Volunteering to be missionaries has brought excitement to our very ordinary lives and lots of opportunities for growth. One of the unexpected perks is the conversations it sparks. Businesspeople, neighbors and the mail carrier have eagerly bombarded us with questions about our big change. Almost everyone, it seems, is intrigued by a family that leaves the security of a good job and a comfortable home to go to the other side of the world because they believe God is calling them. It sounds extreme! And who even knows where Papua New Guinea is, anyway?

Ellen White says, “The world needs evidences of sincere Christianity. Professed Christianity may be seen everywhere; but when the power of God’s grace is seen in our churches, the members will work the works of Christ” (God’s Amazing Grace p. 263). Jason and I have always done our best to witness, but nothing we have ever done has come close to creating the interest that getting ready to leave the United States has. Could it be because people around us are looking for proof of self-sacrificing Christian love that cannot be explained by human motives?

We see plenty of this proof in others. How else do you explain the sacrifice of a woman on a small, fixed income who gives generously every month to enable missionaries she doesn’t know to preach the gospel to a people group she will never meet? Why do all the other AFM missionaries spend their lives giving, helping, working in a foreign culture, far from their friends and family? Are they just trying to gain heavenly brownie points? I don’t think so. When I read story after story in Adventist Frontiers magazines and elsewhere, I see evidence of the outpouring of the self-sacrificing love of Christ in the lives of ordinary men and women. I want to be part of that, don’t you?

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