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Chapter Seven: The Call as Support Factor?

The first part of this chapter investigates if and to what degree the Mennonite women in the study had a personal sense of call: how they described it, its development, and its discernment. The second part investigates how their sense of call—or lack thereof—impact­ed the women’s short-term and long-term cultural re-location experience. These questions are investigated with reference to the mission agency’s policy regarding the call. So, too, are variables such as the source material, the era during which the missionaries served, the perspective from which a statement is made in anticipation or retro­spectively, the women’s theological persuasions, as well as their marital status. Where discrepancies between the written and the oral evidence occur, possible explanations are discussed.


A Sense of Call—Yes or No?


In considering the question as to whether the women had a sense of call or not, we need to be aware that it was CIM/AIMM and GC policy only to accept applicants who witnessed to having a personal sense of call. This is evident, directly and indirectly, from questions which, with minor variations, appear on successive versions of application forms through­out the decades. These include: ‘State briefly your motive and purpose in the missionary call,’1 or, ‘Do you expect to make missionary work your life vocation?’ 2


The application forms did not differentiate between gender or marital status. Identi­cal questions had to be answered by male and female applicants, and by husbands and wives. The AIMM secretary, at the time the interviews were conducted, elaborated on this practice of insisting on an individual sense of call:

We feel that we will not send out a couple, unless they are together on their call. If one feels called, and the other one feels less of a call, or they’re just going along because their husband has the call to ministry overseas, then we probably will not send them, because they need to be together.

He justified this policy inter alia with the increased stress that marriages undergo in a foreign culture. This pressure, he felt, could only be successfully negotiated on the basis of a couple’s common sense of call:

Because when they get out there—all the situations in Africa become more intense. Living becomes more intense, their friends aren’t there, their families aren’t there, the communication with the Africans is difficult, and so they have to learn a new language, cultural differences, everything. It can become more intense in their relationship with one another, too. And so you have to make sure that they have a good, loving relationship, and also that they love the Lord, and that they have a similar call toward ministry.

Considering this mission policy, it is not surprising that, on the application forms, the vast majority of women witnessed to having a personal sense of call. However, this initial impression takes on a greater complexity when it is combined with some of the retrospective oral evidence.3 From these interviews, it becomes apparent that, in some cases, the women’s sense of call at the time of their application was not as clear as might have been inferred from the forms. Missionary 8, for example, stated on her application form that she had a personal sense of call.4 During the interview she relativized her original statement by explaining:

I don’t know that I really can say that I had a call on my own, other that I thought that I could be a support for him in this work. It was exciting.

How do we explain such discrepancies between this written and oral evidence? There are several likely reasons:


Some women might have witnessed to a clear sense of call in order to conform to the mission agency’s expectations. This would have been a particular temptation for wives, who for whatever reasons wanted to follow their husbands into foreign missionary service.


Not everyone who claimed to have had a sense of call might have been quite as sure about it as they stated on the official forms. During the informal interviews, conducted at a more mature stage of their lives, the missionaries were freer to express themselves in a more nuanced way.


The archival material marked the outset of their missionary lives, while the interviews were conducted after years of active foreign mission experience. In the interim, their perception of the divine call itself had often undergone significant changes, the nature of which will be discussed more fully below.


On a mission-historical level, some discrepancies between the older, written, and more recent oral material are likely to be influenced by the fact that the two sources originate from different eras in the missionary movement.


The application forms were mostly filled in at a time when the missionary movement in the western hemisphere was at its prime, and strongly optimistic in nature, with the clear-cut purpose of bringing the good news of salvation to those ‘who had never heard.’ In the words of Missionary 6,

… there was just a very positive image of mission work at that time.

The interviews, on the other hand, were granted in the post-colonial era, and at a time of increasing religious pluralism. By this time, the traditional concept of Christian foreign missions had been extensively critiqued both regarding its purpose and its methods, by socio-political and religious movements. This critique had also affected many of the missionaries’ home churches. As a result, the traditional missionary move­ment had gone into a far more defensive mode, and speaking of a sense of divine call to missions had in the eyes of many become synonymous with arrogance and presump­tu­ousness.


The combined written and oral evidence indicates that, with regard to the degree of their personal sense of call, the women fall into three broad categories:


Firstly, a majority had a definite personal sense of call. This included all the single women. In the case of married women, it either developed independently from, and/or in conjunction with that of their spouses.5 Secondly, some married women did not witness to a strong personal sense of call, but rather had what might be described as a passive sense of call—that is, they were willing to go along with their husbands’ sense of call and adapted to the new situation over time.6 This attitude is illustrated by Mission­ary 22 for example:

I would go, ‘Where thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest I will lodge,’ that sort of thing. And the thing that’s always been, we have always had really good experiences. So wherever God has led my husband, my experience is good, too.

Similar remarks were occasionally found on application forms:

Q: How did you come to entertain the desire to go into Foreign Mission work?

 A: I had a deep desire to serve my Master in whatever work I would be placed. My husband felt the call to missionary service before we were married, I prayerfully sought God’s will for my life and received the assurance that this was His will for me too.7

Thirdly, a few married women, without a personal sense of call, subjected them­selves to their husband’s sense of call against strong personal internal resistance—which they often retained throughout their mission experience. Missionary 14 is one woman in question:

It was my husband’s idea that we go. I drug my feet for a while, and finally I said, ‘Well if that’s where he wants to go that’s where I will go too.’

The majority of women who went against their will were women in their late thirties or early forties, who had been married for a number of years before the couple started considering missionary service.

Development and Discernment of the Sense of Call


For most women, the sense of call did not come as a thunderbolt from heaven; rather it developed over time. This is evident from the application forms.

Q. What influences have been most influential in leading you to con­sider this form of service?8
Q. How did you come to entertain the desire to go into foreign mission work?9

While the applicants’ answers to these and similar questions varied in detail, some basic commonalities can quickly be identified. The fundamentalist-revivalist religious environment, with its pronounced missionary vision, in which a majority had grown up, clearly played an important role in the development of their sense of call. It awakened in them, from early on, a keen awareness of the missionary dimension of the Christian faith. The key institutions of family, church, and school/college usually acted as important agents of transmission of this missionary vision during the women’s formative years.10 This is illustrated by the following statement on an application form:

Q: What influences have been most influential in leading you to consider missionary service?
A: I have had good Christian training in my home. My Church training has also had influence on my life. I also had the privilege of attending a Christian High School and attending Grace Bible Institute.11

This written evidence of an all-prevailing missionary vision is supported by the oral witness. Missionary 20 remembered that in her early experience it was assumed that

… all Christians are to share the message of life with others.

However, this was not everyone's experience. Missionary 5 recounted that her family viewed overt evangelism as profoundly un-Mennonite:

All these evangelist-Billy-Graham kind of people that came, the mass decisions, big campaigns and rallies and tent meetings that was not part of my growing up; Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade, that kind of thing.

Others, too, were raised in families with similarly sceptical views of the traditional missionary vision. Missionary 1 recalled:

My father was not so committed to actual mission work, but he wanted us all to be involved some way in the work of God’s kingdom.

In her family, ‘the work of God’s kingdom’ focused on practical deeds of service rather than open evangelism. The two missionaries quoted last came from different gene­rations. The first was in her late sixties when she was interviewed, the second in her early forties. This seems to indicate that, at least in their case, it was not so much the era in which they grew up which influenced their thinking on evangelism, but rather their early theological environment. Indications are that the missionaries usually, at least initi­ally, adopted the respective theological positions of their immediate environment. This manifested itself later in the women’s divergent interpretation of their missionary man­date.


God used various other means to ‘speak’ to the future missionaries.12 Important per­sonal dynamics often also played a significant role in the process. One of them was the influence of their parents. During a time when the missionary call was held in very high esteem by many, it was the pride and joy of many parents to witness one or more of their children joining foreign missions. Many women were from an early age aware of this desire of their parents for them to ‘serve God’ one day. Missionary 20 knew that she had been dedicated by her parents to God’s service as an infant:

When I was a baby, they had given me to the Lord to use in whatever way God wants to use my life.

Missionary 18 remembered being strongly conscious of her mother’s desire for her and her siblings to become missionaries—an unfulfilled dream that the mother had originally had for herself:

My mother had sisters in China and in the Congo and in India as missionaries. And she had always wanted to be a missionary, but she felt that God called her to marry my father. That was before he was a minister, but she was very anxious to have her children be missionaries.

Retrospectively, she observed how her parents’ desire for her and her siblings seem­ed to have influenced their career choices:

(The parents) were very supportive of whatever we wanted to do. But one thing that we were sort of guided or directed to. I was a doctor, and I married a minister, three of my sisters married ministers, and the last one was a nurse and married a nurse. So we were kind of directed to the ministry, some kind of Christian ministry. And also some kind of helping profession.

Missionary 24’s archival statement on early influences on her missionary call echoes the importance of the parental role:

My parents are sincere christians (sic) and they were anxious for us to be of service to the Lord.

The extraordinary strength of the parental desire for one or more of their children to become foreign missionaries often overrode their need to have their adult children live in close proximity, and in the safety of their home country. This is illustrated in the inter­view with Missionary 19 for example:

M.S.: How did your family feel when you told them that you were going to go to Africa?
Missionary 19: My mother died while I was still in high school, a teenager, but my father was very delighted, as were my brothers. Four of my brothers had already gone to the mission field—two to Africa, two to India, one to China. And so this wasn’t a shock to them at all.
M.S.: Usually when parents hear that their children are going far away, they say ‘I wish she remained close by!’ Why do you think your parents were so supportive of your decision?
Missionary 19: (…) Well they just committed us to the Lord and said follow what he wants you to do!

Against this background missionary 18 pondered retrospectively:

I’m never really sure if I actually had a call from God or if it was just my conditioning and my upbringing.

As mentioned before, it was not only their families that encouraged the children to join foreign missions. They received similar messages from their churches. This is illus­trated in the interview with Missionary 6:

M.S.: What attracted you to the thought of becoming a missionary at that time?
Missionary 6: Missionaries were very much admired in my home; there was a real respect for missionaries.
M.S.: Why were missionaries held in such high esteem?
Missionary 6: I think that was part of the era in churches, and I suppose there was a certain sense in which they would rank Christian vocations, and missionaries were probably put on a pedestal, not that it was right.

Of those missionaries that visited her home she said

I think that was a very important factor in my formation and my interest in missions.

It was common that the mission stories and missionary challenges the girls were confronted with left a deep impression on many of them13—to the degree that some retrospectively saw such events as the initial trigger for their eventual sense of call. This is borne out by an account on an application form:

One Sunday morning some of our missionaries came to the church to give a program. After the service we went to the front to look at the things which they had brought with them. Two of us girls were standing there and one of the ladies said, ‘Here are two girls whom we hope to see in Africa some day.’ That incident made an impression on me that stayed with me.14

Missionary 6 had a similar memory of a visiting missionary as a young Sunday school child:15

M.S.: Do you remember anything that those missionaries might have said or done that impressed you at that time?
Missionary 6: One incident comes to mind. One of the women doctors from India, I remember she was talking at Sunday school about India. But what I remember is that she said, ‘Maybe God will call one of you children here to be a missionary.’ And at that moment I thought, maybe it’s me!
M.S. And did you keep that in mind?
Missionary 6: Yes, I think all the time. I’m not sure how old I was at the time, eight to ten years maybe. But even in high school when I would take classes I would think, ‘Well, maybe typing or secretarial, maybe I can do that overseas, or if I were to do this,’ and it was always in the thought of being a missionary with whatever skill I was doing.
M.S.: What did you imagine a missionary to be at that time?
Missionary 6: That’s been a long time. I don’t remember particularly. I’m sure I thought of the preaching and teaching (…) But also just the exposure. I remember one time it was also a missionary from India that dressed me in one of those Indian saris. I was a teenager at that point.

Missionary 1 remembered that it was not only missionaries who returned from the field who left a significant impression with mission stories, but also missionaries who were sent out:16

Our church was very mission minded. And we had members from our church who were sent out, with our church’s blessing and support and all that.

The romantic component in the early stirrings of a sense of call was occasionally linked to persons such as a much admired Sunday school teacher, who endeavored to instil a missionary vision in the young children. This is evident from Missionary 17’s story:

The pastor’s wife was our young teenage girls’ Sunday school teacher. She was young, she was beautiful, her husband expressed his love for her, and for us it was romantic; we liked it. She would pray in Sunday school every Sunday, ‘Oh God that you might lay your hands on the lives of these beautiful young girls and would call them into your ministry!’ And I said inside myself, she’s talking about me! And I didn’t want to. And—she’s talking about me. No! No, no, no, no! And it wasn’t until a number of years later that—she was talking about me! She had some sense of—I don’t know what.

The following account by Missionary 11 who grew up as a Methodist before she married a Mennonite shows that such romanticized missionary notions were not Menno­nite-specific:

M.S.: Did you ever have any interest in missions as a girl?
Missionary 11: Yes I did! I wrote a letter when I was twelve years old to the Methodist mission; the Methodist mission had a headquarters in New York. And I was a twelve-year-old girl on the farm. Very, very active in church and I wrote a letter to them, wondering what I would need to do to be a missionary. And they answered this twelve year old farm girl and said, ‘This is a wonderful interest that you have, but you are going to need schooling in order to go overseas and be a missionary overseas; you are going to need quite a bit of schooling, and quite a bit of preparation.’

Clearly, these romantic notions about the missionary call were largely unrealistic, and would need to be adjusted in order for the call to become a true support factor in their eventual mission experience. Besides romantic notions, there were other, similar motives mixed into the development of the sense of call. One of them was the desire ‘to help’ those with great spiritual, physical, and material needs in far away places. This motive was especially found among girls. As a child, Missionary 11, for example, was touched, intrigued, and spurred on to help, by the plight of people on the mission field:

At that time in my mother’s Sunday school class, she had contact with the Philippine islands. (…). And she had letters and ways in which our children in our church could help people in the Philippines, and we were doing things, and getting money, and getting little packages ready to send to the Philippine islands. And I really don’t know how she got the contact, but already as a little girl, my mother in her Sunday class was giving her Sunday school children the idea of helping people who weren’t in our country but who had very big needs, and they lived in other countries. And I think that may have even been the beginning (of the sense of call).

At another point in the interview she re-iterated her early desire to help:

M.S.: What did you think you would do in missions?
Missionary 11: Well to be helpful that was for sure! And tell them about the love of Jesus, and the stories, New Testament stories of Jesus and his teachings. I think I thought of a teaching ministry. I wasn’t sure, of course.

We find a similar desire to help on the following application form:

Q: What influences have been most influential in leading you to consider this form of service?
A: Missionaries’ messages, books of missionary experiences, desire to be of help (…) to the unfortunate. Articles on need in foreign lands in ‘Mennonite.’17

Missionary 5’s desire to help was of a somewhat different nature. She was not par­ticularly impressed by the more dramatic missionary presentations, but she felt empathy with people’s everyday struggles:

Some of these missionaries showed pictures with huge sores and amput­ated limbs and things like that. I felt that that was a little melodramatic or something. That didn’t seem as real as the practical food and safety—I think security. Imagine people living with the fear of being killed, shot, guns; that seemed so awful! Look at living here, to think that your next door neighbor would shoot you and this kind of thing.

This desire to help was mixed into the sense of call for many, and was, as we will see, often transferred into the adult implementation of the sense of call. In this context, we need to remember the personal response to the need of others—the strong propensity for ‘helping’ and serving that underlies the Anabaptist/Mennonite understanding of discipleship. The danger exists that women who enter foreign missionary service prim­arily on the strength of their desire to help will soon be confronted with the reality that the needs of the field will always exceed their ability and resources to address them.


From Resistance to Acceptance


Both the archival and the oral evidence indicate that those with a traditional sense of call often accepted their sense of call only gradually. The call was seldom experienced as the proverbial handwriting on the wall. This statement by Missionary 40 on how her desire to go into missions had developed is therefore rather a-typical:

The Lord revealed it to me through a vision.18

The women’s eventual assurance that they were really called often involved an internal journey that moved from resistance to yielding. At first sight, this seems a rather unexpected finding—considering that at that time the missionary vocation was counted among the highest Christian callings. Expectations, therefore, would be that the recipi­ents of the call would be overjoyed at having been divinely selected for such high honor. For some this was the case. Yet there is strong reference, particularly, but not exclusively, in the older written evidence, where many displayed an initial reluctance to ‘accept’ the call. Many of the early missionaries tended to have a strong feeling of inadequacy in the light of their high calling. This contrasts with the later generation who tended to enter missions on the strength of their gifting.


A comprehensive early missionary testimony (entitled ‘Separated unto the Gospel of God—Or My Missionary Testimony,’) stored at the Bethel College archives, vividly illus­trates the internal struggles one candidate underwent before she was prepared to ‘yield’ to the call. She told of different occasions during which she increasingly felt that the Lord might be calling her personally. On the first occasion, during an evangelistic meeting in church, she had an initial sense that the Lord might be calling her:

When I was eighteen, a missionary-minded preacher conducted union evangelistic meetings in our church. On consecration night I went forward to surrender my life to the Lord. (…) We were admonished to do something about it—to prepare for missionary service so we would be ready if the Lord should call us. However I did not believe that God would actually call me, and so I did nothing about it. (…) During all those years I also had a great interest in missions from the ‘long distance’ point of view. (…)

On the second occasion, during a mission presentation, she decided to wait for a clear divine call from God to go to Africa:

In the autumn of 1942, in Mission Class, a missionary from Africa showed motion pictures portraying the needs of his field. The Lord touched me in that service, and I felt I should say, I’ll go to Africa unless you will lead me elsewhere,’ but I continued to say, ‘I’ll go to Africa if You will call me.’

