Excuses were flowing through Jason Palmer’s mind as quickly as the rain dripping through his tent: I won’t make enough money. I don’t know enough theology. I don’t want to live overseas. My parents will be upset. I can’t learn a new language.
Few seats remained empty at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., Nov. 10 for an International Mission Board appointment service. Trustees approved 57 new missionaries who are being sent out among all eight of the IMB’s primary global affinity groups, encompassing the world’s 11,000-plus known people groups.It was 1996, and Palmer, then a high school freshman, had come to Nicaragua with his youth group to raise a building for a poor, rural church near Managua. But instead of working, he’d spent the afternoon stuck inside a leaky tent, reading his Bible, while the team waited out a tropical storm parked off of Nicaragua’s coast. It was Palmer’s first mission trip, first airplane ride and first time outside the United States. That afternoon was also the first time he understood God’s purpose for his life.
“As I was reading, I just remember hearing … this small voice inside of me saying, ‘You’re going to be doing this for the rest of your life. You’re going to go out and tell others around the world about Me,’?” Palmer recounted. “I’ll be honest … it scared me.”
Little did he know that after wrestling with that call for the next 14 years, Palmer and his wife Charity eventually would find themselves among a group of 57 new missionaries appointed by International Mission Board trustees Nov. 10. The Palmers and others relayed their missions calling during an appointment service that evening at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C. Ryan and Maria Ludwick of Spartanburg were among those who were appointed. They will serve in Europe.
“I’m glad I listened to that voice and that it was persistent that long because I wonder how many other people hear that voice and just keep denying it,” said Palmer of Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Durham, N.C. “It’s like this internal battle inside of my head; I’ve got my doubts my fears and then I know what God has said to be true.?-?I know I have to be obedient.”
The Palmers will soon leave their North Carolina home to share the gospel and start churches in Slovakia, a Central European country of 5.8 million people. The IMB’s global research department estimates that less than 2 percent of its population is evangelical Christian.
For Marcie Seagram* of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, Calif., the desire to serve overseas is closely tied to the story of her own salvation experience. As a rising college sophomore, Seagram took a summer job in Texas selling books door to door. The work was hard and required a thick skin. But her life changed the day she knocked at the home of a woman named Nancie Galloway.
Galloway was a believer whose genuine kindness and warmth caught Seagram off-guard – so much so that Seagram had to know where it came from.
“I just asked her, ‘What is it that gives you such joy?’?” Seagram said. “I’m certain it was the Holy Spirit [that prompted me to ask] because I had been looking for God.”
New missionaries Jason and Charity Palmer share the story of their overseas calling during an appointment service at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., Nov 10. The North Carolina natives are bound for Slovakia.That search had started when Seagram was a girl. She vividly remembers being deeply troubled by a conversation about death with her father.
“I was probably somewhere around 11 – and the thought of death just really weighed upon my heart,” Seagram said. “I remember asking my dad what would happen when we died.?-?Was there anything else? And he said, ‘I don’t know.’ I just couldn’t accept that.”
Galloway confronted Seagram with the very question that had haunted her all those years – “If you were to die tonight, do you know for sure that you would have eternal life?”
“No one had ever shared with me before,” Seagram said. “So Nancie sat me down on her couch and for two hours she explained the gospel.?-?I felt this was the truth and what I had been looking for, and I accepted Jesus right then and there.
“She was a complete stranger.?-?She took the time, gave up whatever she was doing that day, just to share the Good News. She was obeying the Great Commission where she was; she was being a missionary.”
Seagram, her husband Daniel* and their two preschool children are now bound for the Ukraine, where they’ll serve as church planters.
– *Names changed for security reasons. Graham is a writer for the International Mission Board.