Missions Mag 1-4

This is what it is like.
Anthony Steele, D.Miss.
Training Facilitator for Latin America
Reaching & Teaching International Ministries
Email: anthony.steele@reachingandteaching.org
Cell phone: 270-970-8436
I greatly appreciate this opportunity to share something about my missions calling and
work. Before He ascended to the Father, Jesus gave his disciples the commandment to go
to all the world to make other disciples, teaching them to obey all things He had
commanded them. We call this mandate the Great Commission. Some have wondered if it
was just a commission for Jesus’ original disciples, but, since they did not get to all the
world in their lifetimes, it is clear that it is a mandate for the church in any age. That is
what God has been using the church to do since the Great Commission was given.
Glendon and Marjorie Grober
The Lord began to speak to me early on about a calling
to missions as a career. I gave my life to Christ at the
age of eight. Shortly after that, I met my uncle and
aunt, Glendon and Marjorie Grober, who were
missionaries to Brazil. I remember reading an article
about my uncle traveling the Amazon River to establish
preaching points and to plant new churches. I
remember wondering, “What must it be like to do
that?”
The Lord called me into the ministry when I was
sixteen and, shortly after that, I saw my uncle and
aunt again at a family reunion. My aunt began to
talk to me about my surrendering to God’s call
and she said “Tony, I believe the Lord will be
calling you to the mission field someday.”
Indeed, when I was in seminary in the 1980s, the Uncle Glen baptizing in the Amazon River
Lord called my wife, Beverly, and I to surrender to
his call to career missions. We wholeheartedly surrendered our lives to this calling. For
reasons of health at the time, the Lord closed the door as soon as we surrendered. That
was a difficult piece of news for us. For twenty-five years, I continued in ministry positions
serving as pastor and as a chaplain for a period of time. The whole time, I was wondering
and praying, “Why did you call us so strongly and then not let us go?” I had a fulfilling life
in ministry, but always thought our lives would not be what God intended if we did not
get to the mission field.
In 2007, I was asked to be a part of some mission work being done in Mexico by the
Caldwell/Lyon Baptist Association in Princeton, Kentucky. They were saturating a portion
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