(…) In Jan., 1943, I sent a letter to my brother, Paul, who was then in the C.P.S. Camp at Medaryville, Ind. Quite frankly and fully I wrote about the Lord’s dealings with me, and that I believed He was calling me to Africa. (…) Paul was not to let the others in the family know about the letter. In the spring of 1943 (…) he spent a short time at home. Mother was to put away his things, including his letters. Although mother does not read our letters otherwise, she ‘happened’ to read that letter. She placed it among my things and I found it later when home on a vacation. (…)

After another series of challenges, she finally felt ready to follow her sense of call to Africa, unless the Lord would clearly lead otherwise:

In Dec., 1943, one of the faculty members gave a consecration message in Home Prayer Band. (…) He added that many who should be on the foreign field are not there. The message ‘struck home’ but still I did not yield. The following day, the missionary who brought pictures on Africa in the fall of 1942, spoke in Missions Class. His address deepened my conviction that I was one whom the Lord wanted on the foreign field. Two days later he again showed his pictures on Africa, this time in Missionary Union. After the meeting one of my friends (who is in the Missionary Course incidently (sic)) asked me, ‘Well, are you going to be a missionary now?’ As usual I replied, ‘I don’t know.’ After a moment I told her that I felt the Lord wanted me to say to Him, ‘I’ll go to Africa unless you will lead me elsewhere.’ She instantly replied, ‘Why don’t you?’ If he doesn’t want you there, He certainly will not let you go there.’

That night, Sat., 4th, 1943, just before retiring at 11, as I was on my knees, I finally surrendered to the Lord’s will for my life by saying, ‘I’ll no longer say, I’ll go to Africa if You will call me, but I, Lord, I’ll go to Africa unless You will lead me elsewhere.’ A peace and joy such as I had not known for a long time flooded my soul immediately.

She felt affirmed in her decision by her family’s positive reaction:

In two weeks I went home for my Christmas vacation. It was as hard for me to tell my parents and sisters about my decision as it had been easy to tell my friend in school. Finally I told them all about the Lord’s leading and my surrender. All were quiet for a few minutes, then mother said, ‘I’m not surprised, Anna. In fact I’ve been watching you for a long time and I’ve been expecting this. Before you were born I gave you to the Lord to be a missionary if He could use you, and He took me at my word.’ All of us were in tears, and I at once steeped (sic) out of the house and cried to the Lord, ‘Why was I so stubborn. Why did I wait so long to yield?’ On the evening of the 4th I had been sure, but now I became doubly sure that the Lord indeed wants me to be a missionary.19

Occasionally, applicants provided glimpses of what exactly made accepting the call difficult for them. Besides a general sense of personal inadequacy, what is evident is their fear of not being able to cope with the challenges of missionary life, because of their fearful personal disposition, and the daunting prospects of having to leave their familiar surroundings:

It troubled me at first, for I was a timid child and the thought of going so far away frightened me. I used even to pray that the Lord would let me serve Him on this side of the water, (…).20

Missionary 26 struggled with the idea of giving up a much loved job:

After graduation I went into general duty nursing and later into surgery. I feel that the Lord definitely prepared me for future service through these years of practical experience. I found it very hard to leave my nursing duties, which I had learned to love, and take up Bible Institute studies.21

Missionary 7 described having to sacrifice a potential marriage to her sense of call as a serious challenge:

I could have got married but I didn’t find someone that was committed to being a missionary, so I didn’t do it. And that was a little of a major decision when I decided to go to Bible school. The guy that I was really interested in, madly in love with when I was seventeen, he was going to be a farmer which I respect and they probably helped support me.

A further hurdle to yielding to the sense of call was that, in contrast with more recent practices, the earlier missionaries were expected to make the missionary call a lifetime vocation. This is reflected in the following question included on an application form:

Do you propose to enter Foreign Mission work for life, if the Lord so wills?22

The women also had to overcome their difficulty in accepting the call to go ‘any­where.’ Many describe arriving at a point of accepting this call to go ‘anywhere’ as a critical turning point, which they most often refer to as reaching a point of ‘yielding.’ Applicant Missionary 24 expressed her eventual obedience response, no longer limited by geography, with the words of Isaiah’s classic biblical response to the divine call, ‘Here am I, send me:’23

When I was 14 years of age, I said to the Lord, ‘Here am I, send me.’ Since that time I have felt that possibly the Lord would want me in a foreign field. As I became older, I became more convinced that the Lord wanted me in foreign mission service.24

Missionary 26 recounted how it took a traumatic event in her life eventually to bring her to this point of yielding. Although she had been willing ‘to serve the Lord’ before, her resistance revolved around her unwillingness to go ‘anywhere,’ which eventually was replaced by an acceptance to go ‘where-ever:’

As stated (…) my interests were directed to Africa while attending tabor college (sic). It did not enter my mind that the Lord would have me in missionary service. I did want to serve the Lord but was not willing to go any where (sic) for Him. While in my second year in nurses training (1941) the Lord spared my life in a car accident. My aunt who was in full time service for her master was killed; this was too much for me, to think that I who did nothing for Him was spared, and one who was so faithful in His service was taken with no one to take her place. The Lord spoke to me through Paul in Romans 12:1,2. I yielded my life to him for full time Christian service where-ever He could use me.25

The archival sources, particularly the application forms, make proportionally more mention of the women’s initial reluctance to ‘yield’ to the call than do the oral ones. One possible explanation for this is that, besides the more stringent conditions, inter alia the call as a lifetime commitment, the difficulties of long distance travel, greater health risks, to mention just a few, at the time of their application the internal struggles were still vivid in their minds. For the interviewees, with their predominantly retrospective view, these had lost much of their immediate importance.26 These struggles do, however, show that no matter how strongly the call to follow, or leave, formed part of the women’s faith culture, their own leaving for an uncertain future did not lose its painfulness, especially for the older generation missionaries.


For the younger mission generation, their sense of call often developed along differ­ent lines. Firstly, some of them were reluctant to speak about a personal, specific mission call altogether. One younger interviewee, Missionary 1, who had grown up in a ‘tradi­tion­al’ Mennonite home, did not have a dramatic sense of call in the traditional mission­ary sense. Instead she entered missionary service on the basis of her life motto:

… you go where God leads you.

She had grown up in a ‘traditional’ Mennonite home, and integrated her short-term mission assignment into the overall history of journeying of the Old Testament people of God and of her Mennonite ancestors:

I mean (the call to missions) wasn’t like it dawned on me or anything. It was just everywhere, and that was maybe like Hebrews says, Abraham didn’t have a land that was his own, he was a wanderer, and he went where God chose and told him to go. And I think that our whole back­ground, our ancestors weren’t missionaries, they were wanderers, too. There is no land that is their own. You go where God leads you.

Her testimony ties in with that of other younger missionaries who, instead of refer­ring to a personal traditional missionary call, preferred to speak of their sense of call to service, or to discipleship, which could be lived out anywhere, including in a foreign mission setting.

Tools of Discernment


Those especially with a traditional missionary call looked for signs of confirmation that authenticated their stirrings of a sense of call. Many viewed an ensuing sense of joy and peace as a significant indicator that they were within the Lord’s will, after they had finally overcome their inner resistance. This is illustrated by the following archival testimony:

I finally surrendered to the Lord’s will for my life (…). A peace and joy such as I had not known for a long time flooded my soul immediately.27

Occasionally, prospective missionaries were wary of being over-eager to enter mis­sions. One such candidate eventually based her assurance of being within the Lord’s will on the ceasing of her inner restlessness once she had committed herself to mission work:

I was thinking a great deal about the problem of my life work, for I didn’t intend to teach for very many years. The words of a minister at Conference made me ponder even more. He said that some people miss their calling and try to preach when they were called to plow. He also said that one ought not try to preach if he can be happy in any other kind of work. I thought that would apply to a missionary as well. So I tried to be happy in my work as a teacher, but somehow I could not be satisfied with it.

(…) Although I believe that a public school teacher has a real opportunity to work for Christ, my heart is still restless to be in full time service for Him. Now I am sending this application, and though I am not worthy of such a high appointment I know that Christ is able to help me do whatever he would have me to do.28

A further popular discernment tool was the open and closed door method. The women often decided to proceed with their missionary plans, praying that God would ‘close doors’ if they should have misunderstood his will. The following is an oral illus­tra­tion of how Missionary 11 and her husband applied this particular discernment method:

The call wasn’t like the big handwriting on the wall. It was more a steady growing earnest conviction that we should go and offer ourselves to missions overseas. And we said, ‘Well, there are open doors, and there are closed doors.’ We didn’t have any big dramatic call from God. But something had been working in me I think from little girlhood up. And we decided if there were health problems, then the door would be closed. You always had to take a physical exam. So we did that and we were healthy, and we began conversing with the executive secretary of Congo Inland Mission, which is now ‘Africa Inter Mennonite Mission.’ And he worked with us, and by the time (my husband) had finished seminary, we were preparing to go to Africa as full time and career missionaries. But I’m sure that this had to be the leading of the Lord. For (my husband) in central Illinois, and his small town there, and me on the farm, meeting at Taylor University, at this Christian university, and feeling that we wanted to give our lives together to missions. I think the hand of the Lord was on me way back as a little girl on the farm guiding me, and we wound up in Africa!

Both methods, using feelings and special signs as tools of discernment, have their theological roots outside of Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition. They are more typical of the fundamentalist-revivalist custom, and alien to original Anabaptism / Mennonitism, which typically used more sober tools such as reading the word of God, and practical obedience. In addition, they represent an individualistic approach to the discernment process with a distinct lack of reference to the community in the procedure. This individualistic appro­ach, too, is suggestive more of the fundamentalist/revivalist tradition than of distinctive Anabaptist / Mennonite practices, where the body of Christ habitually plays an important part in decision-making.


Some dangers inherent in such an individualistic discernment process were raised in a pastoral context by Missionary 6, who at one point had been in charge of the spiritual/ emotional well-being of women missionaries:

M.S.: You suggested that it might be helpful (…) if other people con­firmed the call?
Missionary 6: Yeah right! I think that is part of our Mennonite heritage, too, the community of believers, the affirmation of others. And some of the people that have had the biggest struggles in missions, I think, were those who came without much previous experience, and without a lot of affirmation from others that this is what they should do.

In practice, this communal aspect of the discernment process was partly taken over by the mission board who, even though they asked for testimonials from the candidates’ home churches, clearly were at a disadvantage with regard to their intimate knowledge of the candidates, compared with local congregations.


The early mission board’s assessment followed some rudimentary procedures, which largely depended on the spiritual discernment of lay board members, constituted into a ‘Candidate Committee.’ This is evident from the following verbatim letter dating from the 1950s, written by a past secretary of the GC Mission Board, to Missionary 19 and her husband. It lists, inter alia, some spiritual and practical indicators which the board used in its attempt to discern a sense of call. These included a record of the candidate’s major faith experiences, their theological beliefs, their state of health, character references—which usually included an assessment by the applicant’s minister—and where possible a personal interview with the candidate:

Dear Brother and Sister (…):
Your letter of May 9 came last night. It is true I did not explain the pro­cedure of the Board of Missions with respect to how missionaries are called. I took too much for granted. The steps are as follows:
1. An expression by writing or orally of a person who feels the call of the Lord to become a missionary. This expression is made to our office where the name then is registered, and a form called ‘Preliminary Information Blank’ is then sent to the person. If the person is already advanced in preparation, and a field is definitely open, then
2. Forms on Christian Experience and theological views are sent; with two forms on physical health; and requests for references.
3. The reference forms, usually three, are then sent to those suggest­ed by the candidate, or also to others. When all of 1,2, and 3 are filled in and back in our office, then
4. All material is sent to the Candidate Committee which is a com­mittee of four within the Board. These four carefully examine all these filled out forms and the statements made by the candidate,
5. If at all possible, the candidate is called in person before the Candi­date Committee. (As I say, if at all possible, because sometimes this calls for so much traveling that it seems not advisable, and the Candidate Committee comes to a recommendation without actually having an interview with the candidate.)
6. The Candidate Committee then makes its recommendation to the whole Board if a Board meeting is near; or to the Executive Committee of the Board. (The whole Board meets once a year. The Executive Com­mittee four times a year.) The next Executive Committee meeting is to be in Chicago, June 24. The next whole Board meeting may this year be in Oregon at Conference; but surely in December at annual Council of Board meeting.
7. The whole Board or the executive Committee has then the authority to place the missionary candidate where they see the finger of God pointing. There have been disappointments in this, because some candidates feel they should go to that or that field, and the Noard (sic) says ‘There is the greatest need.’ Those candidates who have trusted the Board have to my knowledge later acknowledged that the Board expressed the will of God.29

Even in the light of these carefully laid out steps by the mission board, Missionary 6—the missionary counselor mentioned previously—advocated caution, and observed that, on occasions, the board might be misled by the applicant’s strong sense of call:

I would say it is important to have a sense of call. However, there have been times in our broader experience working with missionaries, where sometimes people will come, and they say, ‘The Lord has called me, I have a clear cut call,’ and yet they don’t work out. (…) Because they have this ‘call,’ the mission board goes along and sends them there. It doesn’t always work out.

Two past mission secretaries, each very experienced in screening prospective mission­aries, took differing approaches to this task. One, a former GC Mission secretary, emphasized primarily the importance of formal education. He wrote to a prospective candidate:

Seminary training is not a hard and fast prerequisite for a candidate to be accepted, but our Board has found through the years, and experienced missionaries heartily agree to that, viz. that no preparation is too good for the Lord’s cause. One of the outstanding examples of this is your brother (…). He took the full four years graduate course in Los Angeles Bible School, which gave him practically a B.A. in theology. Then he went to the University and claimed no bible credit, but took a full four years course in liberal arts. Now, in a word, (your brother) is a well prepared missionary.30

This approach differs fundamentally from that of the early Anabaptists, who relied more on pneumatic empowerment, faith, and the word, than on formal education—which in fact they viewed with suspicion. In contrast, Jim Bertsche, a recently retired AIMM secretary, with extensive experience in the screening of applicants, primarily relied on his spiritual intuition for discernment. Among other things, he tried to distinguish mere enthusiasm from an authentic sense of call. In his view, enthusiasm was a humanly gene­rated eagerness that focused predominantly on often unrealistically positive expectations of a future missionary life:31

The idea of going overseas and living in a different culture, there are some people that appeals to. How exciting it would be to live in Africa, think of it! All the zebras, and the giraffes, and the seven foot dancers, and the water and all these exotic things, and the waterfalls, and the game parks, (…) and tropical food, and all the rest of it. It’s easy, if they are people who have a kind of adventurous spirit, and enjoy travel, and are curious to see how other people live. The idea of mission service, just on the surface of it, can have a certain appeal.

He juxtaposed such humanly generated enthusiasm with a true sense of call, which he defined as the human response to a divine summons:

Being curious about another culture, and being interested in travel, that’s one thing. A sense of call has to do with a deep inner conviction that grows over time, that God Himself nurtures, and being brought to a place where you just have this inner certainty, that if it’s compared with all the other options that might be open, this is the one, and to volunteer for mission service afterwards. It’s answering an inner conviction that can almost become an inner compulsion: This is God’s leading in my life, and is something I have to respond to.

Missionary 6, the senior missionary, expressed similarly that a true sense of calling is characterized by ‘a quiet inner commitment’ rather than by great exuberance:

I think a sense of call is important, but it has to be more of a quiet inner commitment. Not this: I had this vision and God called me to this par­ticular place, and I have to go there, even though nobody else really feels the person is gifted to go there.

Jim Bertsche observed that, on the mission field, the true call is further characterized by perseverance in the face of adversity:

And when this (true calling) is the case, then when the adventure wears thin, when there are jiggers under your toenails, and mosquitoes are biting, the language comes hard, there is this rock, a certainty that you are where you ought to be, so get on with it.

During the screening process, he attempted to discern a candidate’s ‘genuineness,’ which manifested itself rather in the integrity of the candidate’s day to day relationship with the caller than by their focus on the call itself; to see

if there was a genuineness that came through, and the excitement not so much about going overseas as about walking with the Lord.

In order to prevent people from entering missionary service on the mere strength of their enthusiasm, the board tried to ensure that the candidates had more realistic expect­a­tions of life on the mission field:

At some point we would try and sketch for them the reality of overseas service, and point out that living in the bush, there is isolation, and there are not utilities, and there are not the amenities, there is not the convenience store around the corner, and there you’ll have to make do with what you have. (…) Sometimes I think we may have almost overdrawn the negative sides and the difficulties, because we felt a dose of reality was better at the home end than if they are over there. We also tried to steer them to any missionaries that were on furlough. We had them share, speaking openly about their experience.

While many of these components of the development and discernment of the call applied to men and women alike, there were also some female-specific aspects connected to the issue.

Gender and Discernment


It was official mission policy that every woman should have her own personal sense of call. However, oral evidence suggests that, in reality, this was not always the case. Rather they fell broadly into three categories described in this chapter under ‘A Sense of Call—Yes or No?’

There were the majority, who did witness to having had their own personal sense of call.

There were those who were vague about their own sense of call, but were able to positively integrate themselves by proxy into their hus­bands’ sense of call. And

There were those who followed their husband’s call against strong internal resistance, which they were never able to overcome.

Overall, the archival and oral evidence indicates that couple dynamics often played a critical role in the development of their sense of call. As illustrated before, some women were prepared to forego marriage, if a potential partner did not have a call to missions. There is no evidence that the male partner was ever prepared to follow the female part­ner’s sense of call to mission, without having one himself. In many cases, the decision to enter missionary service developed jointly, with both partners witnessing to a personal sense of call. However, even in such cases a potential marriage was sometimes jeopar­d­ized if the couple could not agree on the specifics of that call. Missionary 9, for example, told of such a disagreement between her and her potential marriage partner:

He stopped on the road and he asked me if I would marry him. And he thought I would say yes right away, and I didn’t! And so I said to him—and I thought he would say yes and he didn’t—‘Will you go with me to India’? And he didn’t say yes. He looked at me and said, ‘Will you go with me to Africa’? So we decided there is no geography with God. And the Lord knows that we are committed to foreign service.

In this case, both had equally strong but divergent convictions concerning the geo­graphical particulars, but succeeded in reaching consensus, where neither dominated the other. They did this by re-focusing from the specifics to the general nature of their sense of call. Another woman, Missionary 5, substituted her lack of a personal sense of call to foreign missions with her more general sense of call to nursing, which could be con­structively incorporated into her husband’s strong and specific sense of call to missionary service in Africa:

I started going with my husband when we were seniors in high school. And he had a strong sense of call to Africa. I didn’t have a strong sense of call, but I had a sense of wanting to do something with—I trained to be a nurse. So I had a strong sense of wanting to do something in nursing. And so my call was not a thunderbolt kind of a thing. It was that we were going to get married, and yes, we would probably be going to Africa, that’s where he felt a strong sense of call. I never felt a strong sense of call, but in studying, understanding what was going on in Africa, I felt a sense of call to work in maternal and child health.

