Overcoming the Scary Side of Missions

By Heather Filyes

I remember the day my mom told me our family was going into missions. I was about six years old. My dad was thinking about becoming a pilot because he didn’t know how else he could be involved. After he completed pilot training, my mother said, we would live in another country. That terrified me. My response: “I don’t want to be a missionary now. I want to wait until I grow up.”

Not long after that, my parents discovered JAARS and learned that the skills they already had were needed. My dad was a truck driver, and to his surprise, JAARS was looking for truck drivers. We ended up living on the JAARS Center in Waxhaw, N.C.

As a JAARS kid, I attended various orientations with my parents and heard about the need for Bible translation. I learned how many people were still without access to God’s Word in their own language and that really shocked me. I also learned of the many different ways a person could serve God overseas or even in the home country. It was at JAARS that God began speaking to my heart, preparing me for the work He had for me.

At first, the idea of going to another country scared me. I was scared of lots of things, including flying and snakes. So I decided that if God wanted me to be a missionary, I would have to work in the United States. At one point my parents were thinking of taking an assignment in the former Zaire. I told them I wouldn’t go, that I would never go to Africa, and I was completely serious. We ended up not going to Zaire, for which, at the time, I was extremely thankful. But God wasn’t finished working in my heart. Gradually He began helping me overcome fears that were holding me back and opening my heart to other possibilities.

Living on the JAARS Center enabled me to make friends with other missionary kids who had grown up all over the world. I heard their stories, which intrigued me. A lot of my friends would go on mission trips during the summer. Until that point I had always thought I would have to wait until I was older to go overseas and see what missions was about. It was very exciting and somewhat scary to find out that God could use me at my young age if I were willing to go.

I finally decided (with my parents’ permission) to go on short-term trip to Siberia and I really enjoyed it. The next summer I decided to go overseas again. That time I felt God directing me to Africa. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. There were still things that scared me. Besides that, the teams that went to Africa usually slept in tents and didn’t have running water. I ended up going to Zimbabwe in the summer of 1996 and fell in love with Africa.

After that summer I began seriously seeking where to attend college. I knew God was calling me into missions, but I still wasn’t sure how and where. I decided to go to Moody Bible Institute because of their excellent missions and Bible programs. That first semester God laid on my heart the importance of His Word. I thought about what it would be like if I didn’t have direct access to it. I knew Moody had a linguistics study program, but I hesitated. I was still afraid, afraid that it would be too difficult for me, but still I felt God pushing me in that direction. Finally I accepted, saying, “I don’t know why or how, but God, if this is the direction you want me to go, I’m going to need your help to get through.” And God did help me.

To complete a required internship with Moody, I decided to go on a Discovery Trip with Wycliffe Bible Translators to Cameroon. It was there I learned about language survey work and, soon after, all the pieces began to come together

After college I joined Wycliffe and eventually accepted an assignment to the Republic of Congo. That’s where I am now. I can’t believe it. I’m in Congo. In Africa! It’s so exciting to see Bible translation work being done here. I had an opportunity to sit in on a Bible translation workshop, organized by Congolese speakers of the Teke language. It was easy to catch their excitement as they work diligently on translating God’s Word into their own language.

As I watched them work and listened to them teach, it struck me how complicated the task was. They have spoken this language all their lives, but they have never written it. They have to figure out an alphabet that works for the language, and yet create one that isn’t so complicated that no one can use it. They have to learn to spell and read using this alphabet. For them, it’s like going back to school, but they persevere because the goal will be well worth the effort. In the end they will have God’s Word in their heart language and that, I think, is so amazing.

In the end, I did just what I said I would—I became a missionary when I grew up. And guess what? It’s not nearly as scary as I imagined!

Heather joined Wycliffe in 2004, spent 2006-2007 in Switzerland in French study, and arrived in Brazzaville in September 2007. She serves as a language surveyor.

—February 2008