We were young and consumed with a passion to serve Him. That is all that mattered to us, even if it meant doing it in a strange land.
At 19, I embarked on my first missionary journey to Mexico from the United Kingdom (I’m Ghanaian by the way).
I had never lived in another country before and really didn’t know what to expect. This mission was particularly interesting because we were the first “all female” set of missionaries that were sent out from my church.
We arrived in the country without speaking a word of spanish! (well except what we picked up on the plane journey there. “Te por favor” which means “would you like some tea?”).
So we arrived and settled in a hostel.
A lady helped us to obtain student visas to a language school where we registered to learn Spanish.
Problem was, it cost us 300 dollars per level so we couldn’t stay in that language school very long.
We did about two levels of Spanish in the language school, then continued learning by reading and interacting with the indigenous people.
Language barrier was definitely a major problem in our outreach efforts.
Also, there were very few black people in the city so people would often stare at us as we walked through the streets (the way some people look at Caucasians in Ghana)
People would point fingers, call us “nigga”, some would laugh in ignorance, a whole mixture of responses! Some were very suggestive…but we stuck out like a sore thumb basically.
I must say though, from the onset, it was a very glorious experience upon arrival. We felt like God was saying “These are my beloved daughters in whom I’m well pleased”. Great feeling it was.
People received prophetic words about us, we would pray for people in English and they would hear Spanish… That glorious an entry, until our “wilderness season”…
(More to come in subsequent episodes)
Natalie Welds