Although this woman did not have a personal sense of call to foreign missions as such, she would probably have interpreted her missionary activities as an integral part of her primary call to service, and to discipleship.


Missionary 18 had a similar general ‘feeling of call and commitment,’ which although not constituting a clear call to missions, included ‘definitely considering mission work.’ This seemed to enable her to adapt to her husband’s more specific sense of call to foreign missions in Africa:

I was definitely considering mission work. But my husband was com­mit­ted to missions. At that time the Mennonites had a seminary in Chicago. My father was associated with that as well as being a pastor. And so my husband was a student there. And that’s how we met. And he was definitely committed to the Congo, and because he was a Canadian he had French. And so he definitely felt a call to the Congo, and that agreed with my feeling of call and commitment. And so we went to Congo.

Missionary 21 submitted to her husband’s sense of call on the strength of the motto of the biblical character Ruth: ‘Where you go I will go.’ She seemed to succeed in apply­ing this approach repeatedly without suffering from any long-lasting feelings of resistance and resentment:

M.S.: Do you feel (God) led you to Africa, too?
Misionary 21: I’m sure that (my husband) would feel much more that he was led to Africa than I would. But yeah you can’t always say, ‘Yes, I was led! Africa was the place I wanted!’—and there are some people that do feel like that!
M.S.: But not everybody does.
Missionary 21: No! I would go, ‘Where thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest I will lodge.’ And the thing that’s always been, we have always had really good experiences. So whereever God has led (my husband) my experience was good too.

Missionary 15 also did not have a personal sense of call to foreign missions, particu­larly not to Africa:

M.S.: Did you ever feel you had a call from God to go into missions?
Missionary 15: Not necessarily, not to Africa! I mean that wasn’t my thing really!

Unlike the previous women, she did not constructively integrate her husband’s sense of call into her own situation. This resulted in seriously negative consequences for her mission experience.


Missionary 14, who never fully came to terms with missionary life as a woman who had followed her husband’s calling, spoke almost exclusively about her husband’s sense of call when asked about her own:

‘Africa Inter Mennonite Mission.’ (…) found out that (my husband) had this training (in administration), and the doctors in Zaire in the Congo were so tired of doctoring all day long, and doing all the paper work. They needed an administrator. And so they contacted (my husband) and we interviewed for that and it was (my husband’s) idea that we go! I drug my feet for a while, and finally I said that if that’s where he wants to go that’s where I will go, too.

Her reluctance to speak about the topic in personal terms might be an indication that, even retrospectively, she had not yet been able to successfully process the trauma attached to it.

Ambiguities of the Sense of Call


Especially in the long term, the effects of the sense of call are not as clear-cut as I had expected when I set out on my investigation. Many women felt sustained by their sense of call. Statements like the following, by Missionary 33 and Missionary 2, were frequent­ly encountered:

I’m happy to be in Congo and have a real peace and joy in being in the land of His choice for me.32 (Having a sense of call) was very import­ant!

Yet the call did not always act as a support factor. The question therefore arises: What were some of the factors that could turn the sense of call into a burden? Three important aspects that strongly influenced its role as a burden or blessing are

The women’s adult view of the caller,

The content the women assigned to the call, and

The way they viewed themselves.

Their pre-mission adult views of the caller are documented on their application forms and application blanks.


The Doctrinal Caller


Doctrinally, the remote God of their youth remained just that—remote. Missionary 26’s answer, found on an application form by the Evangelical Mennonite Brethren Mission Board that had found its way into the GC archives, dealt with the subject directly. She described God the Father in the mainly remote terms of his personal attributes, without any reference to a personal involvement with humankind:

I believe in One God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (ll Cor. 13, 14). God possesses the attributes of personality, and therefore is a Person. He is Omniscience (1John 3:20), Omni­potence (Job 42:2), Omnipresence (Psa. 139: 7-12), and eternal (Rev 1:8)33

The same candidate, in her statement on the trinity, describes God the Father as the invisible—that is, remote—God, who correlates with the world through Christ and the Holy Spirit:

I believe in One God, eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:14, 20). The Father is all the fulness (sic) of the Godhead invisible (John 1:18).

The Son is all the fulness (sic) of Godhead manifested (John 1:14-18). The Spirit is all the fulness (sic) of the Godhead acting immediately upon the creature (1 Cor. 2:9,10).34

Another candidate notes that, besides dealing with humankind through Christ and through the Holy Spirit, God the Father reveals himself through Scripture:

I believe that God reveals himself through the Bible ( …) The Bible also reveals God’s will for man.35

She then continued by describing God’s redemptive purpose mediated through Christ:

Thru man’s sin, man fell, but thru the grace of God which came thru the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, man is restored to God’s favor. (…) The New Birth is that miracle of transformation whereby man is brot (sic) into the Kingdom of God. It is God’s part in salvation; our part is the acceptance of Christ as our personal Savior.36

While divine grace is stressed in the statements, other divine aspects such as his love, compassion, and mercy are largely absent from the women’s relatively austere and distant doctrinal concept of God. It has to be kept in mind, though, that the doctrinal state­ments were probably learnt by most in parrot fashion, and many of the missing attributes such as love, compassion, etc., are traditionally ascribed predominantly to God the Son. This makes the women’s view of Christ all the more important.

Christ—Savior and Role Model


As was to be expected, based both on the women’s early theological formation, and on the theological stance of the mission agencies, a large majority of applicants placed their primary doctrinal Christological emphasis almost exclusively on the salvific role of Christ:

Jesus Christ is the only Savior and Redeemer. “For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12.)

He has redeemed us, not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with His precious blood as of a lamb without blemish or without spot. “Without shedding of blood is no remission of sin” Heb.9:22. We cannot merit salvation through a good moral life, good works, or church membership. It is a gift of God received by faith in the finished work of Christ.37

I believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin, and is truly God and truly Man (Matt, 1:18). He was first and foremost the world’s Savior and Redeemer—Christ died for our sins (1Cor. 15:1).38

From a pastoral perspective, this traditional Protestant view of the divine caller, and its emphasis on redemption as the sole work of the crucified Christ—without linking it to any form of human effort beyond receiving it as the free gift of grace—represents a strong potential support factor, insofar as it opens the door for releasing them of the burden of proving their worthiness, and of the burden of lasting feelings of guilt in the face of failure. This only applies, however, if the missionaries personally grasp this significance of divine grace for themselves.


However, their view of Christ is also of some pastoral concern, insofar as the women doctrinally portrayed Christ mainly as the triumphant Christ who had overcome death and who in turn saves the believers from eternal condemnation. Absent from their des­crip­tion is a mention of the suffering Christ. Such a triumphalist view is one-sided, and therefore unrealistic, in the sense that it neglects the painful aspects of the practical suffering entailed in Christ’s ministry on earth, and by implication the painful aspects of suffering as part of the human experience. It does not prepare the future missionaries for personal and missionary failure, and the accompanying feelings of inadequacy and guilt.


While the fundamentalist-revivalist Christology clearly dominated the doctrinal answers, Christ was also described in traditional Anabaptist/Mennonite Christological terms.39 One G.C. statement of faith, which the applicants needed to sign, contained the following Anabaptist/Mennonite Christological elements:

We believe that Christ lived and taught the way of life as recorded in the Scriptures which is God’s plan for individuals and the race, and that it becomes disciples of Christ to live in this way, thus manifesting in their personal and social life and relationships the love and holiness of God.40

The following Christological statement by an applicant similarly contains typical functional Anabaptist Christological characteristics of Christ as the perfect role model, which it combines with what the applicant saw as Christ’s primary role, namely that as Lord and Savior:

I believe that God the Father sent His son, Jesus, into this world to save men. Christ is an example of a perfect life, but He is more, He is also the perfect redeemer. God has a great love for man and this love moved Him to send His Son to this earth, Christ was willing to give Himself for the atonement of all. Now we may receive eternal salvation through Him.41

The following section moves from the women’s doctrinal views to their personal, experiential view of Christ.


He Supplies All My Needs


The applicants’ statements on what Christ meant to them personally again reflected an emphasis on his role as their Savior and Lord. Many then further expressed their desire to completely subject their lives to his lordship. The following statement is typical:

He is my personal Savior and Master of my life.42

Depending on their interpretation of their acceptance of Christ as their personal sav­ior, it has the potential to act as blessing or as burden. The blessing would be experi­enc­ing his salvation as an ongoing offer they continually claimed for their human weakness. The burden would be viewing it as a single event on which they would have to build in their own perfection and strength. Similarly, their acceptance of Christ’s lordship implies that, as missionaries, they will attempt to submit to the caller rather than to follow their own inclinations. This potentially anchors their missionary calling in one that is bigger than them. However, the importance of Christ’s lordship could turn into a burden if the missionaries should focus on Christ’s commands as their standards, to such a degree that they cease to feel and to acknowledge their human inability to attain them. This is why, in the following section, we investigate some of the women’s pre-mission thinking on Christ’s personal role in their weakness.


Many applicants, particularly of the older generation, ruefully contrast God’s immut­able and undeserved faithfulness with their own unworthiness:

It has always been a marvel to me how patient + loving he is toward me as the least of 1.43 (…) and if I have failed Him, He has never failed me.44

They had perceived Christ’s faithfulness in their pre-mission lives through his prov­is­ion for all their spiritual, emotional and physical needs. As a result, one applicant described him, contrary to the doctrinal statements, in intimate terms:

(He is) my dearest friend and guide in my work or whatever I do. He strengthens, gives wisdom and supplies my daily needs.45

Most of the earlier applicants were convinced that, although they themselves were unworthy and weak, through Christ they would be able to overcome any adversity—as was the case with the following candidate:

He is my all sufficient center of life abundant, and in Him I live and move and by Him will Triumph.46

This view of Christ the caller, and of their relationship with him, encouraged especially the earlier applicants to bravely, if somewhat naïvely, face potential missionary difficulties.47 This is illustrated by the following three replies to the question: ‘How do you regard hardship, suffering and the danger as connected with the missionary life?’48

They are to be expected in a missionary’s life and endured by the grace of God.49

I know there are hardships, suffering and danger in a missionary’s life. If the Lord sends us forth, He will meet the need. We are His, in His vineyard, serving Him and He will keep and give grace to bear hardships and suffering and shelter in time of danger. I realize that a missionary must trust the Lord completely and at all times.50

Christ has promised grace for every need and His presence with us wher­ever we may be, so we need not fear for those things. He gave His all for us; we dare not do less for Him. (…)51

These statements of trust in a caller who supplies all their needs were based on the relatively limited experience of the women’s pre-mission lives. From these experiences, they extrapolated for the future an expectation that, through God, they would be able to cope with any potential mission-related adversity. These statements, although noble, lack a certain realism in their unqualified high expectations of both the divine and the human agents in missions.


While the women’s view of Christ is expressed both in doctrinal and personal form, the Holy Spirit is only described doctrinally, indicating that the mission agencies, and probably the applicants themselves, did not assign great importance to the personal expe­riential aspect of the Holy Spirit.


Work of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is viewed by the applicants as the member of the trinity who interacts most directly with the world, both Christian and non-Christian, through a dual ministry. Missionary 26 wrote on her application form:

I believe that the Holy Spirit is a person, is co-equal with God in all His attributes, and is sent by the Lord Jesus Christ from the Father, to convict the world of sin.52

In addition, his ministry is also to grow and equip Christians for service, and to enable them to overcome sin:

… to regenerate, indwell, guide, and teach the believer and to empower him to live in victory over sin.53

This dual ministry is similarly described in the statements by the following mission­ary:

In relation to humanity as a whole, the Holy Spirit reproves the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement Jn. 16:8-11.54

In relation to the believer, the Holy Spirit regenerates, indwells, seals, infills (sic), and empowers for service. The Holy Spirit is the guide of the believer’s life55

In theory, this dual ministry of the Holy Spirit is of great importance to the mission­ary call. It emphasizes the divine as opposed to the human act in salvation, in bringing the believer to maturity and in enabling for service. This implies, firstly, that the primary source of the missionary’s effectiveness in her service is not human effort, perseverance, competency, or sacrifice. Secondly, salvation, and the spiritual growth of those to whom they minister, are equally at their core a divine and not a human work, since it is the Holy Spirit and not the missionary who ‘convicts the world of sin,’ and ‘regenerates the believer.’ This doctrinal basis, at least theoretically, shifts the burden of achieving ‘mission­ary success,’ from the missionary to the divine—because it holds that, at its core, spiritual life can neither be humanly generated nor humanly developed and sustained. As will be shown later, the women’s practical application of this doctrinal ‘theory’—or the failure to do so—becomes one of the critical factors which determines whether their sense of call acts as either a support or as an inhuman burden.


The Mandate


In keeping with the mission-historic framework we discussed in Chapter One, the earlier generation of missionaries understood their personal mandate as obedience to their Lord and his divine will in general, and to the Great Commission in particular.56 Obedience to the Great Commission was frequently quoted as their motive on their personalized Prayer Cards:

The Congo Calls

Jesus says ‘Go Ye’

Therefore

We must go Jn.9:457

The statements about the prospective missionaries’ purpose illustrate this point further. They also imply the general air of assurance and Sendungsbewusstsein that was rooted in their view of themselves as having been entrusted with being executors of the Missio Dei. In addition, some also wanted to share with others their own wonderful experi­ence:

Jesus said, ‘Go ye ... and teach all nations.’ By the grace of God I have heard the good news of salvation. I have received the Light and I am debtor to these who live in darkness—.58

From the Great Commission, many missionaries and mission agencies deducted that saving souls was largely their personal responsibility. The following questions found on a GC application form explicitly refer to the human ‘effort’ of saving souls as the main task of the applicants on the mission field:

Q: Do you believe that personal effort to lead souls to Christ is the paramount duty of every missionary?
Missionary 40: Yes, I believe it is.
Q: Do you propose to make such effort the chief feature of your missionary career no matter what other duties may be assigned to you?
Missionary 40: Yes.59

Missionary 23 listed to ‘save souls’60 as one of her motives for applying for foreign missionary service:

I believe it’s God’s will for my life, my desire to save souls and love for foreign peoples.61

As alluded to before, such a view poses a temptation for the women to set them­selves up the in their human frailty for the Herculean task of performing what are essen­tially divine acts, for which no amount of human effort would ever be adequate. We shall later refer to this phenomenon as the revivalist-fundamentalist burden. In contrast, Mission­ary 41 showed in a letter, written on furlough, a heightened understanding of missionary work as divine work:

I have been so deeply aware of the need for God to work through us and in us. We go back with all of these educational benefits and the very best that the system can provide in preparation. Yet if God does not work through us by His Spirit, reaching out to others through us, then these degrees and honors will be as ‘tinkling cymbals.’ We feel a deep need of His over-Lordship and enabling power.62

This approach focuses on the sender rather than the call, and is more likely to safe­guard against a missionary motivation which reduces missions largely to an anthropo­centric endeavor, or to works. We find a similar sounding, yet apparently differently motivated mandate in the statement by Missionary 2, who shared the divine salvific concern for the world:

At the time I dedicated my life to the Lord, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart concerning missionary service in Africa. This call became clearer in future years. In Bible school, through reports received directly from Africa, the burden for those benighted souls became great63

This mandate seems to be motivated by a genuine concern rather than by a messi­anic drive, and sounds therefore more ‘relaxed,’ depending however on who ultimately carries ‘the burden for those benighted souls.’


The women’s Sendungsbewusstsein is occasionally evident in their reports of mission­ary successes measured in terms of how many people had responded to the call of the Gospel, or how many tracts had been printed and handed out, etc. This has the potential to put the individual missionary, and entire mission stations, under heavy pressure. This need of having to produce tangible results is absent from the following two statements—the first one by an interviewee, who elaborated retrospectively on her sense of call, and the second by an experienced missionary at the beginning of a new assignment. Both women are primarily concerned with the act of witnessing and with practically demon­strating God’s love. These intentions are stated without direct reference to results:

My attention was drawn to share this message in a foreign country in view of fewer possibilities available for people to hear in these count­ries.64

We feel that God is leading us and that you will be praying for us as you have been doing this year. With this assurance we go with joy and anticipation. We will be working in the development of the agricultural program of the ‘Congo Inland Mission.’ We are going to Congo to live natural Christian lives, to face problems, and with God’s help to try and solve them; to demonstrate the love of Christ through daily living.65

These statements reflect a sowing rather than a producing mentality, and have there­fore a certain degree of restfulness about them.


Overall, this older generation of missionaries indicated a high sense of responsibility and of duty, particularly towards their call and the caller. Their tasks were usually varied and many. As the policy of CIM/AIMM throughout was to prioritize evangelism and church planting, they had to try to combine this role with their professional activities—such as nursing, teaching, etc., and often with their roles as wives and mothers. Accord­ing to their application forms, many women anticipated making their primary concern the practising of their professions. This they saw as an important means to fulfil their spirit­ual mandate:66

I hope, by means of medicine + God’s word, to minister to the Souls + Bodies of those with whom I work—that they may be saved from sin, to an abundant Life in Christ.67

It is my desire, first of all, to tell those who have never heard, about the Lord, so that they may learn to know the Lord Jesus Christ. This I would like to do through the medium of Nursing. Then, I would like to teach them how to prevent illness, and how to alleviate suffering after it has started in their bodies.68

Q: Kind of missionary service:
A: Evangelistic, Educational
Q: Why?
A: Because I feel that is what He has been preparing me for69

In this respect, the following applicant was an exception in the way she weighted the priorities of her mandate by positioning her family commitments above ‘official’ mission work:

Q: What type of work do you wish to do?
A: House wife + mother – religious Ed. Possibly music70

Over time, clearly identifiable shifts occurred in the missionaries’ perception of their mandate. One such change was that the traditional missionary pursuits of evangelism and church planting, although still the official focus of AIMM, began to recede on the women’s list of priorities. In line with Lesslie Newbigin’s analysis, discussed in Chapter One, the traditional missionary mandate increasingly included a more humanitarian focus. Not only was this change in keeping with overall trends of the Western churches’ understanding of missions, but it also opened the doors for the Mennonite female missionaries to recover aspects of the traditional Anabaptist/Mennonite concept of dis­cipleship and servanthood, which emphasize practical Christian witness rather than an overtly evangelistic approach. Missionary 5, a newly retired interviewee in her early six­ties, commented:

After the Second World War, I think in our Mennonite church there was a strong emphasis on development.

