My Journey Towards a Mission Heart

Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Girls in Action. Acteens. Camp WorldSong. Amy Carlisle from Whitesburg Baptist. Babs Christy from Farley Community Church. My own grandfather, Pastor Smith Ledbetter, a bi-vocational minister and NASA welder. These are a few of the names and places that rise when I begin to ponder the influences and influencers that shaped my heart missionally.

Whether it was leading a Wednesday night church program, hauling a child to missions camp, or making prayer reminders for foreign missionaries, I could never have imagined God was preparing my heart for a lifetime of serving the nations. The night I remember the stirring “to go” came as missionaries were sharing about their recent experiences. The follow-up thought to my spirit’s stirring was sadly doubt filled, “Well I could never do that. We would never have the money, and I have five kids.”

There was no understanding of the Holy Spirit within that nudges believers, AND I lacked the faith to BELIEVE truth. God can do what we feel is impossible. Seriously, He rose from the dead. What can He not do? What I did identify with that night was a small group prayer time when precious Debbie Pratico prayed, “Lord, Pam must feel like Joseph most days. Hear her cries from the pit of her challenges. Rescue her.”

A few years later an opportunity came for my oldest daughter, Lawren, and myself to travel to Poland to serve alongside YWAM missionaries Erin and Greg Skrobarczyk. Even now I can remember the day we pulled off an the heart-wrenching goodbyes of children sad to see us go with their faces pressed upon against the van windows.

In 2011, frustrated, I offered to host our church’s missionaries to Uganda. The offer went out for life groups to open up their homes for a time of sharing about the work going on in Uganda.

Holding out for the folks with the nicer homes and two-parent families to step up, I waited. When there was little response from the church congregation, I stepped up. We had about 40 folks gather in my living room to hear about the move of God in Uganda. There had been no stirring towards Uganda. There had been no stirring since Poland. I was up to my ears in surviving as a single working mom of children ages 10-19.

Yet at the end of our party, it was Chris Persons who mentioned, “you should go sometime.” My second-born daughter Mary was then 13, but my life seemed truly in survival status with three children younger than her. Yet I knew that simple thought expressed by Chris began stirring my spirit.

For the next eight years, I would travel to Uganda four times – each time with a different child. There are life-changing stories from each trip that many of you have heard over the years. Then came 2020, when the world shut down and we all tried to figure out what was really going on. I began listening to Dutch Sheets to learn how to pray more effectively for our church, the

government, and the world. There was a prompt in 2022 asking us if God had a specific nation on our heart. I realized how much I missed the people of Uganda.

A few months later during the summer months I was in the middle of planning and preparing a summer outdoor music gathering and struggling to find joy in the journey. In my day-to-day wrestling with the spiritual disciplines to find intimacy with Christ, I was acting in obedience to the next right thing God put in front of me each day. It was pouring down rain for days, preventing us from blanketing the area with invites for our music gathering, but we pressed on anyway. It was minutes after posting a Facebook live with my husband inviting folks to join us for the music night that I received the message from Aggie Paech, the former Ugandan missionary we served with during the four prior trips.

Her message was as follows: ‘My son Brian is leading a church in Mpigi near Kampala. We are the only ones supporting him, and I wondered if you would pray about coming to Uganda again to help him.’ For me, the request was a reward from God because I had been faithful in the smaller things here at home. The next four months had substantial ups and downs including a car wreck that caused a broken back for my youngest son, Thomas, who planned to travel with me. I remember the FaceTime calls from Aggie in the hospital room that kept calling out to the “King of Glory.”

There’s so much more, but I will wrap it up here to say I thought 2022 would be like all the other trips. I would receive many blessings and prayerfully be a blessing to the people there. Never in a million years would I have imagined God was forging a partnership between our small nonprofit River of Life Ministries and Redeemed Bible Church of Mpigi.

We have taken teams annually since 2022 to Uganda and are bringing Pastor Brian and a small team here to minister each spring since 2023. We are seeing miracles of salvation, healing, and deliverance in our community. God is strengthening and building His church both here and there through this partnership. Truly this is the greatest privilege to be a part of and a piece of my story that I could never have imagined.

Here are the points I desire for you to recall from my ponderings:

First: God wastes nothing from our life’s story when we surrender our lives to Him. He uses everything for good. Romans 8;28

Second: What seems impossible to man is possible with God. Mark 9:23, 10:27

Third: God is stirring up hearts to go. Isaiah 6:8, Matthew 9:37,38

I am available to sit down with anyone to share more of the story of how God took my life stories and shaped my heart for missions. Just ask.

Also, our approximate Fall trip dates are October 2-13. Our first informational meeting is Sunday, June 8 at Graves Grocery at 2 p.m. Come and see what it’s all about.