Daktar

Upon hearing about my missionary mandate, many friends and family have given me books and biographies about missionaries to further fan my future into flame.  The first, loaned to me by a dear faithful sister of Gateway Church, Mrs. Pat Widener, was rather daunting.  Titled Daktar:  Diplomat in Bangladesh, weighing in at 452 pages, boasting about size 8 font and yellowed from 30 years since publication, I was tempted to let it rest on the shelf a while.  And I did.  Until Mrs. Pat reminded me about it at the beginning of this summer, I just then picked it up and started reading, but not without my fair share of conviction. 

Those aged pages told of a man named Viggo Olsen, once a brilliant but party-friendly young agnostic in medical school, then a man who found the truth about God through failing at discovering flaws in Scripture, afterwards a successful surgeon presented with an opportunity for a highly distinguished fellowship, and finally a medical missionary who instead decided to open a hospital in East Pakistan for hurting bodies and souls.  Daktar gave an incredibly detailed description of Dr. Olsen’s early life, missionary calling, ventures to build a team and erect the hospital, strains with the East Pakistani government to secure visas and permits, relationships held with the Bengali people, medical work in the hospital, life on the field, persevering persecution, surviving two ghastly wars, the bloody independence of East Pakistan into Bangladesh, and most importantly, trusting God through it all.  Every paragraph that told of the Lord working miraculously through a situation despite his fears and shortsightedness, he never failed to follow with “Thank you, Father!” 

Near the end of the story, Dr. Olsen reflected upon an Indian war monument and related the young liberators of the Bengalis to Jesus Christ.  When India could have stayed out of the war and watched West Pakistan obliterate the feisty Bengalis, they stepped in and fought; when the Father saw our lostness in sin, He also could have chosen to stay out of our mess, but instead he sent Jesus to step in and die for us.  I then realized that this was also what Dr. Olsen and his medical missionary team did – instead of living their own comforting life, they went to a desperate nation, cared for them, loved them, served them, endured hardships for them, shared the gospel with them, and lived a passionate example of Jesus before them, even when the Bengali people could provide nothing in return.

And suddenly, I realized what missions is all about.

A Home and a Hope

Ever since I've been at SAGU, I've been struggling with unbelief.

It's hard to believe that there are so many young people with such amazing calls to ministry.  It’s out of place to see such a warm, encouraging atmosphere radiating from these students and faculty. It's difficult to fathom there exists such a place with the same nuances as Magnet (the chapel speaker two nights ago wrapped his whole sermon around Adventure Time and I lost count of how many other people brought the entire Star Wars series) and an entirely Christian fellowship.  It’s incredible to sit in a class while listening to the professor lecture about world missions.  It’s stunning to see the answer to the prayer for the Lord of the harvest to send passionate young people into His harvest field.

But this isn’t fake.  This is real.  This is SAGU.  This is home.

Yet at the same time, this doesn’t feel like home.  Back at Magnet High, I was always ministering to someone in some way on campus—making a disciple, giving encouragement, sharing the Word of God, praying for someone in need, telling someone about Jesus, teaching the Scriptures, empowering the leaders of next year.  Here at SAGU, those opportunities, at least towards the unsaved, are no more.  Yes, we Christians still have needs and issues that are sought out and met within the love of this incredible fellowship of believers.   Yet as I talk with my Christian friends, learn in my Christian classrooms, and worship in my Christian chapel, my missionary soul grows restless.  This passion for lost souls to come to know Christ and desire to be poured out into someone’s unsaved life burns uncontrollably.  It is suffocating.  In hopes of channeling this anguish into ministry, I’ve joined several outreach ministries, one to international students at UTA, another to neighborhood kids, and soon one to the juvenile detention center.  But this fire remains unquenched.  The cool thing is that God noticed that.  I may have received some direction from Him to do something extraordinary… we’ll see how that goes.  

So for now, this longing “to preach the gospel where Christ was not known” (Rom 15:20) continues to outgrow this amazement of “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity” (Ps 133:1).  Maybe these are just freshman emotions; maybe this is just zeal without knowledge; maybe it's God.  My hope is that this turns into a good thing.