As the Church celebrates World Mission Sunday today (October 21), SR MELISSA DWYER, a Canossian Sister from Brisbane, writes on the challenges of being a missionary in Malawi, Africa
I DON’T think I have ever prayed as hard as the night when robbers broke into our community in the mission in Malawi.
While three of my sisters gathered in the corridor with the armed men, I sat on my bed in my room frantically calling the police to inform them that robbers were in our house. It was 1am.
I was struggling to understand what the men were saying in the local language, whilst listening to the pleas of my sisters.
I wanted to go out to be in solidarity with them, but I had been warned before that it’s better for robbers not to see a white person in the community.
So I sat on the bed, with the money of the school next to me ready to hand over if they came in, and I prayed for my sisters.
And I prayed that they wouldn’t find me.
Three times I watched as the door handle of my room turned, and I thought I was finished. But God didn’t allow the door to be opened.
I think I would have had a heart attack if the men had come into my room.
But God heard my desperate and fearful prayer. And shortly after that the seven men fled our house.
They managed to drive off in our car which we had been unable to start for three months, and left us afraid but physically unharmed.
We sisters gathered ourselves, and our attention then turned to concern for our security guards.
So we ran to the school building, only to find two of them seriously injured and lying motionless in their own blood.
We called for an ambulance, and I called again for the police.
After more than one hour still no one had come to help us.
I ran back to the community and got the other car.
Together the sisters loaded the men into the car and we drove to the hospital.
Upon arriving at the hospital, we found no electricity and no medicine available.
At 2am I found myself holding a torch while a doctor and one of my sisters tried to stitch the head of our guards back together without any pain relief.
One of the guards turned to me and said, “Sister, I’m going to die.”
Even though the situation was very serious, as he slipped in and out of consciousness, I simply tried to reassure him that everything would be fine.
It’s only now, a year after this terrifying night, that I am able to write about it.
Before this event, I had not felt vulnerable or afraid at all in the mission. Yet after this incident I realised my humanity, and my need to trust in God so much more.
As I struggled to be able to sleep in the house, afraid the robbers would return, many sisters tried to convince me that God would look after us.
I was slow to accept this, wondering why God had let them come into our community at all.
Then one sister told me, “God has sent you here to the mission in Malawi. Do you think He will abandon you now?”
This comment hit me. My trust in God had disappeared.
I had prayed when the robbers were in the house, but after they left I had forgotten whose hands to place my life in.
I realised my fear at what might happen had overtaken my trust in God who is.
When I decided to respond to God’s invitation for my life and be a Canossian Sister 12 years ago, I was inspired to give my life radically and completely in serving God as a missionary.
My fear of the robbers had taken away that burning desire to be with the people at the time when my courage was most needed to reassure those around me.
Then I am compelled to look at Jesus, He who was a model of courage in the face of adversity.
In His greatest suffering He didn’t rely on His own strength, but surrendered His life to the will of God.
The moment of seemingly greatest failure in Jesus’ death on the cross became the moment of greatest love and greatest victory. So, too, for each of us.
Moments of great challenge and struggle can become moments of greatest growth if we place them in trust in the hands of God.
Yet I continue to realise that this trust is easier said than done!
As we strive to model our lives each day on the example of Jesus, let us realise that announcing our love for God and our trust in Him is not enough.
We must live up to what we announce just like Jesus, and have courage in the face of adversity.
The key to being a missionary is examining for oneself, “am I a witness for Christ”?
In our universal call to mission it’s not what we do, but who we are as prophets of communion, of hope and of forgiveness.
We are sharers in the mission of Jesus as prophets on a journey.
Yet on this journey of serving others, we can only give that which we have.
As missionaries, to be Jesus’ witnesses, to stand for Him, means that we know Him.
What we have experienced and learnt from Him at the foot of the cross, now we live.
Therefore without prayer, without deep relationship with Jesus, and without a deep level of trustful surrender, our mission is empty.
If we don’t know the one who sends us, and get in touch with His dreams for us, then we are simply proclaiming ourselves and not the Kingdom of God.
In order to imitate Jesus, the great missionary, we don’t need to go to the remotest corners of the earth.
Mission Sunday is a clear reminder for each one of us of our universal call to mission – to look at the life of Jesus and to imitate Him.
Wherever we are, our common mission to follow Christ unites us.
Today, perhaps more than ever, the Church needs us to be prophetic missionaries – men and women not afraid to proclaim the Gospel and to live lives that witness to what we proclaim.
Everywhere we turn there is violence and destruction decimating our society.
Global poverty is escalating, environmental degradation increases and it seems we can’t turn on the news without seeing people killing each other in multiple wars across the world.
Yet in the midst of this, can we, as witnesses for Christ, play our part in transforming the world? Yes we can.
Fearlessly and trustfully we need to place our hand in the hand of God and believe that He is with us, wherever we are and whatever we are doing.
An ancient proverb says, “When the sky is darkest, you can see the stars.” When life is most difficult, God is there.
Surely we can’t do everything to transform our world. But we can do something. And what we can do, we must do it – not tomorrow, but today.
