Missionary Ponderances: Learning To Let God Be The Answer

Natalie Monk went to Mozambique as a medical missionary with something to give. Through cross-cultural and personal challenges in a rural medical clinic, she discovered she was the learner; she didn’t have all the answers. While she had the medical training as a pediatric nurse practitioner and resources, she acknowledges having but a “fraction of the strength, resilience, intelligence, life skills, and selflessness that the Mozambicans around me had.”

As frequent physical illness tested her and ground her down, Natalie faced her own fears and anxieties and confronted prejudice, poverty, sickness, and weakness. Beyond a mere missionary experience, Natalie’s story is a deeply personal account of a young woman who comes to the end of herself, faces her fears in a perfect storm of circumstances, and develops an abiding trust in God, who is enough.

For anyone who wants to serve God but struggles with anxiety, self-doubt, and fear of not measuring up, these hard-won realizations will open room for new avenues of grace in hearts.

Natalie Monk is one of eleven siblings, was homeschooled, and graduated as a nurse at nineteen. She became a pediatric nurse practitioner at twenty-three with the dream of pursuing medical mission work. After seven years in Mozambique as a medical missionary working in a rural medical/nutrition clinic that she directed for five years, she is now a resident of the Phoenix area, where she enjoys long walks in nature, bird watching, and playing the piano.