Holly’s choice became even more difficult when, out of the blue, Stephen called her. He said only that he wanted to get together and talk, but in her heart, Holly believed that if she saw her former love, things would pick up where they had ended so abruptly eighteen months before. Confused, with her emotions tearing her apart, Holly fled to the prayer room of her church for what she describes as “a little honest talk with God.” As she poured out her questions and concerns, the right path became clear. She was being called to grow closer to God. And that would take faith, sacrifice, and a few radical changes in what she had planned for her future.
“I handed Stephen back over to God and [accepted] my singleness,” Holly says. “I knew what I was walking away from, and I told God that if He wanted me to marry someday, He would have to take care of it for me. I needed to go overseas and serve Him. I chose intimacy with Him, no matter what that looked like.” Peace and assurance washed over her almost immediately.
Holly never did see Stephen. This next season of life was about only Holly and God. Perhaps one day she would marry, but for now, she had embraced the title she never dreamed of owning: single missionary.
Once Holly said yes to God’s call, plans fell into place quickly. She continued to hear God whisper, “Pursue Europe,” so in June of 2000, Holly joined Greater Europe Mission—an organization committed to assisting the peoples of Europe in building up the body of Christ. Before long, she found herself in Linz, Austria, helping the local church launch a youth ministry for Austrian teens.
It hasn’t been easy to become fluent in a second language or to fit into a culture so different from what she knew. Yet looking back, Holly reflects, “I am here because God called me. My mind wanders back to the days when I claimed that I would never move overseas, and I have to smile. I am silenced when I think about how God so graciously picked me up, altered my path, and lovingly inscribed His desires onto my heart. God continues to radically change my heart and mold me into His woman.”
Holly clings to a verse she discovered four years ago, when she was wounded by her broken relationship and uncertain of her future calling: “Does the
LORD
delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices / as much as in obeying the voice of the
LORD
? / To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22). Holly’s obedience to God’s call in her life has certainly caused her to sacrifice, but in the end, she knows her joy is far richer than anything she may have lost. She is a reluctant missionary no more.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all.
(Philippians
4:4-5
)
anne savage
Heart for the World
N
ineteen-year-old Anne Savage met Jesus when she was young but truly internalized and personalized her relationship with Him more recently, as a teenager. That’s when she started going on missions trips. She’s been on one every summer since sixth grade. In North America, she’s been to Missouri, Minnesota, and Mexico. In 2001, she went on her first overseas mission trip to Caracas, Venezuela. Focus on the Family’s teen girl magazine
Brio
conducts an annual overseas trip and on a whim, Anne applied.
The trip was life-transforming: “For the first time in my life I was exposed to a new culture that needed God just as much as I did.”
Anne remembers meeting an older woman after performing an evangelistic street play. “After the play, I felt drawn to her. She was adamant that she didn’t need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. She was fine with her Sunday-to-Sunday ritual of going to mass. I felt frustrated and defeated that I could not share God’s love with her. Then it hit me that I needed to
show
God’s love to her.”
Through the interpreter, Anne asked the woman if she could give her a hug. She nodded. Anne wrapped her arms around the woman, who began to cry. “It was awesome to see that such a simple action was all she needed, and all it cost me was to cross the ocean and give her a hug!”
Another summer, Anne went to China—this time with Family Life Ministry’s Hope for Orphans trip, where she helped with annual physicals for a large orphanage. She remembers her nerves as the plane began its descent. She was well aware of the laws preventing her from sharing her faith. But God comforted her. A small video screen in the cabin showed the passengers the illuminated runway. “All of a sudden, this huge, bright cross came into view on the screen. I kept looking, amazed that this would be so bright and tall for all to see. As we came closer, I realized that it was the runway lights, but it was a reminder to me that God was in control.” She says seeing the illuminated runway cross was like hearing God say, “Anne, you are in My hands. I will protect you.”
“From then on, I was so excited, I wasn’t worried at all,” she says. “We had several opportunities to share our faith. God truly worked in all our lives as well as in those who interacted with us.” She especially remembers the orphans. “It was incredible to see all these little children looking at us with smiling faces. The language barrier didn’t matter.”
Being in a country where Christianity is discouraged and illegal, Anne sensed the Lord in a new way. “This was the first time I felt as if my faith was a huge factor in my life.”
She’s also seen God’s protection and guidance in Normal, Illinois, where she lives with her family. The Savage family planted a church in 2000. “In three and a half years, we are busting at the seams of our building,” she says. “It is so awesome to see such passionate people coming together and worshiping God.”
For the past two years, Anne has been the church’s vacation Bible school director, a job she started when she was seventeen. Even then, her desire was to see God touch not only the children, but also the leaders. “As we prayed prior to the event each night, everyone was focused on the kids. But at the end of the night, our prayer time was focused on each other. There were men and women crying, and God mended their broken hearts. I was blown away that God would use this event for little kids to touch the lives of the adults.”
Just as God used a children’s venue to touch children and adults alike, He used the face of a young Russian boy to change Anne’s family forever. One day, someone handed Anne’s mom a picture of Kolya, asking if she knew someone who could adopt him. Kolya’s best friend, who came from the same orphanage, had been adopted by a family one mile from the Savages’ home. When Kolya’s friend could speak English, the first thing she said to her adopted family was “You need to find a home for my friend.”
After much prayer and discussion, the Savage family decided to adopt Kolya, who shares an uncanny resemblance to the boys in their family. The whole family helped in the fund-raising efforts to adopt the boy. Anne pioneered “Cooking for Kolya”; she cooked freezer meals and desserts and sold them to friends, family members, even teachers. She raised over a thousand dollars.
