It was less than a week before I was to leave for the mission field – for what would turn out to be two years onboard a Mercy Ship off the coast of West Africa.

 

Though I knew this was what I was supposed to be doing, and though God had opened door after door to get me to this place, I was still having second thoughts. 9/11 had occurred only days earlier, and I was a single woman in my mid-twenties.

 

What could I possibly be thinking?! Was the world even a safe place to travel anymore? Was it wise to leave behind all I knew as safe and familiar, to head off into an as yet undefined adventure? It would be just me and God, facing the unknown…I knew no one else where I was going.

 

As these thoughts churned through my mind, my soul in a bit of turmoil, I began preparing a sticky but delicious recipe called “friendship bread” – a concoction of 14 ingredients. Never one to remember to check if I have all the ingredients on hand before proceeding with a recipe, I absent-mindedly poured and mixed, measured and spooned.

 

Inwardly, I was having a spirited conversation with God. “Haven’t I promised you that I would go before you, that I would protect you, that I would be a Father and a Husband to you?” I felt Him prompting me inside.

 

I acknowledged that this was exactly what He had been speaking to me about over the past week. When my head hit the pillow each night, His Spirit had been whispering very real reassurances to me, bringing to mind specific verses in the Bible that pledged how He would care for His children and look out for His loved ones.

 

“What is it exactly that a husband does for his wife? What does a father do for his child?” He prompted further. I supposed that both roles involved protection, provision, and unconditional love. “When have I ever failed you? What cause do you have to doubt My ability to come through for you in each and every situation – even if the answer is different than what you may have expected…or preferred?” He continued, gently but relentlessly.

 

The inner questioning went on. I felt myself at a loss to come up with answers. And still I felt an indescribable doubt wrapping its cold fingers around my soul. Into these strange musings broke the harsh reality that alas, I was clean out of the last ingredient on my list: butterscotch pudding mix. Now how on earth could I have done that? I ALWAYS had pudding mix on hand. 

 

I rummaged through the shelf again, then hastily glanced around at all the other shelves. Maybe I had misplaced it after the last shopping trip. Nothing.  In the spot where I normally kept pudding was only a vacant hole. Frustration was added to the list of negative emotions with which I was grappling. I didn’t have time to run to the store, and I couldn’t just throw out the mixture after using up 13 other ingredients.

 

What was I to do? Just at that precise moment, in an inaudible yet distinctly unmistakable way, I felt Him pointedly ask me, “Didn’t I tell you I will provide for you? How much do you trust  Me? Why don’t you ask Me?”

 

I knew with crystal-clear clarity in that moment that it is wonderful to talk about faith and trust, but that those big concepts are only truly defined in specific moments of need like the one I was facing. Gulping, I sheepishly admitted, “Father, I need butterscotch pudding mix. I’m all out.”

 

I don’t think even the widow of II Kings 4 could have felt as much amazement when she discovered the jars filled with oil, as I did moments later when I decided to look one more time on the shelf. I almost fell off the stool as I saw, not just any old pudding mix, but one package of the exact butterscotch mix that the recipe called for.

 

Tears streaming down my cheeks, I knew with absolute certainty that the very God who numbers the hairs on our head and sees the fallen sparrow, is alive and at work in EVERY DETAIL of our lives. Who says miracles don’t still happen today?!! This was only the first episode of many over the next two years, in which God provided for my every physical and spiritual need — often in uncanny, unpredictable ways.

 

If Moses had sat down before he headed into the desert with the Israelites, and calculated how in the world he would ever be able to find enough food, water, shelter, and firewood for the multitudes, he never would have left Egypt. But Moses didn’t let such details cloud his perspective. All he knew was that God had spoken, and that he (after his initial doubting stage) wanted to obey.

 

In the same way, I knew God was leading me to go to Africa. And so I stepped out into the unknown, trusting Him for the details.That’s not to say it was always easy…far from it. I was frequently homesick. It was a challenge living in close quarters with other missionaries from all over the world. It could be discouraging ministering to people who sometimes didn’t seem to show any long-term change. But God did miraculously provide.

