by Ronald Rousseau

When I was about eight years old and living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a friend of the family drove up to the front of our home in his Cherokee truck. Both he and the truck were covered in a thick layer of dust. He looked as though he had ridden on the truck’s roof.

Once our friend climbed out, I asked him, “Big Ronald [I was little Ronald], where are you coming from?”

He said that he left Port-au-Prince that morning, drove to Les Cayes, and drove back all in the same day.

I don’t know where the words came from, but I opened my mouth and called him a liar. In that society, it was not the norm to call a person older than you a liar. I myself was surprised I’d said it, but a one-way trip to Les Cayes in those days easily took twelve hours. The road from the capital city of Port-au-Prince to Les Cayes could be a challenge, especially during the rainy season. You did not know if you could actually get there or how long it might take. Sometimes it was dangerous.

That’s why for Big Ronald to tell me that he went there and back on the same day was unbelievable. He explained to me that they had built a highway from Port-au-Prince to Les Cayes. Still, I had a hard time believing that they could build a road that converted a dangerous twelve-hour trip to a four-hour safe trip.

Paradigms of missions

We live in a world where a thirty-mile trip on our roads is not a big deal, but in other places the roads are not paved. A short trip on these difficult roads can be dangerous or take a lot of effort to travel, and they may not take you far. But many servants of the gospel do it anyway.

That kind of challenging travel is one paradigm of doing missions. There are others. When we think about sharing the gospel, our paradigm may be to introduce Jesus to a stranger at a coffee shop. But some may be intimidated to do so. “Talk to a complete stranger about Jesus and ‘out’ myself as a Christian?” That thought is so scary to some.

In another paradigm, if missionaries participate in a public assembly, mention their membership in the Church of God (Seventh Day), or speak the name of Jesus, they may land in jail. GC Missions has missionaries in politically unstable places around the world, in war zones, and in places where traveling thirty miles may take you a whole day. We have heard testimonies of individuals who were driven out of their communities for accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are not talking about decades ago. We are talking about now. They travel a difficult road for the gospel. A dangerous road.

When we lift GC Missions and its missionaries in prayer, we should pray with the fervor congruent to the challenges they face. They travel on a road that is full of difficulties and deadly situations, and they face imprisonment for their beliefs.

Missionary challenges

Perhaps sharing your faith with someone in a coffee shop or with someone burdened with surviving wartime conditions are not the same thing. If your paradigm is a smooth, paved road, then travel swiftly! Share the gospel and pray for those missionaries whose road is not so well paved.

Jesus has called us to “go and make disciples.” He said to His followers, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15, NIV). The word go is so powerful — a mandate from the Son of God. Jesus is saying, “Go where I send you with the understanding that you may face war, natural disasters, and difficulties that you cannot imagine.” It’s good for us to keep this commission in mind because the breadth of work that GC Missions performs sometimes requires our missionaries to operate in terribly difficult places and in extremely challenging situations in order to spread the gospel.

When I hear of the situations that our missionaries work under, it is hard for me to believe. When they share how they are willing and able to persevere, I understand how convicted they are of the love of Christ and how they must go and share the good news.

We lift up our missionaries in prayer for the love of the gospel, and we ask that God supply them with courage for the road they travel. It is not smooth and even, but they journey on. Sometimes, thirty-four miles can take a whole day or two or three to travel. But they’ve learned that when God calls us to go, we go because He is a faithful God and will provide the strength to journey on, smooth or bumpy may the road be.

Message from Myanmar

To illustrate this point, I have included a communication from one of our pastors in Myanmar who is working under such conditions. Here is what Brother Tluang says regarding the war in his country and the status of the Church there:

[The war] is going on in most parts of the country. Sometimes, towns are captured by the revolution fighters, and sometimes they are taken again by the regime coup soldiers. It’s been going [on] like this. It’s been the fifth year, and I don’t see it coming to its end. Half of the people in our Chin State have fled to other places where they can go and escape. Our churches in those regions are out of contact. Young men and women are in danger of conscription law. Our church members in Taung Ngu have also fled to nearby villages again this week, and our pastor, his wife, and youngest daughter were arrested for a while, as they were unable to run. It was on Wednesday this week. But they were released the next day. We praise God for this. And we are glad that our church building, which is in the process of construction, was not burnt by the soldiers. We praise God for this also.

So it’s like this. Those people living in Yangon are also in danger, and we have to be careful. One of our church members was also arrested by the militia groups last Sunday while walking on the street. But we can bribe them, and he was released in the evening. So we are rolling like this. I do not have photos. It may be searched from the Internet. Brother Tluang’s words remind us to pray for brethren in Myanmar and around the world.