“Do you trust me,” the Lord whispered to Stacey Cooke’s heart as she wrestled with two seemingly conflicting affections. “Do you trust me with this?”
When a Christian answers the call to missions, the question of “Do you trust me?” is one that the Lord must tenderly ask time and time again. Few things about a missionary’s life are easy. Culture shock, inability to communicate, questions about educating and caring for one’s children, and the risk of burnout are all challenges that missionaries must continually navigate.
Despite these difficulties, pursuing a career in missions is always worth it, as seen by the faithful testimony of Stephen and Stacey Cooke.
“We’ve served with the IMB (International Mission Board) for sixteen years,” Stephen said. “We lived in Bulgaria for eleven years and the last four, almost five, in Germany.”
The Cookes, originally from Texas, didn’t just end up in Bulgaria overnight; the process was slow, but beautiful.
“I’ve always had a heart for it, always known I wanted to live overseas,” Stacey said. She explained she first felt called to international missions when she was just nine years old. However, the maturing of that dream took time, patience and faith. It was not always an easy road to walk, partly because her college sweetheart did not share her passion for ministry abroad.
“When we met, I didn’t feel called to missions,” Stephen said. “We felt like we were called to be together, but she also had that calling to go to missions.”
It took nothing less than the work of the Lord (and the bold initiative of a few roommates) to reconcile the tension that hung heavy in the air, so heavy that Stacey admits she considered breaking up with Stephen. Instead, they chose prayer.
“I had some really strong Christian roommates that had done summer missions the previous summer,” Stephen said. Initially, his roommates tried to encourage him to go on a mission trip himself, but when Stephen brushed their suggestion aside, his roommates took matters into their own hands.
“Then they came home one day and were like, ‘Hey, we signed you up for this mission trip. It’s for the whole summer.”
Naturally, there was some initial shock and hesitation, but, as Stephen now recounts, the Lord used that summer to change the trajectory of both his and Stacey’s life.
“I don’t know how,” Stephen told Stacey after the trip, “but I think God’s calling me to international missions.” After crying out to the Lord in tears, Stacey finally watched God reconcile her two loves.
At times, trusting the Lord doesn’t make sense. But, for every tear shed in faith-filled desperation, God actively sows seeds of immeasurable joy.
After Stephen returned from China, Stacey and Stephen entered into married life. Though the move to the mission field was not immediate, God used each day to strengthen their marriage and prepare them for the life to come.
Six years later, the timing was right.
“The question of who should we apply with and where do we go started coming up,” Stephen said. They settled on the IMB.
“We just felt called to go to the nations. We didn’t really know where,” Stephen said.
After looking through various job listings with the IMB and spending time in prayer individually, both Stephen and Stacey felt led to Bulgaria. Though unified in their decision, their initial reactions upon arriving in Bulgaria were hardly the same.
“First of all, we’re in two different taxis . . .,” Stacey said. “We’re driving through, and I just remember almost crying and just again and again praising God for his faithfulness.”
“My thought was, ‘What have I done? I cannot believe I just moved my family to this former communist country,'” Stephen said. Stacey giggles in the background. “I’m supposed to be protecting my family.”
Even still, Stephen trusted the Lord, and God changed his heart.
“God gave us a love for the people,” Stacey said. “To me, that’s also part of a calling. If you are truly called to the nations or truly called to a people, God will give you a heart and a love for them.”
Stephen agrees.
“Bulgarians are not easy to love,” Stacey said. “They’re ex-communists; they’re very closed off people on the outside.”
Stephen and Stacey went on to explain that Bulgarians find it crazy that Americans would leave the wealth of their homeland to live in Europe’s poorest country.
“A lot of them are very hopeless,” Stacey said. “So for us to go in there and be like, ‘No, you can have the love of Christ,’ would just blow their minds. It was an unexplainable love we had for them, and still do.”
This love allowed Stephen and Stacey to pour themselves out day-after-day, hour-after-hour.
“In the States, you go to work. You have your work time, then you have your family time, then you have your church time—you have all these different things,” Stephen said. “There was no, ‘Oh, we’re done with ministry.’ Ministry was in the evening, or at the park, or ministry was in the morning having coffee, or studying language.”
“It was all-encompassing,” Stacey said.
Despite the demands, Stephen expresses his gratefulness for the way it brought their family together.
“We see that as a blessing of the missionary life,” Stephen said.
After spending over a decade in Bulgaria, the Lord moved the Cooke family to Germany, the country they will return to next July after they finish their yearlong furlough in the States.
Throughout the years, the Lord has used every hardship to mold both Stephen and Stacey more into the image of His Son.
“Humility goes a long way overseas,” Stacey said. “Humility, grace and patience. . . I would put those on a banner and have them nearby always.”
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