Tyler and Emily in PNG

Emily’s Story

Growing up, my vision of missionaries, were people who lived in grass huts amongst foreign people.  I thought all missionaries washed their clothes in rivers and cooked over an open fire.  When I heard missionaries speak in my home church I contemplated climbing in their suitcases, so I could go to the ends of the earth with them.

As a child I never thought that I would be a missionary.  I never let myself put my dreams overseas.  I was convinced I would be one to send people.  I didn’t know if my heart really matched my dreams.

When I traveled out of the country to Guatemala for the first time, I was heartbroken for the people.  I wanted to somehow help them build better houses than those built out of cardboard.  I knew coming back on the airplane that I would not travel to another foreign country unless I was bettering their country somehow.

My dream to go on a mission’s trip came true the spring of my sophomore year.  I was able to travel to Chihuahua City, Chihuahua to work with an orphanage.  During my short time there I fell in love with different culture.  I felt God’s pull strongly on my heart.  I felt he was calling me to a ministry in a different culture.  This call was felt even stronger the next year when I returned to Chihuahua, only to be confirmed in Ecuador later that summer.

I knew after I returned from Ecuador that I would be spending my life in a foreign culture.  I was fairly sure that I would return to a Hispanic country.  But God had bigger plans, which he revealed to me over the next year.

How God Led Me to Pioneer Bible Translators

During my last fall at home, before enrolling at Ozark Christian College in January 2005, I received a call from an organization asking me to go to Africa with them the upcoming summer.

That summer I went to South Africa and Zimbabwe knowing that God had something in store for me.  I didn’t expect to have my worldview rocked, but God is more powerful than I could imagine at the time.  By the time I returned from Africa I wasn’t sure where I was headed, but I knew God had bigger plans than me returning to South America.

At this point I was looking for a place to intern for the spring semester of 2007.  I was contemplating returning to the missionaries in South Africa and serving under them, but during my time of preparation, I felt the door close.  With that door closed, I felt one open to get onboard with Pioneer Bible Translators and travel to Papua New Guinea to work with a Literacy and Scripture Impact programs enabling villagers to read the Word of God for the first time ever.

Upon serving in Papua New Guinea in 2007, I felt God’s confirmation once again that I was to be a missionary on the foreign field.  I fell in love with the country of Papua New Guinea, I got to live out my dream to live in a grass hut and bathe in the river.  I was able to watch people read the Word of God for the first time ever in their own language and see expressions of understanding flood over their face as they read about my God.  I handed books of Scriptures to people in five different languages for the first time ever and spent a week teaching them way they could infiltrate Scripture into their lives and allow it to minister to their families and communities.  I know this is what God is calling me to do, because He has given me the gifts and tools to return to those men and women.  He has placed the dream of living in the jungles not just for the adventure of being Jane of the jungle, but because He knows there are still people waiting to hear his Gospel.

As of May 2010, I returned to Papua New Guinea to serve with Pioneer Bible Translators as the resident Scripture Impact Specialist.  Since then, I have been able to build relationship with our national translators, literacy workers and teammates in Madang.