A WOMAN TO ADMIRE 
Marilyn Miller - Missionary 
by Kristen Schafer

     My name is Kristen Schafer. I have been a Christian ever since I was about three years old. I have been attending the Christian & Missionary Alliance church practically my whole life. I had always had some interest in missions, but just a couple of years ago I knew that God wanted me to do something in that field. About two years ago a Missionary woman by the name of Marilyn Miller came to our church for the annual Missions week. She had been in Costa Rica and Cuba. She was an older woman so of course she had a lot to tell.

     Marilyn shared with us that being a missionary is not something that she had planned to do her whole life. When she got married that’s when she felt God was telling her she needed to drop what she was doing in the States and move to Costa Rica where she would live and preach the gospel. Now, like most people that’s not was she wanted to do, but she knew God had a plan and knew that she needed to follow what god was telling her and her husband to do. So she went. 

     They were living in the Jungle. The conditions and places they lived were not the most pleasant places to be living in. The Jungle, of course, was hot and humid and had many different kinds of animals that she had never even heard of before. Many times Marilyn came across things that scared her or she just didn’t want to deal with, but she did because she knew that’s what God wanted her to do. As she lived in Costa Rica and went back and forth from Costa Rica to Cuba, she learned many new things. She invited tribes that were not very pleasant people to stay in her home and God protected her. She went to Cuba and many times was in the middle of gunfire, but she never lost her faith in God. she kept going even when things were the hardest. So Marilyn hand her husband continued to share the love of God with the people around them. Many times she and her husband were the guest of honor at banquets and other formal occasions. Right now Marilyn is having some physical problems, but through our prayer we can lift her up to God and God can give her the strength she needs to keep sharing the message of Jesus Christ. But even though this is happening, I am sure that this is not keeping her spirit down. I don’t really think Marilyn is that kind of person. The main reasons why I admire her aren’t because she goes overseas, not because she is loved by so many people, but because when stuff go tuff she loved God so much that she used that love and put it into her ministries and no matter what happened she knew that she had a mission. That mission was to tell people about God. Even though she wasn’t too thrilled with the whole idea about going to a place where she had never been before, she knew that was what God was calling her to do and that was what she was going to do.