The Way of Life for the Truth

I received the following newsletter from a couple who for me epitomise the DNA of CMS. They have served as Mission Partners mainly in Iran and Pakistan and have kept on serving in their retirement -  they responded to the command to GO back in the 1960s and have kept on GOing.  I  quote chunks of their letter in full, but will keep it all anonymous to give a level of protection and anonymity.  But we give thanks for their nearly half century of mission service in West Asia......... Phil :-)

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

                            I took the less travelled one.           (Robert Frost. 1915)

Long before we first met in 1951 we had each decided to take the less travelled road. Studying in different universities and working in other hospitals, it was 12 years before we became engaged. Married in the Spring of 1963, we took our honeymoon driving overland to Isfahan, the beautiful Safavid city on the high desert plateau of central Iran. There in the old established mission hospital one soon discovered that mission work isn’t a job, but a 24/7 way of life; percolating every thought, persuading every decision, penetrating all performance. To us it was a Way of  Life for the Truth, and though we never lived up to the ideal, and though it was not just a job, we found untold job-satisfaction in it.

Being expelled by Islamic revolutionaries in 1979 was a shattering blow, yet God had already opened  less travelled roads in Pakistan, We served first on the plains of the Punjab in Lahore, then along the country’s troubled Afghan borderland in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan; until, a couple of years back, we conceded we could no longer meet the demands of work in a mission hospital. So after a short trip out last year to help in a crisis in the Christian Hospital at remotest Tank, we returned  home in February this year.

Starting in the 1960’s with visions of reaping a harvest, we soon came down to earth realizing that we were still at  the stage of preparing the soil and occasionally sowing the seed. Yet in Iran now, as in China, a wonderful harvest is being reaped, though at great cost to the new believers,  and perhaps not much through our own spadework. In Pakistan our aim was different; buttressing  the beleaguered church in their Good Samaritan mission and concept of serving the majority community, who generally look down on them.  Such work must go on.

In prayer please constantly remember the need for dedicated Pakistani Christian doctors, nurses, and admin staff for the hospitals in Quetta and Tank. At a Christian medical conference we attended in Lahore last February a Pakistani doctor said about Tank ‘Oh that’s too difficult for us, only missionaries can work there’.   And so it is.   Maybe a career dead-end. Tough on wives and children too.  Few have tried it. Fewer  survived. Only the God-called can.

The Samaritan was only one on the Jericho road that day. A hazardous road.

Having begun with some lines  from Robert Frost, we end with some from

J R Tolkien. Though in a different context, they epitomise The Way – our Way;

Roads go ever on and on 

Under cloud and under star,                           The Road goes ever on and on

Yet feet that wandering have gone                Out from the door where it began.

Turn at last to home afar;                             Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Look at last on meadows green                       Let  others follow it who can.

And trees and hills they long have known.       Let  them a journey new begin.