Remembering Cindie Pike
“Please don’t send me to Africa” is usually the first request to God when the idea of becoming a missionary comes up. Behind that request is our desire, should God call us to missions, to retain our comfort level, proximity to family, and access to peanut butter that we currently have; a shortage of any of which would go in the “suffering for Christ” category. We make ourselves available in a very contained, controlled, and constricted way, yet hope that we can be used “powerfully”. Thanks be to God that some answer the call of God with no strings attached. They answer yes to God— access to modern amenities, constant internet, and peanut butter notwithstanding.
“Please don’t send me to Africa” is usually the first request to God when the idea of becoming a missionary comes up. Behind that request is our desire, should God call us to missions, to retain our comfort level, proximity to family, and access to peanut butter that we currently have; a shortage of any of which would go in the “suffering for Christ” category. We make ourselves available in a very contained, controlled, and constricted way, yet hope that we can be used “powerfully”. Thanks be to God that some answer the call of God with no strings attached. They answer yes to God— access to modern amenities, constant internet, and peanut butter notwithstanding.
In 1998, soon after Ukraine opened up as a
mission field, there was a meeting to decide who would move to the small city
of Kherson to work with the emerging church plant there. The city’s residents
are wonderful people, but the city itself was a holdover from communist days,
with little in the way of appealing architecture, or natural beauty. There was
running water twice a day for a few hours, the internet was constantly spotty,
and the electricity would often be so weak that the lights would dim and the microwave
wouldn’t work. The first hands to be raised at this meeting were that of Mel
and Cindie Pike, and for the next fifteen years they lived there with weak
electricity, water shortages, and on-and-off (mostly off) internet. During the
years that Mel and Cindie lived in Kherson they saw the church plant grow into
a church and joined with others in ministering to the many street children in
the city. Cindie taught Sunday school to the children from a local orphanage
regularly, and the Pikes were used by God to bring many to himself – many of
whom began calling Mel and Cindie their “American Mom and Dad.”
All of this took place until Cindie’s sudden death. While out
walking with Mel, she took a hard fall that broke her replacement knee and
caused bleeding that she never was able to recover from. She was never able to
be evacuated to Western Europe, and died in the city that God had called her
to, where she lived for a decade and a half without complaint or conditions.
Judging by the reactions I heard from Ukrainians since her death, I can say
that she truly fulfilled her call to love and serve those around her.
In the week before Cindie’s death two significant things
happened. First the heat in their apartment building went out. In the middle of
winter, with cold radiators, they used space heaters to bring the temperature
into the fifties in their apartment and used the oven a lot to keep the kitchen
warm. The other significant event was the ordination service for the pastor of
their church. A turning point for the church and one of the last steps before
the Pikes’ departure.
In the days before her death when I talked to Cindie, she beamed
and boasted about the pastor's ordination and said nothing about their
apartment being as cold as a refrigerator. May we all answer God’s call in the
way that Cindie did, and may our obedience to Christ follow her pattern of joy
amidst suffering.
Jonathan Eide, MTW Country Director,
Ukraine