 
On one occasion, my digital camera was stolen out of a ransacked suitcase in the Freeport, Sierra Leone airport. Within days, a couple from home wrote to say they had been wanting to help support me in a different way than just financially, and could they buy me a camera?

 

Another time, our ship’s engine broke down during a sail. The captain and mates said the situation looked pretty serious, from a technical standpoint. (After all, we were a 50-year-old boat.) Our vessel lay right in the path of a fierce storm. The crew gathered to pray for a miracle, asking that God would guide the hands of the mechanics laboring far below in the engine room. Within an hour, we heard the engines roar to life. Soon after we were on our way again, safely out of the path of the storm.

Whenever I wanted to go out into the African communities, I usually had to travel by taxi…quite a different experience than what we Americans know as a taxi ride, however. To make the best use of their space, and to earn the most money, African taxi drivers would often pile up to 20 bodies in their small minivans. If you were one of the first in (as I usually was), this meant having several sweaty, smelly bodies literally on top of you for the rest of your journey.

My fear was that I would contract one of the diseases that are so prevalent in that part of the world. AIDS in particular is a very real threat. Many of the people who were sitting in my lap, or who were pressed up against me, had open wounds, or coughed and wheezed in my face.

 

In those moments, I learned to pray Mark 16:17-18 – “And these signs will accompany those who believe: In My name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” (And I usually added on at the end, “And they will sit with very sick people in African taxicabs, and shall not contract a disease.”) 

 

Do you know, the entire time I was in West  Africa, I never once came down with a local disease – not even malaria, which runs rampant? And this was in spite of the time I was invited back to a little hovel after Sunday School, in what must be one of the poorest spots in the world, and given a meal of fish and rice. The smiling housewife handed me the village’s prized possession: a metal fork. I think it may have been the only one they had, and they only brought it out on very special occasions.

 

The problem was, they had not washed it since the last time it had been used. I gulped and hid my dismay, smiling back as I reminded myself how important courtesy was in a missionary’s relations with the hosts. I began praying fervently, and discreetly bent down to rub the fork against my long skirt. I cleared my plate, later heading back to the ship to begin counting down the hours until I came down with some horrible disease. But…nothing happened. I stayed healthy. God was my protector.

 

I had intended to stay on the mission field longer than I actually did. For reasons unknown to me at the time, I knew clearly that it was time to head home after only two years. I felt badly, as it was in the middle of the school year and I taught in the ship’s school. How would they be able to replace me? The principal did his best to look around.

 

One day he came to me with a very interesting email from a woman who had written that she knew it was the middle of the school year and that it was unlikely there would be an opening, but that she was desperate to work for a few months in our school, in preparation for a long-term stint with an on-shore mission agency later that year. It was a perfect replacement situation for me.

I found out months down the road why God had brought me home early. My father, one of my closest friends and the picture of health at only 56, died suddenly of a heart attack while mowing his lawn. As difficult as it was to be at home and watch the suffering my family went through, I can’t imagine how I would have taken the news had I still been overseas.

In the dark and painful days that followed, He reminded me again and again of His promise to be my Father. “You were My child before I ever gave you an earthly father,” He would whisper to me as I lay crying in bed.  “Trust Me to meet your needs. Turn to me with your doubts, fears, hopes, and plans.”

He has never failed. He often surprises. He sometimes tests and forces me to grow. But He ALWAYS provides and loves. He wants to do the same for you.

 

Erin Doherty

 

“Erin Doherty makes her home in Forestdale, MA, close to the beaches of Cape Cod. She has been a reporter, teacher, missionary with Mercy Ships in West Africa, and office manager for a business firm. She currently works in marketing and consulting, and runs a small virtual assistance on the side called “Minding Your Own Business”. Erin leads worship at her local church, and loves a good adventure. To contact Erin, email her at EMDoherty@aol.com.”

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