The same interviewee, who had been brought up in a traditional Mennonite environ­ment, described her understanding of her missionary mandate, which she felt had set her apart form many of her contemporaries. Her interpretation of meaningful mission work was primarily the practical application of her faith commitment:

I would say my call was very much a combination of my Christian faith being put to some practical use.

She also represented an emerging new missionary generation that openly added the satisfaction of self-actualization, and using one’s personal gifting, to their list of motiva­tions for missionary service:

Somehow working in nursing, maternal and child health was what I enjoyed. I liked doing it. I had a lot of fun doing it. And basically I have always enjoyed what I was doing a lot. And so I guess for me a sense of call also means it’s something you are attracted to, it’s something that’s rooted in your faith, and it’s something that is a need. It needs to be that.

Missionary 8 described the new aspects of the missionary call which emphasized influencing others through leading an exemplary life, rather than overt evangelism, in the following words:

If one is to teach and draw people to Christ, then living discipleship is very important in every aspect of life. A good example is so important for influencing others.71

This view of the call ties in with the previously mentioned mission statement that that GC missionaries had to sign:

We believe that Christ lived and taught the way of life as recorded in the Scriptures which is God’s plan for individuals and the race, and that it becomes disciples of Christ to live in this way, thus manifesting in their personal and social life and relationships the love and holiness of God.72

In this mission paradigm, being a good disciple, being a good Mennonite, is essential for successful mission work. Such a view of the call places a potentially heavy Mennonite burden73 on the missionary, insofar as it makes missionary behavior the basis for mission­ary success. Tied in with this view is the fact that the goal of such behavior is to humanly ‘persuade’ rather than rely on divine intervention.


The new elements of the missionary call were incorporated by Missionary 4, in her early forties, and by her husband. They contained a different set of Anabaptist/Menno­nite elements, insofar as it partly grew out of their critique of materialistic and imperi­alistic aspects of North American culture, and of the way that missions had been done during the colonial era:74

(My husband) had strong convictions about America in terms of their role in the Vietnam War. (…) And of course we were negative about America’s role overseas in general, their foreign policy, but even more upset in terms of the multi-nationals and probably the arrogance of North America. (…) We also did a lot of critique in our training, (…) that I thought we were awfully negative in the ways missions had been done in the colonial era as well. And so we went wanting to break that cycle of colonialism in attitudes and everything, and we saw America as still doing that in a neo-colonialist way.

Missionary 1, in her early forties, had grown up in a traditional Mennonite environ­ment, and also did not have a traditional sense of call to missions as such. She agreed with the previous interviewee, however, that her life in North America did not express her desire to meaningfully follow the divine call to discipleship and to counter-cultural living. In addition, her mandate was partly guided by her gifting:

Missionary 1: It was when I was working at a printing press that my brother, who was overseas in Africa, asked me if I would be interested in coming to Africa. (…)
M.S. When he asked you, how did you feel?
Missionary 1: I enjoyed my work, but I had been there for over six years, so I was ready for something different. I’m not sure if I was consciously praying to God, but I think I was unconsciously praying to God, ‘What would you like for me to do now?’ Because I also remember being at the printing press, I was doing the financial books, I was doing payrolls, I was paying everybody, and to me it felt like a very, very self-centered and a very consumerist life. It was those things that were not valued by my parents in my home! Money and prestige and those kind of things—they were not valued in my home. And so here I was doing all of these things. I just felt very self-centered and that didn’t feel right to me in that way. And so I think I was praying, ‘God, what would you have me do with the gifts that I have?’ And so when my brother asked me, it felt to me like a door was opened. I didn’t need to pray or think about that very often, it felt very right to me to do that.

She described her understanding of the short-term mission service she was embark­ing on in the classic Mennonite term of service:

Missionary work for me means more Bible translation or Bible teaching or specifically religious work whatever that might be, evangelism or whatever. And service means more going (…) to help out—how I could perhaps live a life that Jesus would want, but not to specifically do church related kind of work.

Missionary 4 illustrated that, contained in the new sense of call, there was often an explicit appreciation of African culture, and the notion that it was easier to live a true Mennonite life in that setting:

We arrived in Africa definitely looking for a different culture than we had left. And we wanted to totally embrace a healthy way of living in a totality. As much as we wanted to make a contribution in the religious or spiritual realm as evangelists, we wanted to take in from that culture a better way of living than what we saw in North America!

Such an attitude encouraged a strong motivation to integrate into the local culture. This is evident from Missionary 5’s statement:

We’ve tried hard to learn some of the many lessons necessary to help us become a part of the church, community, and society in which we live.75

Missionary 1 indicated that, in contrast with many of the earlier missionaries, who had often felt called to a specific continent, if not country, geography played a distinctly subservient role in the new understanding of the missionary mandate:

I don’t know that I ever saw myself as going overseas, but I just saw myself as doing service wherever that might be. I didn’t have a specific continent or location planned out, or desire where I wanted to go.

For this missionary and others, the specific geographic call had been replaced to a large degree by the divine call to service and to live counter-culturally. This re-invested many women’s sense of call with its traditional Anabaptist cosmopolitan quality. How­ever, we shall, at a later stage, discuss the fact that even those with this geographically more flexible sense of call did not function as human robots, but they too had to—sometimes very painfully—deal with the human issue of change, and of loss76 attached to geographic and cultural re-location.

The Call and the Initial Cultural Re-Location

The sense of call had a deep effect on the women, and when the time came for them to move to a new culture, they were ready and motivated to face the cultural re-location. In spite of this, relocating from North America to Africa and back again was an emotionally and physically difficult experience—both for those with, and those without, a sense of call.77 This we shall firstly reveal this with regard to the North America-Africa leg of the journey. Missionary 11, who had a strong traditional sense of call, told the follow­ing anecdote, which illustrates some of the ‘hard’ challenges she faced as a North American housewife in rural Africa:

Living was hard. We didn’t dare to drink the water out of the streams, so we boiled our water and cooled it down. We had an old Coleman refrigerator, but it burned kerosene (…), and we had to learn to take care of that. I had a kitchen stove in my kitchen, and it burned wood. (…) We needed to get wood from the Africans, and they brought us wood, and we had to learn how to run that stove, and how much wood to put in to make it hot enough.

However, against all the odds, in her own words, she succeeded to ‘adjust.’ Of the role of her sense of call in this process,78 she said:

It helped me to adjust I think.

The fact that she was able to re-locate constructively is further illustrated by the way that she had experienced an immediate attraction to the local young women, with whom she soon became professionally involved. This initial involvement eventually evolved into her long-term mission mandate, which was to develop a program for women:

I loved the women! I loved the women! And one of the first jobs they gave me in mission work was to be in charge of the girls’ compound. When we first got to the Congo we found that the boys were being sent to the mission schools. They wanted their boys to have education. But their little girls—they did not see any use in it, because all they needed to know how to do was to cook, to go for water, and to go for wood, and to help take care of the children, because some day they would just marry and have their own babies. What did they need education for? Mission­aries saw the need for girls to be educated. We saw that they would have better homes and better lives. And I was a part of that early pioneer group that was very, very active in helping parents in the villages see that ‘you need your girls in the mission school!’

Missionary 2, also with a strong traditional sense of call, described some of her appre­hensions, especially regarding her small children, before and during her initial re-location to Africa:

M.S.: The last couple of months before you left the States, how did you feel?
Missionary 2: Apprehensive! Our daughter was four months old when we left the first time, and I was very concerned about her. Our son was just two years old. As I look back now I would say the adjustment was hard for him! But I think parents in those days just did what they were gonna do, and the kids just jolly well better do it too! It wasn’t quite as accommodating to children as the society is today. We didn’t take them into account perhaps as much as we did later. (…) Even mission boards give more attention to that now than they used to. But I can recall getting to Leopoldville and in the room we were given, there were salamanders or lizards climbing up the wall, and then they would sud­denly just plop. And I had this little, beautiful baby there! And I worried how things would go. I guess there was a fair amount of apprehension.

However, she developed an immediate interest in the local language, which she soon master­ed. This resulted in her involvement in translation work, and eventually developed into her primary initial missionary mandate that she ‘loved:’ 79

I did translation. I loved learning the language! And I loved to do trans­la­tion of Sunday school material or songs!

While these two women had had a traditional sense of call that involved a lifetime commitment, Missionary 1 joined mission service for a two-year assignment primarily on the basis of her sense of call to discipleship and to counter-cultural living. She recounted her keen anticipation of African culture, and of the spiritual experiences her mission service would entail. In her retrospective telling of the story, this positive anticipation overshadowed any sentiments of ‘being torn away’ from home. As one of the new gene­ration missionaries, she was inter alia looking forward for what God would teach her through the African culture:

I don’t remember feelings of being torn away from (home) as I left, I don’t remember those kinds of feelings. I was looking forward to it as an adventure in what a new country, a new culture would teach me, but also an adventure in what God would teach me in a very different kind of setting. And so I went with a lot of anticipation and joy.

She had to deal with many challenges on account of her cultural re-location. These included dealing with strange languages, her fear of tropical diseases, an unscheduled change of job, and spiritual issues:

M.S.: Was it anything like you expected when you arrived on the other side?
Missionary 1: I don’t think I could ever have expected it, but I think I also went with a clean slate, and so I accepted it as it was.
M.S.: What were your first impressions?
Missionary 1: On the very first day, I went to the market with two other young women. And we had a downpour, and we just sat in the market and the African guy whose stall it was, he jabbered, and jabbered, and jabbered, and I couldn’t understand a word that he said. And watching all the people go by, it felt like people were very warm to me, even though I couldn’t understand anything, and they were warm to each other. But then also, coming back to our house, water was running everywhere, and all I could think of was horror stories of these worms and these bad things that happen in Africa! And I was sure I would get some parasite that was just horrible!
M.S.: What was your assignment when you got there?
Missionary 1: When I first got there, my assignment was to be a hostel parent. (…) I got there in August, and by November one family of three children had to leave to go back to North America for health reasons. So that only left one child in the school, and they decided not to keep the school running at that point, so he went back to his home village to his parents. (…). At that point I went to the capital (…) to learn French. So my roles changed very drastically. When I think about those first six months that I was there, and all the cultural adjustments, and the langu­age adjustments, and job adjustments, learning, everything was really pretty amazing!

In hindsight, she notes that, realistically, during this initial period on the mission field, she had probably been under far more pressure than she had been conscious of:

All of those things in a very short time must have been incredibly stress­ful for me! I don’t remember that as being a stressful time, but just in hindsight it had to be!

Her observation ties in with the overall evidence that many missionaries seemed to lack clear memories of emotional stress experienced during their initial re-location difficulties. Beside the fact that such memories probably faded over time, it might also have to do with the fact that the women were not consciously aware at the time of the stressfulness of many of their re-location experiences. This is likely particularly true of older missionaries, who lived in an era with relatively little awareness of psychological processes. However, we have to remember that even younger missionaries, as we know from the Early Socio-Religious Profile chapters, largely grew up in a no-nonsense rural Mennonite environment, where everybody was simply expected ‘to get on with it.’


The re-location experiences we discussed so far indicate that those who had a personal sense of call, and who survived in the face of the many serious early challenges, usually successfully negotiated their initial re-location. One key factor in this process was that they had an outward-looking attitude and soon discovered a personal mandate.


However, there is also evidence that a strong sense of call could not always be equated with a successful initial re-location experience. This is noted in a well-docu­ment­ed case of a young, single missionary with a strong traditional sense of call, who suffered debilitating burn-out in her initial re-location phase, even though she and her spiritual advisers were convinced that the Lord had led her to become a missionary in Congo. On arrival in the Congo,80 she immediately proceeded to take up her teaching mandate, and began to form bonds with the local population.


In the following letter, she describes to the executive of the CIM home office the serious confusion, humiliation, and sense of failure she experienced as she attempted to reconcile her strong sense of call with her inability to cope with the practical challenges of being a missionary. These challenges included teaching very big school classes, a task for which she ‘never felt adequate,’ and which ‘wasn’t always easy:’

I want to warn you right from the start that you will not be very proud of this, my first quarterly report. As you know, I arrived at (my station) Sept. 6. After a week of getting settled and observing in the classes, I started teaching 6th and 7th grades. It was a real joy to teach 75 eager Africans and soon, very soon, I felt so attached to them. However, I never felt very adequate in my teaching but the Lord undertook day by day. Then in the middle of Nov. my health started failing. At first we thought it a minor thing, but before I knew it, I was unable to teach any longer. (Dr. Jim Diller) passed that way from Charlesville. He said that I must take a rest, ‘A rest! After two months of work!’ I could hardly believe my ears, and yet he was serious. In no time, they had decided that I go along to (Mukedi) for 10 days of rest, I couldn’t believe that this was the Lord’s will for He had led so clearly in everything right up to the time that my feet touched Congo soil. I will not speak of the disappointment this was to me.

It wasn’t long until I realized that this was of the Lord. Many spiritual battles have been fought since I left (Nyang) (sic), since I left my work that I enjoyed so thoroughly although it wasn’t always easy, since I left my 75 boys (my 75 children).

Then (someone) was willing to give me lessons in Kipende and I thought perhaps this was why the Lord had brought me to (Mukedi). It was such a wonderful opportunity! But after a few lessons (Dr. Jim) said no more Kipende and that I was to stay put. I’ll admit that it wasn’t very difficult to stay ‘put.’ There was nothing else I could do feeling as I did.

I feel as though I have failed you all. For 2 months I have been receiving wages and there is no output on my part. The doctors both say that I’ve been over-doing it. That’s all, This is hard to take because you warned us so distinctly not to burn the candle at both ends upon arriving on the Mission field. But please believe me, I did not realize that that was happening, (Dr. Jim) finally said it probably wasn’t only the 2 months here in Congo but an accumulation of the year in Belgium.81

The executive secretary of the mission agency wrote a letter to the woman’s parents to reassure them that, based on the young missionary’s clear divine call, which had been evident to all, she should remain on the mission field. He was convinced that she would recover to eventually ‘be a joyful missionary in the Congo:’

No doubt you have heard from (your daughter) in the Congo telling you that she is not well. This letter to you is to give you a word of comfort and assurance. We are all sure, you and (your daughter) too, that our heavenly Father called her to serve Him in the Congo. Her long years of preparation for that work have been blessed by our Lord, no question about that. One door after another opened for her.

Now when she came to the field of work, duties crowded in on her faster than any of us, including our missionaries on the field, had planned for her. The years of strain and now the newness of the field and the new­ness of the work itself overwhelmed her. What (she) now needs is calmness, full assurance that she is where God wants her to be, and medical care with nurses on call. The missionaries are doing their best to provide the first, third and fourth conditions. The second you as parents can, and I am sure will, help her to realize anew.

I am speaking on behalf of our Board and on behalf of our CIM Board and our missionaries in the Congo, to please urge her to stay on the field at least for the present. We are confident this ailment can and will be overcome and she will be a joyful missionary in the Congo. Romans 8:28.82

A senior female missionary colleague conveyed her perspective on the case to the mission board. She identified, as principal causes of the breakdown, the missionary’s con­scientiousness and her eagerness to ‘help’—both highly valued characteristics in Menno­nite culture:

Our hearts have been heavy because of (the missionary’s) illness, We thought she was very happy here and loved her work. The Africans loved her and she loved them. As you know she is a very conscientious girl, and so therefore not knowing the language, and not knowing these people was a great hindrance, and I would say the cause for her breakdown. Examples—on Sunday p.m.’s she would go to the girls com­pound, trying to get a few words, but she says ‘they just don’t get it and I don’t get it.’ She would go to the village trying to speak in words, but only to be defeated, ‘How can I ever do mission work without the langu­age.’ It just depressed her not to be able to talk to these people. In class one day she told her class, if they would teach her Kipendi, she would teach them English. Result—she had not one class, but both classes at her veranda wanting to teach Kependi (sic) and learn English, Another—one poor boy came with a torn text book, Well she has one new book and gives it to him, well the whole class came and showed her their torn books and wanted a new one, poor girl she felt so bad that she couldn’t give all of them new books, but she did the next best thing. Went to work, sewed, patched and rebound the books. These things some of us would regain ourselves, but it didn’t for her. And these things bothered her. Her household—the girl was so busy they couldn’t come to station social nite (sic), and of course she followed by not coming either. And nothing would have done her more good, (and all of them) to take their mind off of their books. And the ladies being so busy made her feel bad, but it shouldn’t, her being a new missionary. In all I believe, she would make good after her period of orientation and language study. Some can get along without, but they find it hard and she being weak wouldn’t do it. Those were her main complaints, ‘I don’t know the language and I don’t know the people.’ I can’t see and believe that the Lord would have us lose a good missionary as (her) and I believe she would make good and is able. Trusting this report has helped you a little, maybe a bit of teaching at home would help her.83

In spite of the missionary’s own and everybody else’s conviction that she had been called by God, she did not succeed in negotiating the initial cultural re-location.84


After our investigation into the initial re-location experiences of women with a personal sense of call, we now turn our attention to those without a personal sense of call. Missionary 4, who had had many years of experience, described women without a personal sense of call as commonly being dissatisfied with their mission situation:

The women who will admit that this is their husband’s job—‘It’s not my job, I’m here to look after the kids, and to support my husband’—usually are very unhappy doing what they are doing. And we85 probably could think each of us of several examples of that.

