Last month, I held hands in prayer with an 87-year-old woman named Martha Reynolds. Martha is my personal hero. She spent much of the last three decades of her life starting a Christian vocational school in one of the world’s smallest and poorest countries.
Now she and her 91-year-old husband, Herb, were taking a bow in the humblest way possible.
As Martha and I bowed our heads together at a recent fundraiser in Seattle, Martha prayed: “This is Your work. We were just founders – floundering around and making all the mistakes. And You put it all together. Look at what God has done.”
Martha didn’t need to spend her Golden Years in a foreign land, pursuing a radical vision on a shoestring budget. She had grown up on a farm in Washington State and spent most of her adult life working as a seamstress for Boeing. A few years before retirement, her first husband passed away. As a widower without much travel experience, she had every right to spend the next few decades tending her garden. Instead, she embraced living way outside her comfort zone.
For much of her 60s and 70s, Martha lived under the same roof as a family she befriended in Guinea-Bissau, a tiny sliver of a country in West Africa. The home had no running water or electricity. When she was back in the states for parts of the year, she lived in a small RV so she could save up money to fund the vision God had given her.
As I look at Martha’s life, I have to ask: What does it take to stretch ourselves and live by faith, not by sight – 2 Corinthians 5:7?
When Jesus called his followers, it wasn’t to a comfortable pew in an air-conditioned chapel (Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me – Luke 9:23). Instead, it was to let go of the familiar, and embrace the unknown. Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you, God told Abraham – Genesis 12:1.
When Obedience Means Letting Go of the Familiar
After her husband died of a heart attack in 1997, Martha wondered what she was supposed do with the rest of her life. She went on two brief missions trips with a church group to Guinea-Bissau. Each time she returned, something still seemed to be missing.
A year after the second trip, Martha went back to Guinea-Bissau. This time by herself. For several months, she wandered around the country without a guide. In her pocket, she carried an English-Portuguese dictionary (Guinea-Bissau is former Portuguese colony).
Eventually, she came across a small community called Canchungo. Its town center was a decrepit, dusty traffic circle. People, cattle and the occasional vehicle shared the road. Westerners were a rare sight.
As Martha built relationships with people in town, she learned about the lack of educational and job opportunities for youth in their town.
“One morning I woke up and asked, ‘Lord, what’s my job?’” Martha said. “He answered very clearly: Start an industrial school in Africa.”
It was that simple.
A Shared Calling, Lived One Step at a Time
In 2002, Martha remarried to Herb, who was also a widower. Now both of them shared the same vision. They both sold their homes to fund the school (thus living in the RV when back in the states). Next to the RV, they built a massive garage on their property so they could store and sort supplies which they later shipped to Guinea-Bissau in 40-foot containers. They refused to take a salary and instead lived off their retirement savings.
Despite not knowing how they would be able to open a vocational school in rural West Africa, they trusted God.
“I had faith that He could do it,” Martha said.
With just $1,000 available initially to invest in the project, friends and supporters multiplied that to $10,000 just before they departed on their first trip as a couple to Guinea-Bissau.
In 2003, they broke ground. The school opened its doors three years later. Since then, that one school has expanded to new locations around the country and equipped more than 2,000 young men and women in Guinea-Bissau with life-changing job skills.
At the Seattle event last month with the Reynolds, I got to share about how God has honored their willingness to live outside their comfort zone. Now, looking back, it was clear how He has used their mustard seed of faith to transform the lives of thousands of people living in one of the world’s poorest countries.
Deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow me – that’s a bold calling. But God does incredible things when we take it seriously.
Chris Collins
Chris Collins is executive director of West African Vocational Schools, a Christian nonprofit that equips West Africans with life-changing job skills.
