May 2003
LIFE OF A MISSIONARY IN AFRICA

Recently we received a letter from missionary friends Patty and Brian Arensen of Africa Inland Mission (AIM). Brian is in charge of AIM Missionaries in Tanzania.

They visited some of their people in the “hinterlands” and described some of the hardships missionaries endure. They first visited three isolated families involved in church planting. The women are alone over 50‰ of the time as the husbands travel frequently. They visited a family with 3 children in the middle of a Muslim community.

They are building a new brick church structure, as opponents to Christ recently burned down the original wooden church. They went on to visit Kim, a young nurse, the last member of a larger AIM team. She uses her medical skills as a witness for Christ. Kim was asked if she ever got lonely since she is frequently without missionary neighbors. She replied that when she got lonely, she would visit her ‘Grandma’, an old native woman that she led to Christ, or go outside and play with the neighbor children who mysteriously appear when she merely opens her door.

They went to Dar Es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. They met nine missionaries involved in education for missionary children as well as for street children. The overriding impression of life on the coast is heat. During the hot season the temperature and humidity both approach 100. Due to the high cost of electricity, air conditioning is not an option.

What is it that makes missionaries do what they do? It isn’t fame, as few know of their accomplishments. It isn’t money, by the world’s standards they are poor. It isn’t adventure, as the glamour soon wears off. The Arensen’s describe it as a God thing. When God works in a person’s life, he/she sees beyond this world to things eternal. No longer are personal comfort, safety, convenience, or material possessions the most important things in life, but pleasing God is. Only by Christ working in them are great things accomplished in His name.