My very first mission trip was to Bulstrode, England the summer of 1981. It was called a “Holiday Inn” team due to the fact we had running water, hot showers and a bed to sleep in. Our team was a construction team and built 21 garages for a missionary headquarters at the Castle we stayed at. I went with Teen Missions International which still takes teens today on summer mission trips.
The following summer I decided to rough it and go to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This was the exact opposite of the summer before. We stayed at an orphanage and slept in tents. We had no electricity or running water unless there was wind. We washed our clothes in a bucket. We worked hard to complete a 4 room dormitory for the orphans. We dug and poured the footers ourselves, laid all the concrete for flooring, used bricks for the walls, and chicken wire and weeds that we picked ourselves for the roof. It was a crazy wild experience that forever changed my life. I came home a changed more grateful 16 year old.
I didn’t take my next missions trip again until the summer after my freshman year of college at ORU. I went back to the same exact orphanage and helped a veteran missionary prepare for another Teen Missions team. The country was in political unrest and the team ended up not coming. I remember riding on the back of a motorcycle with a coup trying to take over in the city. It was crazy dangerous but I was not afraid. The director of South American Missions told my mother, “the safest place for your daughter to be is in the center of God’s will.” To this day those words have stayed with me. I came back from that mission trip and knew in my heart that missions would be in my future. Unfortunately, I knew that my boyfriend of many years did not have missions on his heart. I also knew that I would need to change my major to something that could be more useful on the mission field. So the summer of 1985 I ended the relationship with my boyfriend and changed my major to nursing.
Before I even dated Dave, I asked him “what do you think about missions?”. He said that he felt like because of his past it would someday be a part of his life. Well, him saying that made me think “oh good, he is someone I can date, he has missions on his mind!” I guess I never asked him exactly when he would do missions, just if he would do missions.
After getting married, Dave and I were active in our church but never really talked about going on missions together. We did ministry things together, taught 4 year olds at church, were youth group sponsors many years and supported missions financially. I volunteered a lot with the Crisis Pregnancy Organization that is part of our church. I taught Purity classes to the girls and volunteered as the transportation coordinator for many years. Despite my heart for overseas missions, life moved forward and the topic of “going” never came up. Our life was complicated by infertility and failed adoptions. As we started actually having a family our world became our kids and careers and the desire for overseas missions was put on hold.
We moved to Florida for six years and at that time before moving back to OK we had a brief period that we considered taking the kids on a short-term mission trip with Teen Missions International to Australia. We were at a place in our lives where we had NO idea what we were supposed to do and literally prayed “Ok, God we will go or we will stay just let us know!!” It was almost a week later that Dave’s old boss from Tulsa offered him a job, which moved us back to Tulsa. That was 15 years ago.
I did my first medical missions trip to Africa in 2018. It was awesome spending time ministering to the women in the remote churches. I had been invited for over 20 years to go to Niger by my college friend Danette, who has served faithfully there.
Despite going on only a handful of actual mission trips I have always loved to listen to missionary stories and thought “how would it be to be that person?”. I have ALWAYS been a giver and have a very hard time asking for people to do things for me. That is why this itineration will be a HUGE faith walk for me. For once I will be asking others to send me, instead of being the person giving to send another.
If you have made it this far I will end with events of June 2nd 2022. That is the day that the “call” I experienced as a young adult was awakened. I listened to Bryan Webb share about the Pacific Oceania. I was not scared, but instead, inspired when he spoke about how rough it was there. He shared “bush” stories of situations that were tough but rewarding. At the end of the service he gave an altar call for those that wanted to respond to the call for missions. I wanted to go forward but thought “how can I go forward without Dave? That would be weird!” After service I walked up to his table and bought the books he had written about being a missionary in the Pacific Oceania. I told him that I had a heart for missions, which was apparent that day because I was wearing my Nigeran clothes I had made while on my mission trip 4 years earlier. When he found out I was a nurse he started telling me about all the things nurses do there on the field; deliver babies, pull teeth and suture to name a few. I got very excited. He looked at me and prayed “God, before Patti even leaves this parking lot, I pray you put a call on her life to missions!” What Bryan didn’t know is that the call had always been there but that day it was awakened. I came home from church and told Dave how much I wanted to go forward but felt it wasn’t right without him. He looked at me and said “no way! I wanted to go forward too!” We both knew at that moment that we needed to be obedient to what we felt was the leading of the Holy Spirit, so we prayed and started making calls.
The next week we spent an hour on the phone with Bryan and Renee Webb. And from there we went to the “Missions and Me” seminar in Springfield, MO, where we learned what it looks like to be a missionary with the Assemblies of God. We met with the interim supervisor of the Oklahoma region. We shared with him our heart. I told him that I questioned going at our age and that the devil has spoken to me and said “you are too old to do this!”. His responded by saying “I am 76 years old. Don’t tell me you are too old!” We then applied to become missionaries, and while vacationing in Florida with our best friends, we got our approval to be Missionary Associates for an initial 2 year term to Micronesia.