When you travel as much as we have over a lifetime, you get to experience many cultures, a profoundly broadening experience, and I can usually tell when someone has never left the shores and comforts of America. As big as this country is, it is very easy to become someone who only loves what they know, and only knows what they love.

Perhaps that is why the American missionaries we have met over the years have always seemed larger than life. Their courage and sense of adventure were always an inspiration. I don’t know whether churches nowadays still celebrate Missionary Day, but I am grateful that at a formative time of my life I was exposed to so many extraordinary American servants of God. Without exception they left deep footprints in my own understanding of what it means to be a “sent one.” No wonder then that when God called Best Beloved and me, he used a missionary, this time a German one 😊!

Of course, I have met wonderful missionaries from other countries as well, but I live here in the USA right now and I am reflecting on the many faces of America. If one only listens to what newscasters give us, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the bleak, the angry, the self-obsessed, not to mention the many who seem to think that because they hold an opinion, it is worth hearing!

Give me a “sent one” any day, those with no time to waste on fashion or trend, but people driven by the urgency of the Great Commission. Their names would probably mean nothing to you but I can tell you they all belong to the Beautiful Feet Society!  

And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!” Romans 10:15

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