Available, Brave & Crazy: Part 1

Completely Available

David Moore grew up listening to his dad’s vinyl records—Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles and Petra, a big-hair 80s Christian band. He remembers lying on the floor next to the record player doing his homework and crying with conviction as Petra’s This Means War album pledged:

I am available. I am available.
I will go when You say go.
I am available. I am available.
I will stop when You say no.
My whole life was incomplete
Until I laid it at Your feet.
So use me as You will.
I am available.

“I’ll go wherever you ask me to,” David promised the Lord, which meant he’d do what missionaries in biographies did—move to the ends of the earth, endure trials and see multitudes saved.

A Little Skeptical

Ashley’s journey into missions started when she met David during their first year of college. He told her right off the bat, “I’ve wanted to be a missionary since I was 12.” Ashley wasn’t convinced. Most people don’t follow through on their middle school career aspirations. But she liked David, and they started dating. During their sophomore year, they studied abroad together for a semester in Guatemala. By that point, Ashley had warmed up to the idea of missions enough to switch her major to Spanish and ESL. She saw teaching English as the perfect missionary job but still wasn’t sure if she was cut out for cross-cultural ministry.

In their junior year, David and Ashley attended a missions conference emphasizing the needs of the unreached, specifically the Muslim world. David told Ashley afterward, “I feel like the Lord told me I’m supposed to go to Southeast Asia.” All Ashley knew about that part of the world was that it had lots of islands, but David explained his logic. Of all the Muslim nations, those in Southeast Asia most closely resembled the Hispanic cultures they both loved, with a lush, tropical climate and warm, outgoing people.

David must have explained his mindset shift in a very charming way because Ashley did not second-guess their relationship. Instead, she spent Christmas break asking the Lord what He might have for her. Since middle school, David had been making deliberate choices to prepare himself for cross-cultural missions. Ashley had not. But that Christmas season, the Lord opened her eyes to the ways He had been preparing her anyway.

Although she was young, Ashley had ministry experience as a camp counselor and high school worship team leader and had been on several mission trips. She had also developed a love of travel through international choir tours and studying abroad. Ashley’s wanderlust stands in stark contrast to the rest of her family, who much prefer the familiarity and comfort of home to the unknowns and inconveniences of faraway adventures. She felt the Lord showing her, Look at all these things I did in your life, not David’s. Look at the mission trips I sent you on and how much you loved learning a language. I’ve been preparing you for overseas ministry even though you didn’t realize it.

Exploring

By May of their junior year, David was still more confident in his call to be a missionary than in his call to marry Ashley. He wondered, Would it be loving to ask her to follow me into the unknown of Muslim Southeast Asia? David now looks back on his perspective as somewhat self-righteous, but at the time, being totally available to the Lord included a willingness to be single.

The only way David saw to settle the issue was to visit Southeast Asia. With summer break only a few weeks away, he hurriedly emailed every missionary he knew. A family his parents supported introduced David to Robert and Michelle, Pioneers team leaders who agreed to host him for a three-week visit. David knew nothing of the city or surrounding people groups, but he took the opportunity, praying as he went, Lord, can we bring you more glory here as a couple, or is this not a fit for Ashley?

Ashley, by that point, was ready to say yes to both a ring and long-term missions, although she knew it would be the hardest thing she had ever done. She didn’t have to wait long for David to decide. Although he didn’t formally propose until the following February, from the tone of his letters during the trip, Ashley knew her future would include a round-the-world adventure.

Confirming

David’s main hesitation about marrying Ashley was that she did not have a specific call to be a missionary in Southeast Asia. She told him, “I see how God has worked in my life to equip me to answer the Great Commission among an unreached people group. But I don’t feel a call to a specific place.” David was skeptical of that heart posture. It was not the type of missionary call he had read about and not what he envisioned lying on the floor listening to Petra albums. God was supposed to tell each missionary exactly where to go.

On his first few nights in Southeast Asia, David stayed up late talking with Robert and Michelle about their decision to move to the field. To his shock, he discovered that Michelle didn’t have a people group-specific calling, either. She would have happily followed Robert anywhere in the world. As David processed her story and heard how the Lord had used her in ministry, he knew God had answered his main prayer. He felt the freedom to serve together with Ashley, bringing both of their giftings to the ministry.

Preparing

David and Ashley married in December 2006, and both started teaching in public schools. For the next five years, they focused on preparing for the field. The new Mr. and Mrs. Moore did not wait to cross the ocean before connecting with Muslims. They volunteered with a ministry in their city that reached out to immigrant families through tutoring programs. Most of their students were from a culture in East Africa, and the Moores grew to appreciate the East African culture and idiosyncrasies and the people’s strength of character, deeply entwined with their Muslim faith.

