Dream Job or God’s Calling?

Sandy, a behind-the-scenes missionary with GFA, shares her family’s journey through 20 years of dedicated service. Still today, she and her husband Ralph face the unfinished task together, all for the sake of Christ and His love.

Although my husband Ralph and I were both raised in Christian homes, we had become very disillusioned within the church. We felt there had to be more to the Christian life than works and the fear that we would never be good enough for Heaven. After much prayer and searching, we discovered three things that changed our lives: grace, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We have not been the same since.

Desiring to Serve the Lord Together

In 1997, after my husband completed a degree in business information systems, it was apparent to Ralph and me that we needed to use this skill for God. But we had no idea how to even begin. All we knew was that we wanted to work together as a team for the Lord. We heard an advertisement on the radio about a national Christian job placement service that could help us. After applying for ministries all over the country and asking God to send us wherever He wanted, Gospel for Asia’s response was the only one we received.

We are probably one of the few couples on staff who had no prior knowledge of Gospel for Asia or national missionaries. When we found out we would need to raise support, it was very intimidating. But after reading Revolution in World Missions, we knew this was where God wanted us to serve and that He would provide.

God never ceased to amaze us and show us His faithfulness. Two weeks after returning home from our interview with Gospel for Asia, someone called us and wanted to buy our house. We had not advertised or listed it yet—we hadn’t even told anyone we were leaving! Now we had no place to live and still needed to raise our support goal. Then, in response to one of the support letters we mailed, a couple we had known only three months prior opened their home to us to live with them until our support was raised.

Dream Job or God’s Calling?

We had mailed letters and contacted everyone on our family list, our friend list, our acquaintance list and our friends-of-acquaintances list. Our support came in steadily for about five months and then seemed to dry up. Now we had to really put our faith out there.

I asked the Lord in my quiet time one morning to show us once again our calling and to do something to encourage our faith. I met a lady at the bank later that same day whom I had never seen or met before. After chatting, the lady asked a few questions, and I shared with her our calling to GFA. The lady said that the Lord had given her the gift of giving and she wanted to support us! For the past 20 years that we have served with GFA, she has supported us faithfully every month.

Ralph continued working at his job while we raised support. We were at 75 percent of our support goal when his company offered Ralph his dream job, as well as a huge raise in pay and grade level. There was a deadline to accept the job, and we didn’t have our support fully raised, so Ralph told me on Friday before the deadline to start looking for a place to live and settle down in again. That same afternoon we received a phone call from Brother K.P., the founder of GFA, informing us that a church we had never been to or contacted was going to support us for the exact amount we needed to bring our support goal to 100 percent. Talk about humbling!

The church we had been members of for 15 years wasn’t supporting us, so it blew us away that God would use a church body we had never met, to support us in this way. Once again, we were humbled by His faithfulness!

Now we continued on course, declined the job and were on our way to Texas! To think that God could use us to impact the world with Christ’s love was both exciting and fearful. Would we be good enough? Would we be spiritual enough?


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