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God’s Jenga Tower
By Kayla Falkenholt
Would you believe me if I told you that a successful mission is like a Jenga tower? Let me back up so you’ll understand what I mean.
Even as a young teen, I felt drawn to mission work. I wasn’t sure how, or where, but I knew I wanted to go. As I got older, however, I realized my giftings weren’t in evangelism, linguistics, or translation. I wasn’t a pastor or a doctor. Those were the only kinds of missionaries I knew, so I reluctantly gave up on my dream.
A few years later, though, I found out that the role of missionary teacher existed! A few months later, my bags were packed and I flew across the ocean to Cameroon to serve God with what I was really good at–teaching kids.
My job is to teach the kids of all the other missionaries so that they can focus their days on outreach, preaching, and translation. This past year, the mission school I serve at welcomed students from 5 different countries–Canada, the USA, Austria, China, and South Korea.
It’s been three years now of serving as a missionary kids teacher, and as I look at the community around me, I am realizing just how many different kinds of roles there are. Yes, there are pastors and bible translators. There are also surveyors and statisticians who figure out which languages are top priority for the next translation projects. There are scripture use engagement specialists who make sure churches and their members can actually use the new scriptures they receive. We need ethnomusicologists to help people worship God in their own language and musical style. We need airplane and helicopter pilots to get all of those people out to the villages, and mechanics to do maintenance on said aircraft.
We have families in my neighborhood who have come to dig wells and set up domestic abuse shelters. We need teachers, librarians, classroom aides, and principals to run the schools. We rely on mission nurses to keep our bodies healthy. Our IT technicians and financial secretaries keep things running smoothly.
Back home in Canada, we need a whole team, too: mission directors, board members, accountants, office managers, fundraisers, financial donors, prayer partners, envelope stuffers, and more.
Each of these people is like a single jenga block in a tower. Sure, you can take out a couple pieces and the tower will stay standing, but it will be wobbly, and only a matter of time before one missing block sends the whole thing crumbling to the ground.
God didn’t make a mistake when he made us all different. All kinds of people are needed in the grand design of God’s Jenga tower. Pictures of Kayla and some of the children are shown below:
Kayla Falkenholt has been serving in Cameroon with Lutheran Bible Translators of Canada since 2022. If you would like to make a monetary donation to support Kayla’s work, you can donate online at www.lbtc.ca. If you would like to receive updates and prayer letters from Kayla, you can contact her at kayla@lbtc.ca to be added to her email list. Or just email her to ask random questions!