Ask a Missionary - Catch The Fire

he considers that a spouse is truly our need, he is well able to supply
us with one.
Answer from Jack Voelkel, missionary-in-residence with the Urbana Student
Mission Convention. Previously Jack served for thirty years with Latin
America Mission in Peru and Colombia.
A:
Surrender to God your desire for marriage;
then trust his plan for you.
I was afraid that I would not meet anyone I could marry and that
I would remain single if I stayed overseas for any length of time. I
wrestled with this issue and finally read a book that I knew about but
had been avoiding, Single and Satisfied. I was not sure I wanted to
be satisfied with being single! But reading it did the trick. I became
convinced that if God wanted me to be single, he would be all that
I needed and I would be satisfied. On the other hand, if God did
have a husband in my plan, he would bring about our meeting, and
I didn’t need to worry about it. Given where I would be serving, I
figured that the latter was highly unlikely, so I surrendered to God
my desire to marry, which had been strong since I was a young girl.
I would go, even if it meant remaining single.
Three weeks after that, I met a young, single missionary named
Jerry at a planning meeting for a high school outreach. This event
would feature our singing group in a camp setting, and Jerry was
on the camp board. He had been serving in Korea for a number of
years. When we met, we discovered our mutual love for the Lord
and desire to serve in Korea. We immediately recognized that God
had brought us together. We found that as we were each following
God’s plan individually, his plan for us to serve together in Korea as
a married couple came together. 1
Answer from Barb, who served with Operation Mobilization in South Korea.
SINGLES, COUPLES, AND KIDS: Counting the Cost | 159