36 Years on the Mission Field

Fair Warning: You are probably going to need some tissues as you read this one. Also- if you have personally been impacted by John and Nancy, please read to the bottom of this post as I have a “call to action” for you!

Next week, my parents, John and Nancy, are boarding a plane and semi-permanently leaving the mission field, where they have lived and worked for the past 36 years.

Yes, 36 years.

This is monumental. This moment is equal parts excitement and grief. It is the silent applause of the hundreds (thousands?) of people whose lives they have touched. It is a couple of suitcases full of almost every last item they own.

We joke that when my parents pass away, there will be no inheritance. It’s funny because it’s true. They have spent their entire life building no wealth for themselves. They have practically nothing to their names.

But what they have done instead is poured solid cement into the foundations of so many souls. They have poured into young, single missionaries arriving fresh and Holy-spirit filled onto the field. They have poured into pastors and students who are studying to become pastors from many different countries in West Africa. They have poured into so many people in the village of Tera, being one of the first and only people to bring the gospel to the Songhai people there. They poured into the countless MKs who spent school breaks and Saturday afternoons crashing at their tiny house. They have poured into fellow missionaries who are walking the roads caked with equal parts dirt and the weight of the steady plod of a life overseas. They have poured into people stateside who support them, and have worked hard to continue relationships despite the oceans that separate them.

In their years in Niger, they have filled a lot of different shoes! They began their ministry intending to do youth ministry in a village out east. They then shifted to focus on church planning in a town called Tera. They dedicated 16 years to serving the people in Tera and establishing a church among the Songhai. I could talk forever about the many trials and obstacles they worked through in those 16 years, including learning how to speak and write in Songhai (eventually helping to translate many Bible lessons and correspondence courses into Songhai/Zarma), they learned how to live with no electricity and frequent shut-off’s of the running water. One of the greatest examples of faith in my life has been how my parents spent 16 years dedicated to the people of Tera. When they made the hard choice to leave, the barely-established church there had crumbled. According to the world’s standards, the 16 years of ministry showed almost no fruit. And yet my parents did not give up. They didn’t give up on God, they didn’t give up on ministry. We still do not understand what the Lord was doing in those years and why their was not abundant fruit from the faithfulness of my parents. But we know that faith is the hope of what we do not see. And my parents choosing to have faith and faithfulness in those years is literally one of the huge benchmarks of my own reason to have faith. If there had been great outward success, I may have a skewed understanding of how faith works. Instead, I understand that sometimes it’s quiet faithfulness and fruit that may not be seen until eternity.

After 16 years working in the town with the Songhai people, my parents moved to the capital city and took on roles that served the missionaries and local pastors. My Mom worked in the mission office and my Dad took on teaching at the Bible school along with getting his PhD in ethnomusicology. They have done that for over 10 years now, and I think that it is safe to say that every single incoming missionary to Niger has benefitted from their hard work.

I look back on the past year and cannot even fathom the grief and exhaustion that my parents are currently feeling. They have dealt with a global pandemic, not being able to leave the country, a flood at the mission school, getting covid themselves, and most recently a local volatile reaction the election that resulted in 10 days with no internet or cell, and therefore no connection with friends and family outside the country.

Here is a look at all their prayer cards over the past 36 years! How many of you still have one of these floating around your house?

And now the time has come that the Lord is leading them to make a home in the US. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I will leave the explanation of the decision up to them, but I personally am equally saddened and thrilled at this choice. My parents leaving the mission field is an end of an era, and it is all that I have known them to do! In some ways, I feel a part of me also saying goodbye along with them. Although I still know many people who live and serve on the mission field, this is my greatest connection to the place I call home.

Many people are asking what is next for them, and again- that is something that I would prefer that they share, not me. For now, they will have a six month much needed and well deserved furlough and that after that we shall see!

I am so incredibly blessed to have these giants of the faith as my own parents. If my parents have impacted your life in any way- whether large or small, serious or funny- could you send me an email or letter? I would love to collect these stories and put them together for my parents as a small recognition of the ministry that they have had over the last 36 years.

SO- if you would like to share any stories or pictures, please email them to me at sdevalve@cedarville.edu