A year ago, I pulled up to my new apartment, and it became official: My residency as a college missionary in South Carolina has ended, and now I am a college missionary 16 hours away in Burlington, Vermont. Out of my state; out of my culture; out of the South.
Even before I went on my first vision trip to Vermont, so many people emphasized the differences I’d experience. Differences in world view, religion, politics, hospitality, politeness, food, and climate. I wish I could write about how the differences were overblown and that it was easy to adapt. But, truly, these warnings hadn’t prepared me for just how out of place, shellshocked, and confused I would really feel. Those differences rocked my world, and it is still shifting my understanding of sharing the gospel and raising up disciples who make disciples.
For context, I came from a well-established, large church background — my childhood church had hundreds of people, and my college church had thousands of people. These churches stood on the gospel and valued missions, fellowship, and their personal relationships with God. I knew many Christians in just about every age group and could ask them anything about God, life, and everyday tasks like cleaning my vacuum. I had male and female mentors who sought my good and urged me closer to Christ in every way.
As a missionary at the University of South Carolina, asking a stranger about church or their beliefs wasn’t normally offensive. At the worst, it was declined, yet it often paved the way for friendships and gospel conversations. Even at our worst, South Carolinians haven’t necessarily been outright antagonistic toward the gospel, and the state has never come close to winning the title of the most unchurched in America. Vermont, on the other hand, is always a contender for that title and often wins.
The main similarity between the two states is that their people are sinners
Both South Carolinians and Vermonters are hypocrites, liars, and unfaithful without Christ. Similarities aside, most Vermont church buildings are just community centers and town halls where people hang up flags that are opposed to everyone Jesus died for. Basic Bible knowledge is startlingly low, and religion is somewhat of a taboo topic. People are very skeptical, especially during first encounters, and smiling puts them on higher alert rather than at ease. After three months here, I had quite a few college students and older friends apologize to me for thinking I was shady since I smiled so much.
It takes a lot of time to adjust to a new place. We are called to persevere, pray, and adapt where we can, but I won’t downplay how hard that adjustment is or how long it actually takes. To say it clearly: It’s horrible, hard, and hurts something awful. I’m adjusting to pouring more into our Christian students since they can make deeper friendships with unbelievers in our skeptical culture. I’m learning how to care well for our students — meeting them where they are while still calling them to holiness — and leaning into the long game, knowing many of them have no framework for what it means to follow Jesus. Students in the South have some church experience and/or more Christians to learn from when they come to faith. Most students in Vermont don’t, and it takes time for them to figure Christianity out with less people to do it with and less people to look up to.
This brings me to the crazy part: Those things weren’t the hardest part about being a campus missionary in Vermont.
The hardest part was not feeling cared for or being discipled myself
Sharing the gospel and making disciple makers is suffocatingly hard without community to love me and to do it with me. I got a firsthand taste of the lack of Christian community that my students live with every day, and it’s lonely. The constant low-reward effort of trying to grow friendships made me feel crazy and hopeless. The more I sought to share the gospel and reach out to believers and unbelievers, the more my body and soul felt depleted. Obedience usually pulls me closer to Christ, but without Christians doing life with me, hopelessness weeded in with the joy of obedience. That’s because we were made for community, and anything outside of God’s design is never good. It allows the enemy to do his best work and try to hinder God’s kingdom. I experienced it personally this year, and it brought me to the end of myself. But, it was in that warfare that God grew a deeper community for me than I thought possible in this spiritual desert. It was only then that I began to hope again and believe that I could make it here as an ambassador for Christ.
The longer I live in Vermont, the more I believe that brotherly love is the beginning of disciple making. John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” When my brothers and sisters in Vermont sought me out and chose me, even in the midst of spiritual warfare, I felt ready and excited to share the Good News of Jesus. The more we did life together in brotherly love, the more it seemed the Spirit would raise up new opportunities to share the gospel and invite unbelievers into our lives. All this helped me realize a lot of my job as a missionary in Vermont is not just sharing the gospel but making sure to help build community for my students with each other and within the local church. It is in our community that the world can see we are Jesus’ disciples, by our love for one another, seeing God’s love for sinners and receiving the salvation they desperately need.
As I have been adapting to a different culture, my strategy for evangelism and discipleship is different. I’m starting with brotherly love. Pray that God gives the growth, and that we’d love each other as God has loved us.
— Rayanna Cape grew up in Anderson, S.C., and graduated from the University of South Carolina. She is currently serving as a NAMB college missionary at the University of Vermont and Champlain College with the Vine Campus Ministry. Rayanna is a support-raised missionary, relying on the financial and spiritual support of others.
If you’d like to learn ways that you can regularly pray for and support Rayanna, you can sign up for her monthly e-newsletter at this link: http://eepurl.com/h0XhRb