Voice Spoken, Our Response
We are Eric and Melody Niday.
God asked us to leave everything familiar and step into full-time ministry. We said yes before we had a plan. We said yes before we had the money. We said yes because when God speaks that clearly, the only real risk is staying put.
Home Is Where the Body Is
From Eric:
For most of my life, missions never made sense to me. I could never understand why we would fly across the world to do work that needed doing right here at home. Twenty years ago I went on a mission trip to Mexico. We poured concrete. We ran a VBS. Everyone came back fired up about what we did for God. I came back unsettled. The work was fine. But I could have done that in my own neighborhood.
Then God sent us to Kenya.
Kenya was different. Not because of what we did. Because of where we were. Everywhere we went, people greeted us the same way. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home.
And sitting in a room with people we had only just met, before we even knew what spiritual battles were ahead of us, the Spirit spoke something clearly to my heart:
Missionary work has never made sense to you because missionary work is supposed to be done at home. And home is where the body of Christ is.
Kids were clinging to Lori and Brenda as if they had known them forever. That was home. Breaking bread in the houses of strangers who did not feel like strangers. A pastor slowing his words so another pastor could translate. That was home. Not a building. Not a country. The body of Christ, alive and together.
I called Melody that night. And even through a phone thousands of miles away, she felt it. She confirmed what the Spirit had already spoken. This was not just my calling. This was ours. And people around us confirmed what we were just coming to completely understand. God is calling us home to a family we did not know we had, to a place we have never lived, to finish something in us that can only be finished there.
