While attending the Union Mission Institute in Brooklyn, NY, I met and got acquainted with two Danes. They, like me, were interested in the Sudan Mission. They had attended some mission courses in Denmark given by the Danish United Sudan Mission and had not gotten to go out to Africa for that mission. When they came to America for further education, their mission board was not much in favor of sending them out under them. As I had at the time no prospect of being sent by our mission, we planned and talked about organizing a mission together after the pattern of the Santal Mission. But as it happened, one of the men became ill and died in one or two years time, and the other man then applied to a mission in Liberia, and went out under that mission.
In the Lutheran Brethren things developed also (so that they finally decided to take up the Sudan Mission). In 1915 at the annual meeting in Fergus Falls, several missionaries were being sent to China. The mission board, who knew my desire to go as a missionary to Sudan, sent an inquiry to me asking if I would consider going to China if they called me. To this I had to reply that my heart was fixed on Africa and I could not at that time give it up.
During the annual meeting some of the leaders of the Lutheran Brethren had been thinking it over, and before the meeting closed, a Pastor suggested that perhaps this was the Lord’s guiding that the Lutheran Brethren should take up a mission field on the continent of Africa. A number of others also gave the thought much consideration.
The following summer, I taught Vacation Bible School in Superior, Wisconsin. I had a very fine opportunity to draw a large map of Sudan; it covered half of the classroom wall. There was considerable interest among the school children. Several dedicated their lives to missionary work. During my stay in Superior, someone recommended that I go to Bayfield, Wisconsin and conduct a series of meetings. While at Bayfield, an elderly lady, when she heard about the mission, gave a dollar for it. That was the first dollar that was ever given to the Sudan Project.
While I’m titling this “the first dollar,” and think it’s really cool that the first dollar toward the African mission was truly and simply one dollar, I gotta tell you I’m stuck on something else I read in this section. It’s that my Grandpa’s heart was fixed on Africa (end of his second paragraph, above). As I typed this, I couldn’t help but gulp, and ask: “What is my heart fixed on?”
At the Don Miller conference in Portland last month, one question that Don asked participants has stuck with me (even prior to reviewing my notes, which I’ve still not done...). “What do you want?” Don asked. He even wore this question on a t-shirt at one point. I’m not particularly fond of this question. In fact whenever I’m asked it, I tend to either squirm or get teary. It seems that either 1) I don’t know what I want, or 2) I know but am reluctant to admit it because then I may actually allow myself to desire it and, potentially, to be disappointed.
Grandpa knew what he wanted (to go to Africa) and stuck to it, even when a church board asked if they could send him to China. At the time, he didn’t have another mission option, but his “heart was fixed on Africa. “ He had confidence that there was a reason God placed Africa on his heart, and he stayed true to this conviction.
I’m really thinking that I need to: 1) figure out what I want, and/ or 2) admit what I want and risk disappointment, trusting that God has placed it on my heart for a reason. I’ll admit I’m somewhat envious of Grandpa’s fixed heart… Yet nobody is stopping me from fixing my heart on something. Except for me. So I’ll start with the obvious want. I want a heart that knows, and is willing to declare, what it wants.
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