I entered the village where the École des Femmes (School for Women) meets, and greeted the chief and the instructors. I had been invited to share a short message with the women. My missionary friend who runs the school had informed me that the women I would be meeting had already made professions of faith in Christ. They were studying Scripture and the principles of a Christian home and marriage, and learning how to read, write, cook, and sew.
Women in this country are so downtrodden. I wanted to leave them with something meaningful, but what would encourage these lovely women who face so much difficulty on a daily basis and still readily smile and laugh with me?
As I prayed and watched the women proudly show what they’ve been learning, God reminded me of how I got to where I am today and that I should tell them. I shared with them that once, over thirty years ago, a missionary woman was old and poor in health and had to return to the U.S., her home country. She did not stop being a missionary, though. She spoke to groups of children and told them about Jesus, and that is how I first heard the Gospel and asked Jesus to be my Savior. She was old. She was physically frail. She was a woman. But God used her to work a miracle – to give me new life in Christ – and now I was there to share my story with them.
I had originally planned to share with them that we are all missionaries, not just those of us whom God sends to faraway lands. They are missionaries in their villages. They are missionaries when they visit relatives and friends in other villages. They are missionaries in their own homes. Instead, God prompted me to share a specific example of this—how He used one humble woman to change the lives of others. They could relate to her and understood that God can use them too.