When we met in March 2020, we had no idea that the world was about to be swept up in two pandemics: one health-related, one of racial reckoning. Neither could we have guessed what the Lord had planned for our own lives, guiding us through friendship during isolation, one year later uniting us in marriage, and two years later making us parents to a beautiful, joy-filled baby girl.
We certainly had no clue that the prayers we prayed and those that others had lifted up on our behalf for years would be answered by an invitation to move our young family to another continent.
“Come, join us” was the call from Campus Outreach SERVE to join the team in Lusaka, Zambia, echoing our Saviour’s “Come, follow me,” which beckoned us both years prior to lay down our lives, plans, and expectations in full surrender to the Lord. It turns out that, though neither of us desired to pursue vocational ministry, our gracious Father would call us both to spend our lives serving him, Alex discipling university students through campus ministry and Brittany serving overseas and stateside in an international mission organization. With this new invitation, we labour together.
Research posits that by 2050 one in every four people around the world will be African. Pair that with the median age on the continent being nineteen years old and you see the unique opportunity we have to journey with the next generation of world-changers. What a gift it would be to God’s kingdom should they change the world for God’s glory.
Though our history paves the way with the first US missionary being the formerly enslaved George Liele, and the first single woman sent as a missionary being the formerly enslaved Betsey Stockton, modern-day participation—with African Americans making up less than one percent of the global mission force—does not reflect this rich heritage with the numbers of African Americans choosing to cross oceans and cultures for vocational ministry.
As descendants of enslaved Africans brought to North America, we are excited and grateful to spend this next season in “the Motherland,” connecting to a place and people with which we are unfamiliar yet intimately tied. As followers of Jesus, we are humbled to follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before us, counting it an immense privilege to carry the gospel forward.