The journey to adopt Kolya was a faith-stretching time. Yet God provided through grants, gifts from strangers, and donations. “It became our motto that God owned cattle on a thousand hills. He only needed to sell a few cows to make this happen! We definitely saw the blessings of those cows.”
Now, Anne is the eldest of five and is attending Taylor University. She has a yearning to take Jesus to Europe, particularly France. She loves singing worship songs to Jesus, experiencing His tangible presence.
The future? “My heart is to be involved in mission work. There is so much pain and emptiness out there. I have come to realize, though, that whatever plans I have, God is going to radicalize them! I cannot even fathom the amazing plans God has for me.”
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
(Romans
12:1-2
)
niki mcdonnall
No Regrets
W
hen Niki attended fifth-grade camp, she declared she wanted to be a missionary when she grew up. Her future husband, David McDonnall, made the same decision his fifth-grade year.
At Texas A&M, Niki served on a ministry team at Central Baptist Church that coordinated outreach to more than five hundred students. She led freshman Bible studies. Although a student, she was fully committed to working in her church and reaching out to nonbelievers. Still, she was burdened by her fifth-grade dream of becoming a missionary.
She fulfilled that dream by becoming a Journeyman missionary with the IMB (International Mission Board), a Southern Baptist missionary agency whose Journeyman program encourages young men and women to become missionaries. It sent her to the Middle East. She met David, also a Journeyman missionary, on a crowded Bethlehem Square in Israel amid the cacophony and mayhem of New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Initially, neither wanted to serve in the Middle East, but independently they fell in love with the Middle Eastern people and each other. Both became fluent in Arabic.
Stateside, two years later, David gave Niki a cookie cake with a frosted “I love you. Will you marry me?” written in Arabic. She said yes.
The couple enrolled in Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. While there, they were asked to lead a group of seminary students on a humanitarian aid trip for three weeks one summer to northern Iraq. Along with their dozen-member team, they celebrated their first wedding anniversary on Iraqi soil. Then they returned to Texas.
Because of the couple’s fluency in the language and their hearts for Arab people, they were asked to suspend seminary and go to postwar Iraq full-time. Niki weighed her fears and consulted her pastor. In the end, she decided to place her trust in God despite Iraq’s security issues. Showing the Iraqi people God’s tangible love trumped her own fears for safety.
Amid the fury of almost daily terrorist acts against Americans, Niki and David relocated to Iraq to coordinate humanitarian aid for the Iraqi people. Letters home never indicated that she feared danger. Instead, Niki highlighted the work they were doing: interacting with the Iraqi people, delivering food and supplies, rebuilding war-torn schools, and locating water.
One afternoon, Niki, her husband, and three other missionaries spent time with several Iraqis who were subsisting in abject poverty. “We had a great day with them. They had been so welcoming. They were so eager for our help,” Niki says. They concluded their time there by deciding to secure a site for a water purification plant for the desperate people they met.
On their way back, a car pulled alongside their vehicle. Within moments the car was sprayed with bullets from automatic weaponry and rocket-powered grenades. After the assailants fled the ambush, David called his supervisor in Jordan on a satellite phone. “We’ve all been shot,” he said.
The five were transported to a nearby U.S. battlefield hospital. Niki remembers seeing David across the room; his injuries seemed minor. They spoke to each other.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” she mouthed.
“We’re going to make it through this,” he said. They were the last words she heard David speak before she succumbed to a drug-induced coma. Later, David died aboard an army helicopter. Four U.S. Army surgeons spent six hours trying to keep him alive. But Niki didn’t know.
She woke up eight days later in a Texas hospital. Still hazy, the first person she asked for was David. Her family evaded her questions until finally she asked if he was mad at her. Then her family circled her hospital bed. Her father told her David had died the day after the car attack.
Now the lone survivor of the March 15, 2004, ambush, Niki faces life as an injured widow. She’s recovering from over twenty gunshot and shrapnel wounds. Her list of bullet wounds is long. A bullet splintered her lower left leg, carving a hole so large the doctors thought they’d have to amputate. Amazingly, the leg was saved and the prognosis is that she will walk just months after the attack. She’s hobbled from crutches to cane and will someday walk without assistance.
She lost three fingers on her left hand, leaving her with a middle finger and a thumb. It’s been a difficult adjustment to make. “It’s weird, but I keep forgetting those fingers aren’t there. For twenty-six years I had them. So I reach to hold something, and it falls out of my hand. And I remember.”
She also notes, “I’ve got several graze wounds on the back of my head. Another quarter inch and it would have been my life.”
According to surgeons, one bullet entered her nose but then defied the laws of physics by exiting without hitting sinuses or brain tissue, her nose still intact. No reconstructive surgery, miraculously, is needed.
Despite the extensive injuries, Niki lives with hope and a desire to serve the Lord wherever He takes her. Her heart for the Iraqi people is evident, and she longs to see others willing to spend themselves for the sake of Jesus and His love for the Middle East. “We need to keep going to these places—to hard places, to sometimes violent places,” she said. “They need help.”
In the midst of a strong desire to see others go, Niki grieves the loss of her three friends and her husband. “In my humanness, I definitely wish my husband had survived. I wish my friends had survived,” she said. “But do I regret doing what we were supposed to do? I don’t regret that at all. It was very clear that this is what we were meant to do.”
Niki worries that people will lose courage because of her ordeal, forsaking overseas missionary service in war-ravaged countries. She longs for others to see past the violence to needy people. She wishes the evening news showed the humanity of people in other countries, not just the violent acts of a few.
She’s often asked if she will go back to Iraq. “Eventually,” she said. “Maybe.” Niki admits, “It has been a hard road. There are still days I pray, ‘Why?’ I miss my husband.”
Yet she has sensed God’s presence even in her grief. “God has been so faithful. His mercies are new each morning. And that sense of His nearness has never left.”