Can a child be on a mission field? before you say no read about my experience
I will never forget how as a child I found myself on a mission field, if I can remember clearly the name of the village was Gurumi, somewhere in Oyo State, Nigeria.
I was only 8 years old and my elder sister was 10 when a very young couple visited us, we loved them, they had come to visit my parents and they spoke at length, we really loved them and everything we heard about them. They just got married and were now missionaries in a village called Gurumi and God has been faithful to them. When it was time for them to leave, as the children that we were. We started crying, we would love to follow them back to the village to experience life as a missionary, at that age we had watched a lot of movies about mission work and we really loved to be a part of it, this was our chance, this was our opportunity. My parents laughed they thought we were joking but we didn’t stop, thank God we were on long holidays from school and had nothing else that could stop us. We pleaded with our parents, please let us go, let us follow our favourite couples, please, please, even our favourite couples were surprised, what kind of children are these they wondered because we were just meeting them for the first time and were so willing to follow them back home.
As soon as we got our approval we happily packed our small bags, of course a bag pack, that was the first indication that we were not serious we were just “visiting missionaries to Gurumi😂”.
Anyways we followed them to that village and when we arrived we loved the place, the villagers we kind, some of the things I saw in that village I have never seen them else were.
For instance if we wanted water, we would walk into the bush and dig the ground a little, wait for some time and the water would come up, it reminded me of some bible stories.
In church, we joined the academics team, we taught some children how to read and write, we also taught them some children gospel songs🎵. Are you surprised 😮, looking back I am also surprised at the things we knew at that early age even more shocked at the fact that we could teach other children.
Just when we thought we were having fun and enjoying ourselves something struck, Mosquitoes! i mean little but mighty Mosquitoes, since I was born I had never seen those kind of Mosquitoes in my life, our favourite couple warned us about them and told us to always shut the door but as children we did take it to heart, we left the door opened at a lot of times and a lot of Mosquitoes rushed in. They immediately turned our bodies to their playing ground and before we knew it my sister and I was down with Malaria Fever, we cried, we vomited a lot, now we wanted go back home, and these was not the days of phone calls, to make a phone call in that village you will have to go somewhere, climb somewhere and swing your hands many times before the network bar will come up.
When our condition got worse, our favourite couple was left with no option than to take us back to the city of Saki where they got us, we came back home defeated by Mosquitoes. We quickly got medical attention and we felt better, when we were whole and hearty my mother asked us,
do you want to go back to Gurumi, we screamed, No oooooooo, till today she will say "My missionaries to Gurumi"
So because we were children the Mosquitoes had taught us a very good lesson about mission work "it is not for the weak". But nevertheless like Paul we have planted an Apollos will water our seeds.
As funny as this may sound there is however very good lessons to learn.
Number 1, children can know a lot of things but you can only find out their capacity when you place them in an environment were they can function.
Number 2, Mission work is for those who are prepared and not just for fans of movies about mission.
Number 3, Christian couples must live with vision and purpose and be a role model to the youths and children around them, its beautiful to see that I became a missionary for few weeks because some young couple yielded to the call of God.
I have come to the end of my story and I hope you enjoyed it, what can you learn from this story let me know in the comment section and don’t forget to clap👏 if you enjoyed it.😄
0 Comments