While David and Ashley enjoyed their stateside tutoring ministry, their eyes were firmly fixed on Southeast Asia. They planned to pay off their student loans and have their first baby at home, then head overseas. Ashley was pregnant with Sophia when they joined Pioneers in December 2011. Theoretically, David and Ashley went to the orientation program open-minded about where they would serve, but Ashley says they only pretended to be open-minded. Their commitment to joining Robert and Michelle’s team never wavered.

Once they officially joined the mission agency, a trip to visit Robert and Michelle confirmed a fit for both David and Ashley. A highlight was teaching English at an after-school program the team had started in a poorer neighborhood. At the end of an afternoon teaching action verbs to the children, they realized, We’re specifically equipped to serve here. We’re good at this!

Church planting is an inherently long-term task, and David and Ashley’s team set an example of faithfulness. Robert and Michelle had been on the field for almost 20 years and all the other team members had at least 10 years of experience. The Moores saw them as mentors to learn from and emulate. David promised himself, I’m not going to be one of those missionaries who quits. Ashley shared David’s long-term outlook. She pictured having more children and raising them in Southeast Asia. She was already processing schooling options for one-year-old Sophia. The Moores were going to be one of those missionary families who went to the field, loved it and stayed forever. At least, they were available to be one of those families.

Launching Out

Ashley was correct in her prediction that moving to Southeast Asia would be hard. She and David faced all the common challenges of starting life over in a new world: language learning, culture shock and the need to build new relationship networks. During their first rainy season, a roof leak migrated through their house from room to room, dripping from corners and light fixtures and occasionally reducing Ashley to a puddle on the floor, crying, “I just want to go back to America where our house never leaked.” Sophia was a toddler and the Moores soon welcomed a new baby, Aiden. “Having a C-section overseas is no joke,” Ashley remembers. “It felt brave and crazy.”

For David, the transition was more rational than emotional. “In some ways,” he explains, “I decided it was home before we moved there.” They both made steady progress in language and culture acquisition and mostly enjoyed the process. Gradually, their lives settled into a rhythm. Life on their team, however, was much different than they anticipated.

Recalibrating

David and Ashley had an eight-year relationship with Robert and Michelle before arriving on the field. However, about a year before the Moores moved to Southeast Asia, Robert and Michelle accepted a new role as area leaders overseeing several teams. They broke the news to the Moores, “We’re not going to be your team leaders after all.” Less than six months after David and Ashley arrived in Southeast Asia, the new team leaders who replaced Robert and Michelle announced that they were also stepping down and moving to another city. That meant the team now consisted of David and Ashley, a newly arrived single woman who soon moved away and a newlywed couple. Eighteen months after joining what they considered “the most stable missionary team in the world,” David and Ashley were tapped to lead what felt like an entirely different team.

As the Moores finished full-time language study and switched their focus to full-time ministry, they realized that their team of four adults—two of whom were moms of preschoolers—had limited capacity. They didn’t have the ability or vision to continue the afterschool program their team had invested in for over a decade. So, David and Ashley closed down the project that had first attracted them to the team. “There was a heaviness,” they remember, “of being responsible for ending something that had been a big part of our identity coming into the work.”

The second major ministry adjustment was shifting focus from training lots of people in disciple-making skills to focusing on a few. During the Moores’ first two years on the field, their team had helped to train about a thousand local believers in church planting principles. But after two years, they could only identify one trainee who was putting theory into practice. They needed a new strategy, so they asked the Lord, What are Your plans? How can we follow You in that direction? The team soon identified three couples among their local believing friends who had a vision for self-reproducing house churches among their focus people group. The team committed to investing more than half their time and energy to support and encourage those three couples.

In two years, David and Ashley had moved around the world, learned a new language and culture and substantially re-shaped a team that had developed for decades under the guiding hand of people they deeply respected. The responsibility felt heavy. Yet the freedom was energizing.

Focusing on building trust in a smaller group of relationships came more naturally to David and Ashley than large trainings. Tuesdays soon became the highlight of their week. One of the three core partners came to the Moores’ house at about 3 p.m. They prayed together and reviewed key Scripture passages, and then the two men went to public places to search for spiritually open people. They would visit roadside stands or a university campus or walk through neighborhoods intentionally starting spiritual conversations. They returned home at 10 or 11 p.m. and prayed for the people who had shown interest.

On a few occasions, the Tuesday outings were marred by what David considered spiritual warfare. His fingers would start to tingle and then go numb one by one. Or he would see a black blob over the words in the center of his vision as he read Scripture. Medical friends suggested he was having migraines.