This observation is largely borne out by examples of women included in our case study. Missionary 21, who entered missions as a middle-aged woman, remembered follow­ing her husband’s sense of call against some internal resistance:

They were looking for a pastor for this church (…), and as we talked to people, we found out that they asked a lot of different people if they would go. But I think (my husband) was interested in it right away, because he had been on the mission board for years—he still was on the mission board just before we went. And he had traveled in Brazil one time with mission executives, and he traveled twice in India with mission executives, and I went back with him once to India.86 So he was really interested in it, and we were about ready for a move anyway. He kind of stays ten years in each place he stays, it sort of seems. So he was quite interested in it. But I was not very anxious at all. It just seemed like such an overwhelming thing.

One of her major problems was leaving her grown-up children behind:

I’d leave my kids. And I was trying to analyze why it was hard to leave the kids’—they were all married, and they were all settled and so on. And I think partly it was I kind of had this feeling that I was abandoning them. And one of my friends said, ‘Well maybe you felt abandoned.’87 I don’t think I realized maybe that was the cause of the sadness. But anyway, so we went.

She experienced her initial relocation phase as long and frustrating, mainly because of her lack of a personal mandate. This prevented her from finding a meaningful place for herself:

The thing is when you move your husband knows right away what he is going to be doing. And you don’t. You have to figure out what you are going to do. And it took me quite a while to figure out where I fit into this. And the (local church) had a lot of very strong people in it because they were mission personnel and so on. Where do you fit into this? And some of them are quite capable Bible teachers and all the rest of it, and I didn’t feel adequate in that area at all. So it took a while till I settled into what I really enjoyed.

The following is a similar account by Missionary 14, a woman who at over forty years of age, but still with young children, had followed her husband’s call even more reluctantly:

I drug my feet for a while, and finally I said, ‘Well if that’s where he wants to go that’s where I will go too.’

As had been the case with the previous interviewee, she, too, spoke of her initial inability to successfully make the transition into the foreign culture—describing it as ‘difficult’ and ‘real difficult.’ 88 She, too, could not find a personal place or mandate, and while eventually a task was assigned to her, her description of it did not give the impression that she had really embraced it:

It was difficult! We were in Belgium for nine months—maybe a year—to learn French. And I did not have a special job when we went into (Zaire.) I wasn’t a teacher, I wasn’t a nurse, and I would have to do home schooling for (our son). And then they gave me the hostess job for the group of missionaries that lived there, and I was in charge of doing things like that. But at first it was real difficult. (…) But I had work to do. There was lots of work to do. We had lots of visitors, and lots of guests. (Our mission station) was where the airplane came from Kin­shasa with mail and passengers. And the ‘MAF,’ the ‘Missionary Aviation Fellowship’ had air-planes, and they would come with mail from all the different stations. And the mail that would come from the capital city—I was the one that went to the post office and picked up that mail, and we sorted all that mail and got it ready for all the different stations. And when the missionary plane came in, it was my job to take the mail sacks to them, and bring the mail sacks that they brought from the other stations and sort them, all that mail, that was a big job!

Her relocation difficulties were exacerbated by her inability to successfully acquire the local languages:89

I did not get the French language. I had a tutor, and we went to the school that the missionaries had to go to. And (my husband) had a different one that really tutored him. And (my husband) knew German, so because he had a foreign language it was easier for him. It was very difficult, and I did not pass the exam. And then when we got to our station where we were going to be working, the language was Chiluba. So we had to find a Chiluba teacher for us, and that was worse than French! It was difficult for me. I never did get the language well enough that I could handle a devotional or anything like that.

This in turn contributed towards preventing her from successfully forming poten­ti­ally supportive bonds with the local population:

All the missionaries had house help, and yard people, and we didn’t mesh very well. I didn’t know the language well enough to tell a cook how to do what I wanted done, or how to prepare, and so I ended up doing my own housework and my own cooking and preparing the meals and laundry. I had a washing machine. The missionaries at first had fellows that did all their laundry by hand. And with the machine they didn’t know how to handle a washing machine, and it was just easier for me to do everything by myself. And that was a mistake, too, because had I not I would have been able to have somebody help me with the language, and then have a cook or laundry fellow that I could converse with. But I managed, I did what I could do!90

These stories indicate that those without a personal sense of call struggled significantly with their initial re-location phase.91 Either they took significantly longer to adjust than those with a sense of call, or they failed to successfully adjust altogether, insofar as they struggled to find a place and a mandate for themselves in their new environment. In addition, they tended to be less motivated and/or unable to acquire the local language. In this way, they cut themselves off from the vital support of the local population. This lack of integration, thereby separating themselves from a major pot­en­tial support base, made them even more vulnerable to missionary attrition.


Up to this point, we have discussed the role of the sense of call, or the lack thereof, in the initial re-location experience of those moving from North America to Africa. Evidence indicates that the sense of call to missions also played a major role in the reverse cultural relocation. Unexpectedly for some, it became a strong liability on their return home. This was the case with Missionary 2. Her strong traditional sense of call to missions, which had played a very important, constructive role in her life as a missionary, turned into a burden on her unplanned return home during the civil war in Congo. She felt that by leaving the mission field prematurely, she had broken the sacred promise of mission as a lifetime vocation:92

My sense of call was very important. But when we made the decision to come home, that was I guess our stumbling block, because we felt we had a lifetime call, and a lifetime commitment, and to consider going home was like breaking that commitment. So it was a very painful decision to come home. I’m happy that we did, but I found it a very difficult choice.

In the case of Missionary 2, the trauma of her ‘betrayal’ of her sense of call had a permanent negative effect on her subsequent ability to make choices:

I felt the decision-making in my life was affected by that decision. I found decision-making hard, of even small decisions. I would equivo­cate, not knowing if I should do this or that and I often have pegged it to that big decision to leave Africa.

If only one partner felt called back home, the dynamics were similar to those where only one marriage partner had felt called to the mission field. Again, those, mostly women, who did not feel ‘called home,’ found it particularly difficult to readjust and to find a niche and a mandate for themselves in their original home environment.


Missionary 11’s strong traditional sense of call to mission, for example, also became a liability during her reverse re-location. She had succeeded in her initial cultural adjustments on the mission field partly on the basis of her sense of call.93 She however struggled seriously to re-adjust on her return home, which she described as having been a ‘rough’ experience. This was largely due to two main factors. Firstly, she returned home against her strong internal resistance in order to follow her husband, who had been called to a home mission assignment, and secondly she had no ‘place’ to come home to:

The first year was rough. I had a rough adjustment the first year! Life was so different. I missed a lot of that life out there. The African life and my teaching role and my association with the African women, I missed that a lot. (...) When you come back to the United States you need something to get into, something to tie into, and you need to feel useful, useful! And I didn’t the first year!

Comparing the re-location challenges of ‘going out’ with those of ‘returning’ she remarked:

It is an adjustment both ways.

On her return home she experienced a loss of identity, by moving from being ‘a missionary in my own right’ to just being ‘my husband’s wife:’

It was very busy for (my husband), he had his assignment. (…) He was involved immediately, and immersed completely as executive secretary. And then there was a lady in (the office) doing the book-keeping, they had a full time secretary. But I had a big adjustment, because I came from being a missionary in my own right to just being (my husband’s) wife.

While the couple’s calling to missions had been a shared one, their return home provided a defined role only for the husband. This initial forced individualization within the marriage94 proved to be ‘very hard’ for her:

It was very hard the first year, very hard! I didn’t feel included! I didn’t feel included! I was waiting for him to include me. He was so busy, was so involved.

She eventually found a place for herself through a personal assignment, which afford­ed her independence, while it loosely included her in her husband’s new position:

Eventually then I was offered to be the president of the women’s auxiliary of ‘Africa Inter Mennonite Mission.’ And they had a big office building, and they had some extra rooms upstairs. So then I would go mornings and had an office, no one was using them anyway, and I became the director or directrice of the women’s auxiliary of ‘Africa Inter Mennonite Mission.’ Finally I felt included then! I felt a part of it. (…) I was so glad about that little office on the first floor, and they had big time accommodation and so forth upstairs, but I loved it! I had a manual typewriter, and I had a telephone, and I had a desk, and I enjoyed that. I had correspondence from the field. African women were writing to me, and missionary women were writing to me, and because I was the director of the women’s auxiliary, I got to go to the board meetings every year. Finally I felt included! That was a wonderful thing for me to be included.

Her new assignment turned out to be an extension of her missionary call, which, for her, meant that she was able to use her mission experience, because she ‘understood:’

Finally I also could have a lot of people in my home. We had a big house. I could help missionaries coming home from Africa. We met them at the airport and brought them into our home. I knew a lot about what it was like to come from Africa, and to come to the USA. I could also help people who had been recruited or were being sent out. They could come and stay at our house those last days before they actually left, do their last minute packing. They called it orientation, when per­sonnel would come back. They would bring them here to Elkhart at the home office for orientation. So I could help them. I could help them from the home end, because I understood, and I could help them when they were leaving to go out, because I understood.

Missionary 5, who had understood her missionary call primarily as a form of the call to discipleship—and returned home, too, for the sake of her family—spoke of a similar severe initial disorientation on her return:

I didn’t want to come home, but my husband (needed to come back). And someone was going to take over, and our oldest son was ready for university, and we had made a decision that we would come and live in the States with our children when they were ready for college. That we would not send them, because we heard enough stories of children who didn’t adjust well when they came back. So we made the decision that whenever our children were ready for college, we would find jobs and live here. For me that was—it fit everybody except me! I was enjoying what I was doing. I was working in leadership training with women in the church, and it was going good. And yet it was time for everybody else to go. So I had already started feeling depression. I would just cry and say, ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home.’

Of her reverse cultural re-location experience on the whole she said:

It was a difficult time for me then, the adjustment back.

She reacted with depression to the major losses that her return home entailed95—which included the loss of Africa as home96—and the important African support net went with it. It also included the drastic loss of the significance of her missionary skills, which she felt were suddenly of no importance in her home environment:

We were there thirteen years, and when I came back I went into depression. And it was only when people here helped me to see how much loss I was experiencing, everything from the wedding dishes which I hadn’t brought back, loss of friendship, loss of community, a very close rural community, loss of valuable skills. Nobody here cares about whether you could speak several languages, or whether you can communicate with non-literate women. I mean who wants to know that here! So I had skills that were not needed here.

Eventually she was able to process some of these re-location issues, which were common issues of transition, with a supportive group of women that specialized in this area:

And then when we got here, the worst thing was everybody was saying ‘Oh isn’t it wonderful to be home again?’ And I felt like wringing their necks and I would just come home crying. But that was during sort of the women’s movement. And I found a group of women here working with the community mental health center, and the county extension office, working in transitions for women. Whether it was being widow­ed, divorce, or moving, many women in transition. And it was outside the church, outside sort of my family that thought they now again owned me. And so that’s where I found real sort of healing and recovery from that transition.

As had been the case with the previous interviewee, she, too, had to redefine her relationship with her family—and particularly with her husband—by gaining a greater degree of independence from him and finding her own post-mission identity:

I also grew in sort of self-identification from my husband. We had worked together well. We had been energized by learning language, every­thing we had done. But I also then felt I needed to differentiate myself from my husband. Because he now had this job at the college, and I was just staying home and keeping house. Well sort of doing what women here do, and have doughnuts when he brought his class home over, and make a nice supper whenever he wanted to have company and that just didn’t feel very good. While he assumed that I would sort of be an extension of him, I remember telling him, ‘Look, I’m not the one getting paid, you’re the one that’s getting paid. If you wanna have stud­ents over you can get your own doughnuts!’

Her loss of identity was exacerbated by the fact that, during her prolonged absence while serving as a missionary, she had lost her place in the home community. She had virtually become a stranger at home:

I didn’t really have friends. By the time we left, I had finished nurses’ training, and then we’d gone off to graduate school, and then (into missions). So I didn’t really have friends here. I had to start making friends.

This story of Missionary 5, who had lived out her call to discipleship on the mission field, illustrates that, although theoretically the call to discipleship and the call to count­er-cultural living equip the recipient of the call to be geographically mobile and to deal with cultural relocation, in reality the missionaries with such a sense of call, on account of their humanness, still struggled with their re-location experiences, and with the outsider-insider phenomenon.


Up to now, we have established that those with a sense of call clearly succeeded far better in their initial cultural re-locating, both from North America to Africa, and on their return to North America. Those without a personal sense of call, however, found it much more difficult initially to re-locate successfully. This indicates that a sense of call acted as a support factor in the initial cultural relocation process.

The Long View: The Call in Crisis—The Call Remodeled


If we look at the long-term role of the sense of call, we find that it was far more ambig­uous than it was during the initial re-location phase. For one, although the majority of women witnessed to a personal sense of call, accounts of missionary attrition in the form of depression, ‘nervous breakdowns,’ and early termination of service formed a prominent part of many stories. Such stories were either based on the women’s personal experience, or on their observation of others.’ The attrition accounts included observations such as the following by Missionary 6, who at one point had acted as a missionary advisor:

In our mission, at one point, I think we had at least five (women) that were on some kind of medication for emotional disturbances. We had several people with emotional breakdowns.

Missionary 5, another senior missionary, and Missionary 17 commented respectively:

Scary how many women we had on anti-depressants.

Usually our breakdowns were during the third and fourth year.

How are such attrition experiences to be explained in the light of the fact that most missionaries successfully negotiated their initial cultural re-location—many of them strongly supported by their sense of call? What additional burdens or stresses entered the picture in a long-term service situation—and were they in any way related to their sense of call? We shall investigate first the burdens they faced because they were women.

The Women’s Burden


Multi-tasking was one clearly identifiable stress factor in the lives of married women. For many long-term female missionaries, the opportunity to practise and develop their professional skills as a form of ministry turned out to be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it afforded them an important role in the missionary endeavor, and, particularly in the case of early missionaries, opened up avenues for female ministry beyond the restrict­ed scope they had at home. Missionary 18 remembered that one of her female ancestors preached on the mission field, which at that time was perceived as a strictly male prerogative at home:

My aunt was one of the first missionaries under the ‘Congo Inland Mission’ which became the ‘AIMM.’ She was a nurse. The mission was started in 1911 I think, and she went out in 1912. Recently we have read some of the things her husband wrote—she married a Swedish missionary. They started the Swedish Baptist mission. But my great uncle’s account was interesting. (…) He kept a diary, and he mentions (his wife) preaching and what a good preacher she was!

On the other hand, most married women included in the case study, who had antici­pated at the outset of their mission journey that their sense of call would assume a high priority on the mission field—be it of a traditional or of a more contemporary nature—were soon faced with the burden of the classic role-juggling act of working wives. On the mission field, they lived with the very real tension of having to weigh the importance of their divine calling to be an active part of the mission endeavor, against their God-ordain­ed roles of wife and mother, both of which were instinctively very close to their hearts. In addition, they had their own personal needs.97 About her missionary role Missionary 18 remembered:

At that time in our mission the women all had assignments. There was not anybody who went out as a missionary’s wife.

The women’s assignments were often, but not always, related to the professions in which they had been trained. Officially, this professional work was viewed as a function of the missionary call. Practising their profession in Africa posed its very own challenges. Missionary 13 recounted some of the extraordinary and prolonged odds she faced as a novice missionary teacher, who had to teach a subject unfamiliar to her. This after having had her first baby within six months of arrival on the mission field—while learning to live in ‘the bush,’ having to acquire the local language, struggling with the unfamiliar task of training household help,98 and struggling with old-fashioned household appliances:

(During the) first six months? I had a first baby! And we had a daily lesson in Kipendi, which was a tribal language. This was really the interior, what they call the bush. And (…) then not only that, but they thought I ought to have been more useful, so I also taught a class in arithmetic. They were forming a new class of kids that didn’t quite make it, and they needed some help. I had never studied calcule mentale, so that was a new one on me!99 (…) I brought the baby in a buggy right into class, and taught the class, and took the baby back home. We did all kinds of things in those days! Try to handle two or three things, plus house help, which wasn’t the easiest thing in the world either! To try and train your helpers to start that cook stove. All cooking was done on a wood stove. And all our washing was done on a rubbing board. That’s how we went there through the first four, five years.

Such constant task-overload was usually also a part of their furlough experience. Missionary 35 described in a letter how much she had been in demand while at home:

Apparently sitting quietly for too long a period of time is not easy—at least not in the home community. Just a sample—“Will you bring a missionary message on Sunday morning?” “We would like to have you tell of your experiences at Sunday School.” “Have you any slides?” “Could you speak to our Bible School?” “Can you come for Coffee?”100

Missionary 18 recounted some of her furlough challenges as follows:

When we got home, all of us came down with colds, and (my husband) left the following day, so I had my hands full, especially with (my baby), who has just gotten some more teeth. Then of course there is always cooking, etc., and I have been trying to get our clothes ready for winter. After not having to concern myself with winter clothes for four years this seems quite a project.101

In addition, the missionaries usually lived very unsettled lives during their furlough, deputizing and visiting their friends and families. Missionary 41, who had finally settled into her home, wrote gratefully: ‘It is so nice to have our own place.’102


The stress of multi-tasking experienced by professional married women was some­times exacerbated by marriage dynamics. The women often felt forced to compromise, and to readjust their initial mission expectations. Firstly, many of them were faced with the fact that, in practice, it was predominantly the husband’s assignment that assumed priority, while the wife was expected somehow to ‘fit in.’ There were some couples, however, who negotiated among themselves the priority of their respective assignments, and occasionally it was the woman’s vocation that took precedence over that of her husband. This was the case with Missionary 18, who remembered:

The decision where we were sent was dependent on me rather than on him.

She remembered further,

our first term there was a bit of—not friction between us, but he really wasn’t completely happy in the work he was doing.

Predominantly, though, the missionary postings were male-oriented, and many inter­viewees automatically described their husband’s task as the dominant one. Even though elsewhere in the interview they might indicate that they, too, had built up significant ministries, they often listed the spouse’s assignments first, and gave them considerably more definition than they did their own roles. Missionary 5 illustrated this tendency:

(My husband) was director at first, until another person took over as director, and so the director’s wife is seen like the pastor’s wife.

Missionary 19 indicated that the prioritizing of her husband’s assignment meant that she and the children were left on their own for long stretches of time:

My husband was assigned to the village schools and village evangelism, and had to follow the governmental rules to be in the villages or in the schools 220 days a year. (…) I worked in mission accounting with one of the ladies.

