What is the mission field? Do you have to be living off support? Do you have to be living abroad? Do you have to have made great sacrifices?

It may seem silly but this very struggle to understand what missions really is, posed a big problem for me while being here. In fact, I struggled so much with it that I endearingly now refer to this time of confusion as my “mid-missions crisis” and it happened exactly halfway through my time in El Salvador. When I came here, I was suddenly a “missionary” and didn’t even know what that mean. Because of how often we throw around the term missions, mission, mission field, and missionary, I had no idea what was expected of me.

I came to El Salvador with a specific “mission”. While I didn’t know details, I new I’d be working with the soccer school, getting the girls program going, and building relationships with them. Anyone who knew me knew that it seemed like a perfect fit! I had an incredible amount of support and was amazed at how easy it was to get the financial help I needed. But what happens when that mission changes, when it’s not what you thought it would be?

So often missions is reduced to going and serving the poor in God’s name. While this is a significant part of what missions can and should look like, it’s not all it is. Sometimes I wonder what it would look like if the people in the places we go to do missions came to the US to do missions. Because the reality is, we find we are often more blessed by those we go to serve than we are a blessing to them. While being here I’ve had the privilege of being on the other side of missions. It’s a perspective that we don’t often get living in the US. It’s the receiving end of missions. I never would have imagined that coming to El Salvador, I would be ministered to by so many other missionaries. Although I still don’t understand what exactly “missions” is or is not, I have a better understanding of what my time here is about. Missions, or not, I know why God sent me. Last Thursday and Friday, Elsa and I had the opportunity to attend a conference for Baptist pastors and church leaders. It was called Timothy and Barnabas International and was presented by Johnny Hunt and fellow Baptist pastors. In addition to talking through these things with many people back home, it was through one of pastor Jerry Gillis’ messages that I was finally able to work through this struggle. Let me take you on the journey…

The LORD bless you
and keep you;

the LORD make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;

the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.

(Numbers 6:24-26)

In the Jewish culture, the face was very significant. You would pray facing Jerusalem, the temple, or the Holy of Holies. It was a sign of respect. They realized that we are wired to be seeing and that when your face is turned towards something it is life giving. Just as kids need to be seen by their parents (“Look at me daddy!!”), so we need to be seen by our heavenly father. At the beginning of this adventure it was easy to feel God’s face shining on me. He provided so abundantly in so many was to bring me here. But once I arrived that began to change…

After about a month and a half of being here, I began to realize that I wasn’t having a difficult time because I was adjusting, but I was having a difficult time because I was inadequate. I didn’t have the resources, support, language, and skills necessary to do my job well. So suddenly, I had 30+ supporters who were supporting me to do something I felt like I was failing to do. I saw how God was using me in other ways, supporting Elsa, the English program, with Elsa’s family, etc., but that wasn’t my “mission” in coming here. That wasn’t the “mission” my supporters had signed up to support me in. I began to struggle feeling like I wasn’t honoring them because I was doing something different with their money. I felt like I was letting people down. I questioned why God would bring me to a place with such a clear mission that I wasn’t able to fulfill. If I’m honest, I wrestled with feelings of abandonment from God. Not total abandonment. My time spent alone with him was as refreshing and rewarding as it usually it. But when it came to ministry, he had been faithful in bringing me here and providing me with everything I needed to get here but then left me to figure out the rest. It felt as if he had said, “I brought you here safely. You know your mission. Ready? Ok… 1…2…3…GO!” And then walked away saying, “I’ll check back in with you in 3 months to debrief. Until then, we can talk about whatever you want and I’m happy to comfort you but let’s just leave that whole ministry thing out of it.”

And in that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed. Many disasters and calamities will come on them, and in that day they will ask, ‘Have not these disasters come on us because our God is not with us?’

(Deuteronomy 31:17)

If God was capable of hiding his face from Israel when they messed up, was it possible that He would do the same to me? That as I came here and realized the extent of my own selfishness and pride that he would get fed up and turn his face from me? Was that why I felt alone?

The truth is, I was inadequate. I am inadequate. We are all inadequate. Eve was deceived and Adam rebelled. I am selfish and prideful. We all live in sin. Just like the nation of Israel, we mess up over and over and over. But just as God was faithful in delivering the nation of Israel, he is faithful in delivering us. As he set about his redemption plan for the nation of Israel, he kept us in mind.

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

(Galatians 3:14)

God turned his face from his own son so that we might receive His indwelling spirit, and his face would always be turned towards us.

God’s face was never turned away from me. I just needed to trust. He hadn’t abandoned me in ministry, but he was allowing me to struggle so that I would learn and grow. He was preparing me and shaping me for future plans he has for me. Having dreamed of an experience like this since I was young, and having felt like it couldn’t have been more perfect, it was a hard to realize that this isn’t IT. This isn’t what God has been preparing me for. In fact, it’s simply another experience to prepare me for something even greater in the future. And once I realized this, it actually brought more comfort, more excitement. I don’t know what it is he’s preparing me for, but I can only assume, given his track record, that it will be amazing.

This was confirmed for me when I approached Jerry after his message. I wanted to thank him for being so real as he shared through tears about a time in which he had felt as though God’s face was turned from him. As I thanked him and shared with him how my experience was similar I also began to tear up. There’s something powerful in meeting someone and talking with someone who has experienced a struggle that you have felt alone in. As he kept talking he shared with me how that time for him, his earlier years of ministry and being a Christ follower, were less about what God is doing through you, and more about what God is doing in you. Although God undoubtedly uses us during this time, it’s really a time of preparation for the future. Hearing him say this gave me the freedom to really accept this as the reality of my time here. Because, although I had accepted that God was using it to teach me, it felt selfish. People had faithfully entrusted their money to me to do ministry here, and now I was struggling with ministry in order to grow. It changed my perspective on my time here but in that change, it turned the focus off of others, and onto myself; a switch that I wasn’t willing to make. However, hearing him say it made it seem ok. It allowed me to simply sit back and enjoy all that God is teaching and will teach me during my time here. To fully appreciate and absorb all that I am experiencing, guilt free. To realize that my supporters, while they are excited about the ministry I’m doing here, are more invested in me. To realize that they are supporting me, not specifically what I’m doing.

So to you I owe a huge thank you! Thank you for investing in me. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to learn and grow and having faith in what God is doing in me and preparing me for! I’m excited to share this journey with you and am excited to one day, share the final destination. (Or at least share the pit stops along the way.)