One Tuesday evening, David and his local partner met an elderly man with a history of sorcery, black magic and violence. Their simple conversation developed into a year-long Bible study from Genesis through the Gospels. The old man began to confess his faith in Jesus in his prayers: “I know You are the Son of God. I know You can forgive my sins. I know You died and rose again.” Watching his transformation crystallized David and Ashley’s ministry vision. They looked forward to investing many years in that type of relationship.

After an intense first three years on the field, David and Ashley were set to take a seven-month home assignment in 2016. They planned to visit supporters, introduce their family to Aiden, give birth to their third child and return to Southeast Asia just after Christmas. Leaving for the States was surprisingly hard. After three years of regularly thinking, I can’t wait to go home, Ashley now found herself crying over the idea of leaving Southeast Asia. They had established a life and ministry they enjoyed, despite the challenges. They had deep friendships and a home that felt like a sanctuary, despite the leaks. “I want to go home,” Ashley told David, “But I don’t want to go home because this is home.” They boarded their first flight to the U.S. with a sense of urgency to return to the field when the time came.

“Let’s Take a Walk”

David and Ashley and their kids landed back in the U.S. with people to see, stories to tell and a case of the flu. They bounced between friends’ houses and enjoyed reconnecting with family and church partners they hadn’t seen in three years. From May to September, they stayed in 13 homes.

Soon after the Moores landed in the U.S., David’s mom started pestering him to see a neurologist about his occasional vision loss and numbness. To allay what he considered to be her hyper-vigilance, he agreed. The Moores were so confident it was just migraines that Ashley—10 days away from a scheduled C-section—didn’t go to the appointment. The neurologist was 99% sure David was right about the migraines but ordered an MRI to rule out the 1% possibility of something else. He ordered a high-contrast MRI. When that was done, he knocked on the door of the changing room and said, “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

Staring at the MRI results in the neurologist’s office, David thought, That glowing white blob on one side of my brain doesn’t seem like something that’s on a normal person’s brain. The neurologist assured him, “If you’re going to have a brain tumor, you’ve won the lottery with this one. It’s in the perfect spot and it’s slow growing. We should be able to take it out without causing any cognitive deficit.”

David went outside and lay down in a patch of grass near the doctor’s office. He remembers it was a beautiful day. He was shivering from the shock of the news and gratefully soaked in the calming sunshine as he talked to the Lord about what had just happened. He didn’t want to tell Ashley the diagnosis over the phone and had a string of meetings that afternoon and evening which it didn’t occur to him to cancel. It wasn’t until 10 p.m. that David finally sat Ashley down, told her he had a brain tumor and then held her while she cried.

Implications

While the diagnosis was a shock, David soon came to see it as just one more obstacle to overcome. In his own words, “My mindset in encountering obstacles was that you beat them. That’s one of the trademarks that define people of character.” He admits that some of that attitude stemmed from pride. “I thought of myself as an impressive person. And I was competitive. I lived for obstacles.” When the doctor estimated it would take a year to recover from surgery, David mentally cut that in half. From his perspective, a brain tumor was inconvenient but didn’t have to interrupt their plans. They would still go back to Southeast Asia in January as planned.

Ashley, however, felt utterly overwhelmed. She remembers crying in bed, How on earth am I going to parent three children by myself? And she was angry at God. I just finally decided Southeast Asia is home, and now this is happening. Why did You even bring us there? In her grief and confusion, she wondered, Haven’t we already gone through enough hard things?

Looking back, Ashley can see one clear reason the Lord took them to Asia: She doesn’t think she could have weathered the coming storm if she hadn’t first moved overseas. She learned so much more about perseverance and how to lean on God in those three years abroad than she ever did in the U.S. Still, she wasn’t entirely happy about it, confiding in David, “God was sure sneaky if He only brought us there to make me strong enough to deal with this.” Nevertheless, Ashley still clung to Him, writing in her journal, Jesus, redeem this terrible time. May I be safe in Your arms, even as it feels like everything is falling apart.

To complicate matters, David and Ashley were processing the terrible news during the last few days of Ashley’s pregnancy. Ava was born 10 days after David’s initial diagnosis. By God’s grace, she was a calm baby. “The Lord knew I needed that,” Ashley says.

The Moores scheduled David’s surgery exactly eight weeks after Ava’s birth so Ashley would be fully recovered from the C-section and able to lift and care for the kids. The oncologists and surgeons David consulted all agreed with the neurologist’s initial conclusions: His tumor was optimally placed for surgery. He could anticipate a full recovery with no deficits. The positive prognosis fed into David’s narrative. He knew this was the kind of setback that would prevent some people from continuing on the mission field, but he would lead his family and persevere through it, glorifying God—and probably impressing a lot of people—along the way.