These examples indicate that the women accepted the priority of the husband’s call more or less willingly—often viewing their function as a contribution to the couple’s common calling.103


With regard to their deployment, the position of single women was somewhat differ­ent. On the one hand, Missionary 20 said:

One thing that is different is that sometimes with couples there is a conflict if there is one mission post that would be good for one of them, but another mission post would really be better for the other one. They have to decide then. For a single person, that doesn’t become a problem. You know you go where you are best suited!

On the other hand, it was usually simply assumed that single missionaries were more flexible than married ones. They were therefore often re-deployed less thoughtfully. One such single missionary, who had probably been more hastily deployed to a new challenging posting than if she had been married, wrote the following about her new position in a letter to the Secretary of the GC Mission Board:

If I had known longer before I’m afraid, I might not have come, because it is a large job, but as I said then, He never gives us to do things without giving us the wisdom and strength to do them.104

Another single missionary wrote to her friends at home:

A few months ago I was asked to stay on another year before returning to the States, and I am considering this seriously. It was said then that a nurse was coming to Kalonda, and it would help if I stayed to tie things over (…) then our Executive Committee met and decided, among other things, that this couple was to go to Mutena instead. So it goes!105

The married mother, however, had to consider her husband and children beside her profession. Based on the traditional marriages that most couples led, it was usually left to the wife to juggle the missionary and the family duties. This normally did not happen without severe feelings of guilt. Missionary 15 hinted indirectly at her retrospective dis­comfort at having prioritized her children, while they were young, over and above her missionary involvement:

Missionary 15: I felt for the first few years that my job was with the children.
M.S.: Was that all right for you?
Missionary 15: For the first few years yeah. (…). Probably I had more questions about it since that time than I did then (...) because I think I felt that my job was with the children.

Missionary 14 harbored guilt feelings towards her children, who sometimes came second to her very challenging missionary role:

My husband and I were in teaching, and so we both were interested in the teaching part of it. And starting new schools. (…) I don’t know that we were qualified, but there was such a need for it, so we just did what we could. It was very challenging, really very challenging, almost so much that you wondered if you could do it! ’Cause I had family too! I had three children. They were all born there. And they had their needs too. I suppose many times we neglected them so we could fulfil the needs that were about us.

The following letter excerpt addressed to ‘Dear Mission Friends’ is a classic case study of a woman being torn between her missionary duties and her sick child. In this particular instance, the mission conference, which she clearly enjoyed, took priority after she had sought guidance in prayer:

But husband, should I really go out this week-end when our son has such a fever?’ This was Friday morning, February 13. We prayed and sought the Lord’s guidance, and found peace to go ahead for all the plans had been made to have our first Women’s Conference in our district. (…) What a joy after the service not to have to rush off, but rather to stay in the village for two whole days.

(…)

P.S. You guessed it, when we got home our son was better and was playing Bible Dominoes on the floor with Daddy.106

Although Missionary 18 did not remember suffering from permanent work-related stress herself, she did remember that her daughter did not always cope well with her mother’s medical obligations:

When my kids were little, most of the time I didn’t really feel that I was overworked. I mean there were always times when you were. And I know particularly it was hard on our daughter, because it always seemed like I was called away at meal times, particularly supper time. I don’t know why! She used to scream and scream, and scream.

A further stress factor for the married women was that, as mentioned before, many husbands were often absent from home and left the wives with the responsibility of running much of the family’s home life. In this regard, the mission situation was charac­terized by some unique features. On the one hand, the traditional duties of wife and mother were made easier due to the fact that most women had local household help and childminders. On the other hand, mission reality often required the women to fend for themselves and their children under stressful circumstances, and this in turn made them even more vulnerable to feelings of loneliness. Missionary 19, whose husband had to spend 220 days a year in the villages, remembered feeling homesick because

he was away a lot! And I had the children at home. Our little girl was four, and our second child was just a year old.

Missionary 41’s medical doctor husband, who had been overwhelmed with hospital duties immediately after the family’s arrival in the Congo, wrote:

(My wife) has had to do most of the getting settled into the new home here and has done an excellent job of making us all comfortable.107

While married women struggled to cope with life on the mission field with their husbands absent part of the time, single women had to face the missionary challenges without a steady male partner altogether. Missionary 6 observed how difficult this was for them at times, especially if they were posted in isolated places during such occasions as their ‘village live-ins:’

We had a number of single women that came. They really struggled! Really difficult for single women! I think of the six or seven that we related to in our team, I would say only one had a really positive experience. Several of them had to leave early. I guess, with a couple you have that partner to share with, and that support. And I don’t think we had the right kind of structure for singles. We had one single man, and he has also had problems. I think maybe the Catholics have something with putting together singles in their convents, where they have that support from somebody else.

These demands on the women, to cope without their husbands, were difficult in themselves, but they could be greatly exacerbated by health problems, for example. The medical records stored in the archives, as well as letters and interviews, indicate that many women suffered from sometimes severe medical ailments,108 and the additional stress caused by such problems. The following letter excerpt illustrates such an instance of illness amidst great demands from all sides. It was written by Missionary 2 on the return of her family to the Congo, and addressed to the secretary in the home office:

We hardly had time to get unpacked and somewhat settled when I got sick. I ran a fever and had very severe pain in both legs and one became paralyzed. I thought at the time it might be polio + so did the doctor but nothing was said. We thought the paralysis would leave when the baby was born but it didn’t and I was very weak. I fell quite often and couldn’t trust myself to carry the baby. My back and chest didn’t seem to have any strength. Then I developed a breast abscess that kept my strength at low ebb. Finally after 2 weeks and 14 injections of penicillin it subsided. Those were trying days. Everything in the garden needed to be canned just at that time, our freight arrived within the same 24 hours as (our baby daughter) and the other children were all a bit insecure with coming back to Congo and boiled water, mosquito nets, strange language, etc.109 Thank the Lord for wonderful fellow missionaries who came to our aid with much love and prayers. Now I am gradually getting back to normal. The only muscle really affected is in my right thigh. I am beginning to manage steps (stairs) now. And now everyone agrees it must have been polio. I was exposed to it on the boat because one of the children of missionaries with whom we traveled came down with it just a week before I did.

In addition to their own health issues, the usual family health worries of Western society were amplified on the mission field, particularly for women with babies and small children. Missionary 18 emotionally remembered, during her interview, the blessing of being able to breast-feed her own baby while bottle-fed babies succumbed to various medical problems on the ship that evacuated them during the Congo uprising:

In England we got on a ship, came home in a ship, and that was very, very cold! But I know I was very happy that I was still nursing our youngest son, because some of the babies that were being bottle-fed were having all kinds of problems, diarrhoea and so on. And you didn’t always get your meal on time, and he was already ten months old, so he wasn’t really surviving on my milk, but at least it tided him over when he was hungry!

Not every child was able to receive the medical treatment it required on the mission field. This occasionally led to the premature termination of a family’s service, which usually did not happen without deep soul-searching by the family and the mission organization alike. Missionary 16’s story reflects some of the trauma involved for the parents in such cases:

We moved to our village (…) at the end of December. And then (my daughter) got the dysentery in May, never fully recovered after that. She lost a lot of weight. We kept going back to the capital and she still had bacteria in her stools, and tummy aches and food just upset her. We considered coming back to the States several times. We didn’t actually come until she started going downhill really fast in January. So we were there for a year and a half, but she said, ‘Mum, most of my time in our village I was sick,’ which is true! (…) And yet she loved it there! Part of the reason why we waited so long was ‘cause she did not want to come back. (…)

And then also communicating back here (to Missions Head Quarters), was hard as far as the decision to come back. ‘Cause in July I just want­ed to come back, and they felt we should stay. And then at one point they agreed we could come back, but then the board met and decided we should go (for medical help in another African country) instead. So just that communication from long distance, what’s the best decision to make?

In the case of Missionary 17, her youngest child, who was mentally challenged, proved to be unable to cope with the boarding school situation, and eventually was the reason why the parents prematurely terminated their missionary service:

She wasn’t able to cope really. I remember how I begged the board that they would give us a job in Kinshasa in the capital city, and that she would go to school where we lived! And they said no, and we went back anyway, and then within a year or a year-and-a-half we had to come home because of her anyway. So I knew! I knew she couldn’t do it! She could not do it—psychologically! Some children could, but she couldn’t! And then she knew that ‘I’m making my whole family change their life forever, and go back to Canada first, and then to the United States, and it’s because of me!’ That marks you too!

One of the most painful issues the women raised, concerning this conflict between the divine call to missions and the call to motherhood, proved to be the practice of sending the children to boarding school. In this regard, Mennonite missionaries were no different from missionaries of other denominations. As had been the case in early Ana­baptist history, their sense of call took precedence over family obligations. The very young children were usually home schooled by their mothers and other female mission­aries, after which time they were sent to boarding school at around the age of nine or ten. Most missionaries seemed, at least outwardly, to have accepted this arrangement as an unavoidable act of obedience that formed an integral part of their missionary call. This echoed the deep respect with which they had been taught to view the divine caller, God the caller, in their childhood. The divine claim on their lives had priority over their children’s claims. This is evident from the following quote by Missionary 2:

We believed honestly, that this is what God was asking us to do, and we did it!

It was also the policy of the mission organization. Missionary 10, a former MK and at one stage a missionary herself, painfully remembered:

That was the thing that was done then. That was apparently what the mission expected.

The following are some emotions that Missionary 2, missionary 17, and Missionary 11 experienced as they sent their children away:

Oh, that’s like cutting your heart out! It was very hard.

It’s like a mother bird that pushes the little bird out of the nest and says fly baby, fly!

The hardest thing I think, of all, of being that young missionary woman, was sending my young children away to boarding school. It wasn’t giving up luxuries, it wasn’t the wood stove or the kerosene lamp, or the toilet that didn’t flush—it wasn’t that at all! It was having to send my young children away, one thousand miles away to the boarding school in the capital. (…) I wanted to take care of them myself! And I know that many nights they went to bed with tears in their pillows. And there were times when they really needed us but we couldn’t be there, and I missed seeing them and being with them! I think that was—of all the adjust­ments, and of all the things we did that was the hardest—giving up my young children at age nine and ten, and sending them away to boarding school. 110

In retrospect, Missionary 17 voiced lasting doubts about the correctness of her decision:

And now in retrospect, I wonder some—I wonder! I shouldn’t say some­times!

A similar mechanism to that of boarding school came into play when it came to the children’s tertiary education—which was generally not available in their environment at the time. This resulted in the parents sending them to North America for their studies. Again this practice was partly aimed at facilitating the children’s eventual reintegration into North American society. This additional stage of separation from their children, which was even greater in distance and time, caused the mothers further deep anxiety. Missionary 19 explained:

I think the most difficult was to leave our daughter here in the States after she finished high school. It was in the early seventies, and in the late sixties when she stayed. And this was just in the time when drugs were becoming strong. So that was very difficult, very emotional!111

Sending their children to boarding school and to the US for their tertiary education was not only an act of obedience, but it partly also reflected the women’s thinking on the two worlds—the North American and the African culture—both of which they were now citizens of. They tended to draw the line at integration with the local population when it came to their children’s education. It was important for them to keep open their potential for re-integration into North America. Missionary 8 stated:

Because we wanted (the children) in the end to be able to live in both cultures, to be able to be at home in Congo, but also when we would come back here (U.S.A.), when they would be adults, that they would not be so strange here. And I felt that that was important!

In some cases, the entire family seemed quite naturally to fall in with this arrange­ment, as the following statement by Missionary 4 indicates:

One of the options would have been to home school. But even the kids didn’t see that as a very good possibility. They said that when they were home, they wanted to do what the villagers were doing. They didn’t want to stay in the courtyard and do school work. And so they went to school. And then when they came home from school, they were just a part of village life. And even the early boarding school experiences were very positive, too. We had very good dorm parents, and our kids were very close to them. They were young, so they really bonded very closely with the dorm parents as well.

It was not only the mothers themselves who suffered because of the separation. Many of them had to witness the traumatic effect it had on their children—often far into their adulthood. Missionary 17 emotionally shared the following:

(Our son) was an adult before he told me that he cried himself to sleep every night! (…) He wanted to protect us! He never told us that till he was grown up. Never! And I still remember hearing that for the first time and realizing what we had put him through. No that’s the one thing, the only thing that we felt was very hard—us not being able to have the children with us! (…) And there were missionaries who sent their children away from home earlier than we did! Our children were fourth graders when they went the first time.

As time progressed, the issue of MKs was increasingly addressed by the mission agen­cies. Missionary 41 wrote that a Missionary Health Workshop that she had attended during furlough was entirely concerned with

the missionary child, his problems, how missionary parents sometimes are the cause of the problems without realizing this, their guilt feelings.112

The boarding school issue further illustrates that, while the women’s anticipatory statements on their sense of call and on their mandate were usually clear-cut and assured, retrospectively this was often not the case. A few of the above statements indicate that, in retrospect, significant doubt had arisen in them about their original position, and their view of the divine caller and their mandate.


Those with a fundamentalist-revivalist background tended to carry additional burd­ens, which we have already flagged elsewhere, and which will now be discussed in some more detail.


The Fundamentalist-Revivalist Burden


The women’s burden is clearly dominant, and this is evident from the interviews and other documents. However, there are two related burdens that could pose a problem for the missionaries—the fundamentalist-revivalist burden, and the Mennonite burden. These will be discussed next.


Two classic aspects of their missionary call that have the potential to turn into a fundamentalist-revivalist burden are summarized on the prayer card of Missionary 23 and her family. Ending with ‘OUR BURDEN’ the card reads:

CHRIST’S COMMAND “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.”

THEIR NEED “But if the Gospel is hid, it is hid to them that are lost.”

OUR BURDEN “Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.”113

At another point, her family’s prayer card was headed ‘Answering Congo’s Call.’114 The fundamentalist-revivalist call was geared towards preaching the Gospel to every soul so that they should be saved. This was not only God’s command, but it was also the need of the people. The realities of the mission field were that not every soul who heard the Good News responded to it positively. Many missionaries struggled at times with the lack of apparent success of their labors, particularly in the spiritual sphere. This is illustrated by Missionary 29’s furlough assessment of her professional work as a teacher and ‘direct­rice.’ Although she put on a brave face, her frustrations with the lack of evidence of scho­l­astic and spiritual progress in some of her young charges, and in older villagers, are apparent:

Q: What has been the general nature of your work during this term of service? How well do you feel you have succeeded in what you have tried to do? What has been your greatest joy? What have been your greatest disappointments?

A: Since the beginning of 1954, I have been director of the Ecole Prepa­ratoire (6th and 7th grades,) and in the past two school years have taught all French classes in the school. As director, I was also responsible for the housing and food for these boys. (…) I have often allowed things to trouble me, and by my impatience have failed to glorify the Lord. But He has been faithful, and whatever there is of success, the glory is His.

It is my joy to see these young people grow in their Christian experience, and win spiritual victories. On the other hand, there were some who have not been willing to yield themselves to the Lord, and because of misdemeanor had to be dismissed. Others do not show the interest in spiritual things that we would like to see. I also find great joy in doing village visitation, but have not had as much time for it as I would like to have. I am disappointed in that there are not more who are willing to consecrate themselves to the Lord and be more separated from the customs of the village.115

In keeping with this understanding of the missionary mandate, which focuses relatively strongly on evidence of the missionary effort, Missionary 31 indicated her satisfaction with the success of her husband’s ministry in a letter to her home constitu­ency:

(My husband) has been making his regular literature trips, bouncing merrily along over these roads. Ten days ago on a supply trip west of here he and (a colleague) sold over 700 copies of the new issues of Tuyaya Kunyi magazine at a native market in less than two hours. Their supply became exhausted before they got home; they radioed the press for an extra printing of this issue for sellers who hadn’t yet been supplied. The magazine has about 25,000 readers now; pray God will really use it to plant the seed of the Gospel in the hearts of the masses.116

In addition to the burdens discussed above, every Mennonite missionary tended, either directly or indirectly, to carry some Mennonite burdens.

The Mennonite Burden


The Mennonite burden manifested itself indirectly through the women’s early socio-religious formation, and more directly through certain distinctives of their mission praxis. Missionary 5 made a direct link between missionary burn-out and the fact that, in a socio-religious environment where discipleship is emphasized—especially in the case of women—there tends to be an imbalance between giving and receiving, and also a striving for perfection:

I think a lot of that is how we were acculturated here in North America. And that has to do I think both with the religious life and with our culture, that a great deal of emphasis is put on women for servitude, discipleship, humility, submission, perfection. And that combination, I think, tends to emphasize the giving part rather than the receiving part of our faith. And it doesn’t encourage self-care.

The desire to give and to help had played a key part in the development of some women’s sense of call, and it kept resurfacing on the mission field in women who felt challenged to address the needs of others—sometimes beyond their strength, as Mission­ary 13 testified:

There was such a need for (teaching), so we just did what we could. It was very challenging, really very challenging, almost so much that you wondered if you could do it!

The fact that Mennonite mission praxis, particularly in its more recent manifestation, focused heavily on discipleship by serving the local community through integration and identification, entailed its own challenges. As with other ideals, this, too, exacted a high price from the missionaries, and often proved to be impossible to translate into reality. Missionary 6 described some of the ways in which she felt Mennonites were doing missions ‘differently:’

I would say that, as Mennonites, we did have a different way of approaching mission work. The people on our team that did the actual Bible teaching they did learn the Setswana. That was very important. And to try to work within the cultural setting and identify with the people. One of the ways, in Botswana, that new workers were intro­duced, was through village live-in. And we all spent varying amounts of time in the village. People that needed to learn Setswana very well spent longer periods of time in the village live-in, and then of course taking some language training.

She proceeded to describe the actual effect that this understanding of the mandate had on many missionaries. In the cases of some, the strong focus on practised servant­hood contributed to the premature termination of the service, because it asked too much of the human individual:

Oh we did some foolish things (because of) our style! I mean we put a single woman in (a certain place) and one at (another place). And in both cases we felt that there were enough other support people around, but it just didn’t work. Yeah, emotional breakdowns! And some of the married women had emotional troubles, too. But because of a strong partner they were able to pull through it, and hang in there.

To conclude this section on burdens: Clearly, in the long term, the women were faced with many challenges which caused them serious emotional strain. As a result, many suffered from emotional disorders which ranged from mild to serious, with some even having to terminate their service prematurely. The following section describes and analyzes a few individual examples of women who experienced emotional shipwreck—and their subsequent recovery and remodeling of their sense of call. This is done with a special focus on Anabaptist/Mennonite factors potentially related to these events, by asking the question whether the women’s Anabaptist/Mennonite roots—especially the under­standing of the divine call as the call to discipleship and to counter-cultural living—contributed in any way to their attrition.


The Call Remodeled


The crisis of the call is usually related to aspects of the women’s concepts of their sense of call that did not stand the test of real life in mission. In their application statements, many—especially early missionaries—had stated heroically their conviction that God would give them the strength for mission-related suffering, and that therefore it was not to be feared. Many women had also grown up with an almost idealized view of Menno­nites who had suffered for their faith. Missionary 16 had grown up with the notion that a believer needed to be broken, and that therefore it was desirable to be broken:

When I was younger, I was almost wanting brokenness. ‘And I want to be broken, I want to be broken!’

However, she was not prepared for the reality of the suffering that she encountered in the mission situation:

(I had) some real hard experiences (on the mission field). And I have not welcomed that kind of brokenness. It’s been very painful. And looking back, I see that could have been welcomed as part of God’s work. (…) And now I said, ‘I don’t want this! This is too hard! I didn’t expect anything this hard!’ So I guess I do (accept suffering as part of God’s work in my life), but—I could say in the past three years that I haven’t welcomed it. Like it hasn’t been fun (…), but when you know it’s God’s work you can.

At the time of the interview, she still struggled to try to readjust her romanticized view of human suffering, and of God’s role in it. After the family’s premature return from the mission field, she remained in a state of confusion. She had retained her view that it was possible to view suffering in a different light if one accepted it as part of God’s overall work in one’s life, yet her former clear-cut conviction on this issue was giving way to a much quieter, more realistic persuasion. Her experience had led her to the conclusion that it was not easy to understand God’s plan, or to positively integrate her missionary suffering into her faith life. In this regard, her daughter’s post-mission sentiments seemed to echo her own:

(She was) feeling like we were spit up, chewed up, and thrown out.

Missionary 17, too, had to adjust important aspects of her sense of call, including her original view of herself, of God, and of her calling. This came about through traumatic mission-related experiences. Her story illustrates how the tendency to reduce certain aspects of Anabaptist/Mennonite faith to static behavioral patterns such as a ‘can do’, ‘will do,’ and ‘have to do’ attitude,117 without a strong supernatural dimension, posed a danger to the missionary calling. In her case, her self-reliance and competency, which had been encouraged in her early religio-cultural environment, had engendered in her a certain sense of pride that, over time, seriously put her calling in jeopardy. She prefaced her story by commenting on how unexpectedly easily she initially coped with many of the commonly feared missionary challenges:

I had liked it! I liked it there! Our journey to Africa turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be—which was a surprise, but it was much easier! Culture-wise, language-wise, friends with other missionaries-wise, senior missionaries-wise, relationship-wise with the Africans.

Yet in spite of the fact that her initial re-location experience turned out to be ‘better than (she) had expected,’ she admitted that

yet it was so difficult!

The primary sources of her stress had both major external and internal origins. Firstly, even though she coped well externally with individual adjustments to missionary life, it was the accumulation of the demands, particularly as a young working wife and mother, that proved too much in the end. A second exacerbating factor was the duration of the stress. Her initial period of service lasted for an uninterrupted five years. This for her, and for others like her, proved to be:

Too long and too hard.

Thirdly, against the backdrop of this multiplicity of ongoing demands, she was put in charge of the primary school girls at the mission school, which was known to be a notori­ously difficult assignment:

After I had been (on the mission field) a year, our baby was three months old, one of the missionaries that was in charge of the girls left on furlough—the girls lived in dormitory-style housing and went to primary school on the mission station. I was assigned to that job by the other missionaries. And it was always considered to be one of the hardest jobs on the mission station. It was considered to be so difficult! And I was so young, and I had a baby! And it was the hardest thing I ever did in my life, but it was also the best!

She dealt with these heavy external demands with an internal response which was largely based on her optimistic view of her personal abilities and strength118—charac­terized by a strong sense of determination, competitiveness, and as she herself admits, of pride:

I in my own heart decided:‘This is not too hard.’ I had a lot of pride: ‘This is not too hard for me! I know that the single ladies have a lot more to give to this than I do as a married woman with a husband and two children. But I can do it, and I can do it even as good as they can—or better! And I’m going to!’ That’s the kind of determination—it’s not very godly, but that’s the kind of determination I had!

This ‘can do’ attitude as a response to the challenges of her missionary call was very likely influenced by some virtues of her childhood, which in her personal case had included

hard work, obedience, pulling your fair share of whatever.

She had further been taught by her father the proud—and at the same time shame-oriented—self-sufficiency which refuses to admit weakness or ask for assistance. She was the one who had been told during the great depression that

Mennonites don’t go on relief!

Eventually, after the birth of her second child, she collapsed emotionally under the burden of her heroic battle with her sense of call:

After I had my second baby I had a nervous breakdown—I mean not a real one, but a bordered-on one as you could get.

She experienced classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress.119

(I) couldn’t sleep, was afraid of everything. So they sent us to the lake, where we had three cottages. (…) And I wouldn’t let the children go swimming, which is so far away from my character you have no idea! I was scared the snakes would get them! I had never been scared before. But I was afraid of everything! And I couldn’t sleep. And my mind did not stop working! And you know what I noticed? You can think on two different levels. You can be doing the normal thing that you are supposed to be doing, just on automatic pilot, and this thing is just going, going, going, going. It never stops! So I could have really had a terrible break down! But I was fortunate, I didn’t.

Her condition was treated according to mission practices at the time, by lay people such as a missionary nurse, and with the help of her husband. In her case, the critical turn-around was initiated as her husband, and a missionary with whom she had secretly been competing, intervened to relieve her of her assignment, in which she had been deter­mined to succeed although it clearly exceeded her resources:

And then this missionary lady that I had thought that I could do it better than she could, was back from her furlough, and I had had the girls already for two, three years. And it was sink or swim—learn the language or die, and also learn the culture or die. And I was very deter­mined, and then my husband went to this missionary lady and (…) She looked at him, and she said bring me the keys! Just like that, bring me the keys. So he came home, and she knew that work backwards and forwards, she’d done it for years. And so he came and got the keys, and she took over from there, and I could be at home, and we could make it our five years.

According to her, the critical factor in her temporary missionary shipwreck lay not only in the external factors she was faced with, but importantly also with the internal coping mechanisms with which she had faced them. In hindsight she discerned this coping mechanism as having been

not very godly.

She had misunderstood the divine call through her own need to succeed:

This determination of mine, that I was gonna be able to do the girls' work no matter what—I did that to myself.

Her experience ties in with Missionary 5’s observation:

I think our self-esteem can be really tied in to being asked to do something, or offering to do something. And then calling is the sacrifice, the cross that Christ has given me to bear and stuff! So it’s all tied together, I think, in how we perceive the gospel, how we perceive our call, how we perceive the needs out in the world, how we perceive our own self-image and care kind of thing!

The actual turn-around and healing process of this super-efficient missionary dep­end­ed on her gaining critical new insights into herself, her missionary motivation, and into the God who had called her. In doing so, she had to drop counterproductive aspects of her personality, which had been supported by Mennonite faith and practice. In addition, she had to drop her heroine status—so evident in many older application forms, and in the long-held perception of many home constituencies.120 These unrealistic and therefore destructive components of her interpretation of the call had to be dismantled, inter alia through what, in classic theology, would be called confession and repentance:

And I know also when I went and begged forgiveness from the single missionary woman, and told her how much I admired her for when she just said to (my husband), ‘Bring the keys;’ how she had saved my missionary career.

Her calling was further revived by a similar cycle of events during her subsequent first furlough, which she eventually embarked on while still emotionally vulnerable.


Initially, she again acted according to the shame-oriented behavioral pattern she had learnt as a child and had displayed on the mission field before—this time trying to avoid loss of face before her home constituency. And again, this cover-up behavior prevented her from receiving much needed support. In this instance, too, it was the spiritual insight of a mature friend that broke this destructive cycle:

One day in church, a friend of mine said, ‘I’m praying very hard that the Lord is gonna give you the joy to go back to the Congo!’ And I said, ‘Does it show?’ She said, ‘No it doesn’t show!’ I said, ‘How do you know?’ She said, ‘The Holy Spirit told me!’ (…) And I thought I was putting on a wonderful front. But inside I just cringed!

Similar to the boarding school episode, her disclosure of her inability to cope, and her confession to a friend, proved to be the beginning of another significant turn­around in her missionary calling:

I’ll never forget it! And it wasn’t too long after that that I did begin to feel that it would be OK to go back.

Her move from super-achiever to a flawed missionary in need of love and grace is echoed by a parallel development in her concept of God. Over time, it changed from that of God the distant and rather stern observer, to that of a loving protector, as represented by Jesus:

M.S.: Do you remember what God was like for you as a little girl?
Missionary 17: God was very holy. (…) God was austere, but very, very holy. And you addressed him in a special language. He was not to be trifled with.
M.S.: Is that still how you imagine him today?
Missionary 17: No, no! No, as a mother hen, sitting on her little chicks, protecting them, that’s how he has become for me.
M.S.: When did the change occur?
Missionary 17: I don’t know, gradually I think—a whole different pic­ture! Although I still believe he is very holy, but I see him so different. If Jesus is a picture of God, that changes everything from what my first idea of God was!

In this aspect, too, her retrospective oral witness, based on her actual mission experi­ence, introduced a more realistic view than the triumphalist convictions that are also found in some of the archival material, and that she had initially held herself—namely that through Christ one can do all things and overcome all obstacles.121 It is not so much that in hindsight the interviewee would deny the basic truth of such beliefs. Rather, she had become aware that her ‘hardest experience’ also turned out to be her ‘best,’ because it caused her to undergo a major paradigm shift:


She had to shed the (partly Mennonite) burden of a false, that is un­real­istically optimistic, view of her own capability and strength.


She had to shed, over time, the Mennonite burden of the distant, dem­and­ing divine caller, and get to know his compassionate, protective side through Christ. In Mennonite-specific Christological terms we may say that she integrated into her ontological Christology the human Christ.122


Missionary 18’s story contains some striking similarities to the previous one—the recurring element being that the missionary calling was for a long time meshed with a strong internal drive to compete and to succeed. Earlier on, in the interview, she had explained that her own sense of call was connected with that of her mother, who

had been very anxious to have her children be missionaries, or at least (…) (she) kind of directed (them) to the ministry, some kind of Christ­ian ministry, and also some kind of helping profession.123

Missionary 18’s powerful drive, which was probably at least partly due to her early conditioning, surfaced strongly for the first time when she and her family were unable to return to Africa after their evacuation on account of the political unrest in the Congo. One of the reasons for having to remain in the U.S. between 1960-1970 was her hus­band’s ill health. This circumstance clashed with her inner voice:

I had a feeling all that time. I had had this strong motivation to go as a missionary. Because a lot of the missionaries did go back! 124

As a result, she developed permanent feelings of frustration:125

I always kind of felt some resentment about it!

With hindsight, she was able to appreciate the bigger picture, and became aware of God’s hidden blessings which she had been unable to appreciate in her frustration at the time:

When we went back to Congo, and I saw how some of the other mission­ary kids struggled with going away to school, and had different kinds of problems, I was so glad that we had had those ten years with our children.

After a break in the interview, she volunteered the following insight, which she described as having been important to her. As had been the case, to some degree, in her previous story—and in that of the missionary quoted immediately before—her strong internal drive, too, had turned against her and her calling. In her case, it eventually also affected her marriage relationship, her husband’s emotional health, and to some degree that of her children. The first part of this story deals with a critical phase in her mis­sion­ary calling126 as a medical doctor, during which a new young workaholic colleague be­came her point of reference. As had been the case in the previous case study, her compe­t­itive nature took over as the driving force behind her calling:

I guess there was some of my competitiveness, which came out, which I know I have had all my life! As long as I was the only doctor I could say I can do so much and no more! But we got another doctor, and that should have made my load easier! Well what happened was, this was a man who was about young enough to be my son, and I had this feeling that I had to do as much work as he did. He had a wife and family, and his wife took care of running the household. But I ran the household. There wasn’t a lot to do, but there were things to do, to plan the meals and to see that your cook was there and got things done, and then in the evenings we had to make our own meals. Our cook was only there for the noon meal. And another thing is, this second doctor was a work­aholic. And he used to spend a lot of time at the hospital, missing meals and that kind of thing. And I somehow got into that pattern too, because I wasn’t going to be outdone!

This competition, which she allowed herself to be drawn into, began to seriously affect her relationships, including her marriage and her association with her patients:

It got to the place where my husband really got quite put out with me. And he told me one time, ‘I think you love your work more than you do me!’ And I told him, ‘No I don’t, I hate my work! Because at that point I did hate my work! I was just doing it because I felt I had to—in the meantime I wasn’t enjoying it! And one day that really brought things to a head when I got angry with a patient simply because the patient was ill at an inopportune time.

She, too, reached a critical turning point in her calling when she had to admit her inability to cope constructively with her punishing schedule, which she realized was self-inflicted rather than being a sign of virtue:

And I thought, ‘What’s getting into me? Something has to change!’ So my husband and I finally talked things over, and we decided I didn’t have to go on my colleague’s schedule. Actually, I was in charge, I could make my own schedule! And I was in my fifties already. He was in his thirties, which makes a difference, even though you don’t want it to, but it does! So we made some rules about it, that I would come home for meals unless there was an emergency—and most of the time it wasn’t an emergency! In the afternoon, we used to do surgery, and make rounds in the morning, and then have clinics in the afternoon. And that I wouldn’t see more than so many patients in an afternoon.

At this crisis point, she was humbled, had to overcome the accompanying ‘shame’ of having limitations, and had to have the courage to disappoint the expectations of an un­sym­pathetic colleague and staff:

My colleague and the staff could never understand that! They couldn’t understand that I had to make limits, but I had to do it anyway, and things went much better then.

As a result, her missionary work turned from a burden into a satisfying task:

I really started to feel like I enjoyed my work again, and actually got a lot more done. Because I found you don’t get a lot done when you are tired.

For her, the entire episode was at its core a spiritual experience. Through it, she recognized and shed the burden of her strong need to succeed. She further realized that she had instrumentalized God for her own needs—that is, she had made God part of her burden. After the turn-around, she became increasingly prepared to let him set the pace instead. Through this, her sense of call was profoundly remodeled:

I found that God gives you strength if you need it for real emergencies, and that he doesn’t give you strength when you just do it for your ego trip! And so that really was a spiritual experience!

As a long-term result, her medical ministry broadened to include a faith-teaching ministry, which provided her with the ‘most satisfaction:’

The thing that gave me the most satisfaction, the last couple of years I was there, was teaching a course to my nurses in French on what it means to be a Christian—because we had a stipulation that our nurses all had to be Christians. But sometimes their idea of what it meant to be a Christian was very shallow. We’d interview people who wanted jobs, and we’d ask them what it means to be a Christian. ‘Oh,’ they would say, ‘It means following the rules of the church,’ or, ‘my parents were Mennonites, so I’m a Mennonite too’—answers like that which didn’t really cut it. And so I developed this course myself. I just really felt the Lord was helping me. It was completely from the Scriptures, what the Scriptures say about sin and salvation, and how a Christian behaves, and that gave me a real sense of satisfaction! (…) And when it was over, then I interviewed each one and asked them what the course had meant to them. And a number of them said that they had accepted Christ because of this. They had the name before, but they didn’t really know what it meant. It was shortly before we came home, and it was a very, very satisfying experience for me!

Her story-line illustrates that, often, such critical turn-arounds in the women’s inter­pretation of their sense of call were not single but rather recurring events that kept lead­ing them into a deeper understanding of themselves, of God, and of their sense of call.


The turn-around stories documented so far mainly concerned missionaries with a traditional sense of call, and touched primarily on their perfectionism and high achieve­ments, which in Anabaptism/Mennonitism is supported by their optimistic regen­erative anthropology. Next, we shall investigate how the call to discipleship, and the call to follow the humble Christ, based on the Anabaptist functional anthropology, could also turn into a burden.


The following story further illustrates that not only the women themselves, but also their families, particularly their children, were over-extended under idealistically imple­mented discipleship that in this case practised a high degree of identification and integ­ration. Missionary 4 recounted the exceptionally high price that one of her daughters especially had to pay for what she termed the family’s ‘over-identification’ with the local population. Their extraordinary effort at integration/identification was additionally motiv­ated by their desire to make up for mistakes of previous generations and their ‘colonialist’ mission approach:

The way we overreacted to the colonialists was to over-identify. We took identification with the culture so strongly that our children in the early years had to make a bigger cultural jump than was possible for them. The other two always did quite well, but the youngest one didn’t. (…) And that’s been our hardest experience as a family, that as a four- and five-year-old we moved here (to the U.S.A.) and back again. And both of those transitions were very painful. And when we got back, she got very, very angry, a lot of negative behavior. We didn’t understand what was wrong with her. Now we are understanding that that was a major trauma, because of the culture. Just like children are traumatized maybe in abuse here (in the U.S.A.) or something, she went through a trauma just from such a big cultural jump. And we didn’t know enough. We didn’t realize that by identifying to the degree that we did (to the local culture), we were putting our children under a lot of pressure. (…) The transitions, going to Africa and one of the most traditional villages I believe. There was no school there when we moved there. And there is almost nothing that happens in that village that a Westerner could understand without studying it. There is no aspect of life, either physical or social or the community structure that is like in the West. It’s a different world, and the kids had to learn all different rules, eating, and relating, and respecting. And so there’s lots of things here that aren’t natural for them at all.

One very significant effect this development had on the interviewee was the sense of guilt it triggered in her. This was, as an example, expressed in her preface to the above account:

This is where I think the biggest mistake we made, and my husband and I of course had to take responsibility for this!

In addition to considerations of mission praxis, her extraordinarily ‘radical’ approach to mission life had partly been influenced by her personal maxim that if a pursuit is

not a challenge it’s not worth doing.

Her mission assignment, of introducing the Word of God to an ‘un-reached peoples group,’ then also turned at times largely into a personal quest to devise strategies, with the divine dimension receding into the background:

At the start of our mission, I feel like I lapsed more into studying the Bible in a more of an intellectual way. And that would be the way my husband would study it more, too. Kind of studying it to learn things.

However, a major crisis in her own life, and that of her entire family, generated a profound readjustment in her approach to her missionary call. As a first step she took personal responsibility for mistakes that were made. Secondly, this brought about a painfully changed, but more realistic, assessment of her optimistic view of herself and of her role in what was at its core the missio dei:

When there are struggles, (a person like me) will always put the blame in other places. And I have done an awful lot of that! My husband especially has taken the brunt of that. (…) And so when we struggled, I just pointed fingers and said, ‘Well it all comes from you!’ Today I cannot say that any more, and that’s hard, but it’s very, very good for me to go through that! And I will be more usable by God because of it. So I am thankful for it. But it’s hard, it really is hard! Emotionally, it really brings you down, because you realize you’re kind of dependent on it for some kind of security. And when that’s gone—I’m not who I thought I was—it’s unsettling, it’s very unsettling!

A third step in her chain of responses was that she discovered new aspects of the divine caller—particularly his redeeming, caring, and comforting aspects, by returning to a devotional approach to faith rather than her previous predominantly rational one:

When these things started happening with our family, I had to run to God for comfort. And so then the Psalms took on a new meaning, and I just desperately needed, so the Bible became a devotional book instead of something to learn things from. And I still have an intellectual mind, and I still enjoy learning things from the Bible.

She, too, like the previous two missionaries in this section of personal case studies, experienced a shift from a position of personal strength to one of personal weakness. In addition, during the subsequent furlough she developed a renewed focus on the healing, regenerating aspects of the divine caller, and of a supportive Christian fellowship group:

When I first came back (on furlough), I was just so burned out and down, and I’d go to (my) prayer group, and I think the first month I cried through all the singing every time. And some of these people didn’t hardly even know me! And I couldn’t say anything. I just cried and cried. And that really kind of got me out of depression. (..) Everything that was stored up in there. And the promises of God were just so overwhelming! Some of it was grief, but some of it was that renewal of God’s presence. That group has a lot of healing songs. That was definite praying to God for healing. And I knew music was important! We’ve done a lot of music as a family. We’re all good singers. And so that’s always been important. But leading your children in singing is different than sitting in a prayer group and singing!

All these stories show that, for a calling to be sustained in the long term, it needs to be continually re-modeled. Although most missionaries had undergone a conversion experience in their youth, at the basis of their re-modeling processes was renewed repent­ance—a prominent early Anabaptist concept. In this process, the missionaries (not the Africans) were converted: They changed, through an ongoing process, their view of themselves, and of the divine caller.

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1Cf. for example AD 7.


2 Cf. for example AD 57.


3Some missionaries whose application forms were investigated, also granted interviews, usually decades after having filled in those forms.


4AD 55.


5 These findings loosely fit into Dana Robert’s observation based on biographies of 19th century female missionaries, that ‘most of the time, the commitment to mission preceded commitment to the husband.’ (Dana L. Robert, ‘American Women in Mission, A Social History of their Thought and Practice,’ Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1997, p.21).


6Cf. Dana Robert’s discussion of the substitution of their own call by 19th century (evangelical) missionary wives through that of their husbands, a practice she ascribes to a minority of women, ibid., pp. 21f).


7Missionary 28, AD 12.


8Cf. AD 45.


9Cf. AD 7.


10 Some churches organized special Mission Festivals, which were seen as ‘a real encouragement to the missionary as well as to the home people’ (Missionary 41, AD 63).


11 Missionary 20, AD 45.


12To determine if and to what degree it was God speaking through these experiences is beyond the scope of this book. This question will, however, at least to some degree be dealt with again later on in the book.


13There was a strong indication in the written evidence that many considered missions from their childhood. Missionary 35 stated on her preliminary information blank that she had considered mission work ‘Ever since I was a child.’ (AD 31). This fact was so important that, much later in her life, it was also mentioned in biography memo about her (AD 33).


14 Missionary 29, AD 14.


15Missionary 34 was one of those missionaries who presented the missionary cause to children during her furlough. In a letter she shared her joy of presenting ‘a list of small articles such as I might need to take back with me when returning to the field,’ to a group of ‘smaller children’ at a children’s birthday party (AD 30).


16The mission board gave the prospective missionary 27 practical advice on how to testify in the churches she visited: ‘It will be well that you visit some congregations and ladies' societies in Saskatchewan before you leave. Yes, it is true, you cannot tell people much as a missionary, but you can tell about your call to mission work and your spiritual pilgrimage thus far, and also share something of what you have read about non-Christian people’s condition’ (AD 52).


17 Missionary 38, AD 39.

18 AD 57.


19 Missionary 32, AD 6.


20 Missionary 29, AD 14.


21AD 9.


22Cf. for example AD 57.

23Cf. Isaiah 6,8.


24AD 7.


25AD 9.


26Overall, these concerns were very similar to those of the 19th century missionary Ann Hasseltine, who ‘wrestled over feelings of religious duty, over her attachment to her family, and her dread of suffering alone in a foreign land;’ the original worries of Harriet Atwood about becoming a missionary, which mainly consisted of having to leave her ‘every temporal mercy’ and her friends; and the initial objections of Sarah Davis, of having to leave her friends and family (all quoted in American Women in Mission, p.19).


27Missionary 32, AD 68.


28Missionary 29, AD 14.

29AD 51.


30AD 51.


31This is partly borne out by the findings in the section on the early development of the call, which deals with romantic notions about life in missions.


32Missionary 33, AD 24.


33AD 9.


34Ibid.


35GC application form, Missionary 18, undated.


36Ibid.


37 Missionary 2, AD 13.

38Missionary 2, AD 13.


39Based on this Christology, this is how Missionary 8 understood her witness: ‘I have tried to live a Christian life for others to see.’ (AD 55).


40Cf. for example AD 67.


41Missionary 28, AD 12.


42Missionary 38, AD 39.


43 Missionary 38, AD 39.


44 Missionary 41, AD 60.


45 Missionary 38, AD 39.


46 Missionary 41, AD 60.


47 This is also illustrated by the singing of the consecration hymn, ‘Go Labor on! Spend and be Spent’ during the mission ordination service of Missionary 5 and her husband (AD 40).

48 Missionary 36, AD 37.

49 Missionary 36, ibid.

50 Missionary 26, AD 9.


51 Missionary 29, AD 14.


52Missionary 26, AD 9.


53Missionary 26, ibid.


54Missionary 2, AD 13.


55Missionary 2, ibid.


56Dana Robert’s findings on the subject of the missionary motivation of 19th century evangelical Protestant women indicate that, in this the early 20th century, CIM/AIMM woman missionaries were no different from missionaries of mainstream Protestant denominations. Cf. Dana Robert’s discussion of the topic in her Section on ‘Missionary Motivation and Gender in American Women in Mission, pp.24-36.


57AD 4.


58 Missionary 29, AD 14.


59 Missionary 40, AD 57.


60Missionary 40, in a letter from Congo, was motivated more by guilt: ‘Many years ago God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel if he did not warn the wicked man of his evil way, to save his life, and the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, his blood will be required from thy hand. This is still an inspiration and a real cause to us today that we warn the wicked to turn from their wicked ways. That’s why we are here, across the ocean, away from loved ones’ (AD 59).


61AD 5.


62 AD 65.


63AD 13.


64 Missionary 20, AD 47.


65Missionary 5 and husband, AD 41.

66Their professions almost exclusively fell into the typical female helping domain of those days, such as education and health care, areas into which we know they had been steered in their youth by their families and communities.


67Missionary 18, AD 69.


68Missionary 24, AD 7.


69Missionary 33, AD 54.


70 Missionary 38, AD 39.


71Missionary 8, AD 56.


72AD 67.


73We shall further develop this theme of the Mennonite burden at a later point in the book.


74At the same time, it reflected the thinking of the 60's generation, and fell into the mission paradigm of the time.


75Missionary 5 and husband, AD 42.


76The passing away of far-away parents was among those often stressful losses. Missionary 33 wrote to the mission board: ‘I very much wanted to make Sunday’s Pan American flight out of Leo at 7 p.m. (But) at 12 noon (…) there was a telegram telling me of mother’s homegoing and advised me not to come’ (AD 25).


77The journey itself was often hazardous, particularly in the early days and during war times. The mission board informed missionary 40 that one missionary’s departure for the mission field had been held up ‘because of the attack on the Portuguese steamer by a submarine not long ago’ (AD 50). Missionary 37 related: ‘We had a rather rough voyage. We would have been able to enjoy it more if we had had smoother sailing. Our greatest difficulty was that we did not have enough cargo, as a result we were floating on top’ (AD 38).


78Missionary 22 and her husband wrote: ‘We are all looking forward to our return to the Congo—realizing that conditions there will not be ideal, but believing that it is God’s place for us’ (AD 66). Missionary 41 wrote similarly: ‘It’s good to be back in Congo again. This is my home and here is my work. I have great peace that this is God’s place for me’ (AD 1).


79We find a similar pattern, of pointing out difficulties but moving on soon to the positive aspects of a situation, in the archival material, too—although it is easier to put on a brave face in a letter than in an oral testimony: ‘I will be moving to Mutena at this time. While we will be lacking some of the conveniences there which we enjoy here (such as electricity) we should have much greater opportunity for contact with the people. I am looking forward to this (Missionary 20, AD 46). Missionary 35 stated similarly: ‘Twenty-four students take piano lessons with me. Other responsibilities are to teach Reading ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic with grades three, four and five, also to have French in Lower Room, Upper Room, and High School, and then there is the Junior Choir and the Senior Choir. To me it is a joy to be busy. As faculty members, we keep looking up for our daily supply of strength (AD 34). We find a similar positive meta-narrative in the following letter excerpt, describing a couple’s experiences in Brussels during language study: ‘We can remember many frustrations and difficulties, but they are over-shadowed by the benefits we have received from living in and becoming part of another culture’ (Missionary 5 and husband, AD 41).


80Especially for the older generation missionaries, their arrival in the Congo by plane, even after a prolonged preparation time, came as a shock in itself, as the following statement indicates: ‘Things happen so fast when one goes by aeroplane that it takes a while to realize the change that has taken place’ (Missionary 39, AD 48).


81 Missionary 34 AD 30.


82GC executive secretary to Missionary 34’s parents, AD 5.


83Missionary 35, AD 21.


84The general secretary at the time advised a prospective missionary on the basis of this event: ‘Work hard now, also with your French, but when you get to the Congo be sure not to pressure yourself. Take it real easy the first six months. Study some local language but let your mind and body take time to adjust to that new world’ (To Missionary 27, AD 53).


85Her husband was present at this interview.


86She had grown up as an MK in India.


87She had spent her school years at boarding school.


88It was not only those who did not have a personal sense of call who initially found the conditions difficult. Missionary 33 had felt called, for example, but still experienced the first six month as ‘difficult.’ (AD 24).


89In contrast, another prospective missionary, who had a strong sense of call but was delayed in her departure for the mission field, wrote to the executive mission secretary, ‘among other things I bought a fairly good recorder at Missionary Equipment. As (…) I have had no French teacher since Christmas, I decided to record the French records the C.I.M. office has and study French on my own’ (Missionary 27, AD 10). She wrote later from Brussels, where she conducted her initial language studies: ‘(L)anguage study is not an easy task but I’m so glad that I’m finding it real interesting now. It is really quite a challenge’ (Missionary 27, AD 11).


90Missionary 4, and her husband who was present for part of the interview, identified learning of the local language as a pre-requisite for successful re-location and integration into the local population and eventually for a ‘successful’ ministry. Husband: ‘We have learned that the spouse who does not have the calling needs to get in and learn the language and begin to mingle with people and to associate with them. Or else we are going to lose them really fast.’ Missionary 4: ‘That would be the best way to get them in, because they are going to hold back from contact with people, so they need to be the ones right up front there, getting the language in, and then you might be able to save their work.’


91These re-location difficulties were evident even during their furloughs, which for many early missionaries only occurred after four or five years of service. In a letter, Missionary 29 described how, during her furlough, she needed to readjust to life in North America: ‘It has been a time of getting acquainted again with everyday life in America, of renewing old friendships (AD 16).


92Missionary 18 had a similar sense of betraying the call when, after her family’s evacuation from the Congo, she was forced through her husband’s illness to remain on furlough much longer than she had anticipated or felt comfortable with. She said in her interview: ‘I don’t know if this relates to you, but it was important for me. The ten years that we were home between 1960 and 1970, my husband wasn’t too well, I had a feeling all that time. I had had this strong motivation to go as a missionary. And so I felt all the time somewhat guilty that we didn’t go back. Because a lot of the missionaries did go back! And somehow or other it just didn’t work out for us, and I kind of felt some resentment about it.’


93 Cf. her statement in ‘The Role of the Call in the Short Term Cultural Relocation’ …


94Numerous interviewees described their joint missionary call as ‘the glue’ that either ‘brought’ or ‘kept them together.’ (Missionary 18; similarly Missionary 6, and Missionary 5.)


95Missionary 13’s remarks, in a letter, show how inherently stressful was the loss of stability connected to a move. This was also true for the children. She wrote in connection with their threatening evacuation during the Congo uprising: ‘(The children) have gone back to school. We just hope and pray they won’t have to be uprooted from their studies. They feel the same way about it. When (our son) heard we might have to leave, he wrote, “I sure hope ‘all over’ we don’t have to go to America” (AD 19). Missionary 41 wrote similarly on returning to Congo after a prolonged furlough: ‘These last days of packing and preparation, moving out of our home, have been the usual upheaval of family life. It is not easy to tear out roots laid down during four years here’ (AD 65).


96This letter excerpt, written by Missionary 25 while on a ship on its way to the Congo, illustrates that the missionaries often felt like citizens of two worlds: ‘While sailing along on the ocean, away from one home and towards the other (…)’ (AD 8). Missionary 40 wrote on furlough: ‘I am homesick for my home in Africa’ (AD 58).


97Cf. Dana Robert’s observation that ‘(t)he immensity of the expectations for missionary wives in the early period of American foreign missions meant that most women could select only a portion for their mission, but would feel the burden of inadequacy for the whole’ (American Women in Mission, p.3).


98Missionary 35 wrote to her mission board a description of the strange foods that she had been introduced to in Africa: deer meat, mango sauce, planton chips, wild pig, and cooked rice cereal (AD 32).


99She was not the only one who indicated that she felt inadequately prepared for some of her duties. Missionary 35 wrote in her furlough report: ‘I didn’t really feel qualified to teach music as extensively as I did’ (AD 35) .


100AD 36.


101AD 28.


102AD 62.


103The women in both examples elsewhere described, with great enthusiasm, their own effective ministries.


104Missionary 32, AD 23.


105Missionary 30, AD 18.


106Missionary 43 and family, AD 44.


107AD 61.


108Missionary 33, for example, had contracted ‘Congo parasites’ (AD 26). Others suffered from malaria, and other ailments.


109Representatives of the mission board felt that her illness was a result of an overload of demands, although they seemed to play down her suffering: ‘We wanted to say that we admire you for carrying the load of a family plus pregnancy, plus learning another language. We suspect that all of this together accounts largely for the fact that you did not feel quite so chipper after the arrival of this last baby. However, we hope by now you are feeling much better and know the words ‘As thy day so shall thy strength be’ are for you’ (AD 49).


110This was one difficulty that missionaries also shared with their home constituencies. One mother shared in a letter: ‘I think this is one of the hardest things in a missionary life—seeing the children growing up and being away from them so much’ (Missionary 31, AD 22.)


111Missionary 19 and her husband wrote the following to a representative of the CIM mission board about the family’s deferred return to Congo: ‘Our delay in returning to Congo is alleviating some slight problems with (our daughter), and the fact that she would be staying behind. (17 is a very early age to be left entirely without parental guidance these days.)’ (AD 43.)


112AD 64.


113AD 3.


114AD 4.


115 AD 74.


116 AD 20.


117Missionary 30 had to learn on an extended furlough to ‘take time to enjoy myself and not feel guilty.’ She added: ‘I think there are others who need to learn this’ (AD 17).


118According to the application forms, many early missionaries had a strong sense of unworthiness as far as their calling. Over time this changed, with the modern approach explicitly selecting missionaries on the basis of their strengths, i..e. of their giftedness.


119These include anxiety caused by the exposure to severe stress (The Merck Manual of Medical Information, Pocket Books, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, 2003 p.556).


120Although the missionaries often did not feel free to share very deeply with their home constituencies while they were on the mission field, whatever home support they received was important to them. This is evident from the following letter excerpt: ‘The reports we have read of the Mission Candidate school at the Mission home in Chicago have been most encouraging. We were particularly touched that you had special prayer for those of us who are expecting little ones’ (Missionary 18, AD 27). Missionary 29 mentioned in her Christmas letter: ‘I want to take this opportunity to thank every one of you from the depths of my heart for your greetings, gifts and prayers’ (AD 15).


121This would be primarily a fundamentalist-revivalist burden.


122(Thomas Scarborough: Intended is not the model Jesus, but the compassionate Christ).

123Missionary 18.


124In general, the men returned to the Congo first. This required the women at home to be strong, while worrying about their husbands. Missionary 23 stated: ‘In his letter (my husband) wrote that they had once more returned to Leopoldville (…) We praise the Lord for his protection on this trip’ (AD 6).


125She hints at this in the way she ends a letter to the executive secretary during her forced furlough: ‘We still hope that the Lord will open the way that we can serve him again in the mission field, in Congo or elsewhere’ (AD 29).


126She asks herself, at another point in the interview, if her calling was really divine calling, or if it was the result of environmental conditioning.