Thomas Island family leaves it all behind to serve as missionaries

The Olson family had it all. A spacious, nicely appointed Lowcountry-style home in Thomas Island’s Shell Ring neighborhood. A boat to enjoy recreational activities on Charleston’s beautiful waterways. Good friends and family nearby, along with a full calendar to keep them busy.

Nathan had a well-paying management level job with a company in Ladson. His wife, Ashley, an artist, homeschooled their three children - Sarah Elizabeth, 12, Knox, 10, and Mary Haddon, 5 - while keeping them engaged in a plethora of activities common for kids their ages. They were in that so-called “sweet spot” of life where success and happiness meet -and all seems perfect.

But three years ago, while the family was visiting the United Kingdom for medical reasons, something began stirring in their hearts - a flutter of faith-filled compassion that would ultimately inspire them to leave it all behind.

Many people are prompted to make critical life decisions when they find themselves at a fork in the road. For Nathan and Ashley, devout Christians, it wasn’t a fork, but a cross — laid out in stone bricks on the pavement of a English street.

The site marked the spot known as the Oxford Martyr Memorial in Oxford, England, where two men, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, were burned at the stake in the 1500s for their faith in God and for their belief that every man and woman should be able to have their own copies of the Bible. Ashley had spent time before the trip teaching her children about church history, specifically about the Reformation period. That day, the cross in the road nudged them to consider a new path.

“We were just as a family so emotional, because we had really studied about (Latimer and Ridley),” recalled Ashley. “…It was crazy because we were standing there and here’s this symbol of a cross in the road and everybody is just walking around so carefree, riding their bicycles, people out having lunch. You could look across the street and actually see the (old) charred marks on the buildings from where they would have the burnings.”

They also found it odd that so many old, beautiful churches were no longer being used for their original purposes, many of them sold off to be used as mosques, apartment buildings, or secular gathering spaces. After they returned to the states, the Olsons continued to study the story of the Oxford martyrs, and others in the region.

“We really focused on the martyrs and we were just blown away at their bravery,” said Ashley. “The desire that they had to live a life that was not their own. That they really believed that they were here for the purpose of Kingdom work. They were not living for their own accord. It was overwhelming to me that we would read these stories and some of them were just 17 years old!”

As Ashley and Nathan talked with their children about the importance of doing hard things, especially when it comes to faith in God, they began to contemplate some tough questions. What does it look like to lay down your life for your neighbors? What does it look like to love well?

“This is how we make an impact, a difference,” Ashley said. “As I am doing this, I am reading these stories (about martyrdom) and people who literally took it to another level. We live in a generation where parents are going ‘I can’t get my teenager to make their bed,’ or ‘I just can’t get him to finish his homework.’ Do we realize what people were doing (back then) and the depth of what they were doing for the sake of the Gospel?”

The questions continued to percolate, as did a gentle but unmistakable prodding to do more to live out their faith. Nathan and Ashley were no strangers to mission work. Both had been involved in church plantings before, and Ashley’s uncle is serving as a mentoring pastor for Team Europe with World Witness Missions. Her cousins, Rebecca and Emma, are also working in the mission field. But what exactly were the Olsons being called to do?

“I thought maybe we were just seeking adventure, change,” said Ashley. “This can’t really be what God wants us to do. Our pastor said ‘What’s stopping you from researching?’ So two years ago in October, we began the process.”

As they did their due diligence, the Olsons experienced what they would describe as several divine interventions along the way. First, unbeknownst to Ashley, her cousins were working with a missionary in Germany named David Stoddard, whom Ashley had been in touch with herself about mission work after getting his name from another contact. Then, she spoke with her uncle about a church he had helped plant in Scotland - Grace Church Leith just north of Edinburgh, about 366 miles from where the family had seen the cross in the road at Oxford the year before. Her uncle connected the Olsons with the church’s Pastor Athole Rennie, who was in need of servants to support the church’s mission. Soon, Ashley’s cousin, Emma, and her husband, committed to joining the team, along with the Olson family.

“We’re going over to help serve,” said Ashley. “It could mean teaching, leading, discipling, stacking chairs…whatever is needed.”

But why Scotland? It is a place, Ashley explained, in which only six percent of the population attends church. In the community where they will be serving, the participation rate is only two percent.

“In the mission world, when you get two percent or below, you’re considered to be an unreached people group,” she added. “…Many of the churches there are just dissolving and dying out. There is a level of indifference towards the Gospel. They’re not hostile towards it, just indifferent.”

All the more reason for the Olson family to go, Ashley said.

“We became so overwhelmingly burdened for that area, because of what it once was, and what people were doing for the Gospel, and the state of where it is now…It is so post-modern to the point that they don’t even know or understand the depth of their history.”

In addition to serving at Grace Church Leith, Nathan will be using his unique business and management experience to assist the Free Church of Scotland in their desire to start a church planting center (Ashley believes God was preparing him all along to do this exact type of work).

“There is just such a need,” added Ashley. “They just want people to love them well. A good portion of the couples at Grace Church Leith, this is their first church experience. They have not been discipled. They don’t know what living for Christ looks like. They just want people to do community with…That’s what so often our churches today are missing. We can offer hundreds of programs and things to be busy with. If you’re not reaching the heart of the person and loving them where they are, you’re missing one of the greatest components of the Gospel, so that that’s what we’re doing to do.”

But at what cost? That is something that the Olsons had to prayerfully consider before agreeing to accept their new calling. To go, they needed to sell their home and nearly everything in it, ready to start fresh in Scotland and support a two-year commitment.

“We sold our house in less than a month,” said Ashley. “We’ve sold 90 percent of our possessions, all of our furniture…From that perspective, our children are learning to get rid of things, to hold loosely, and to realize that things do not make you happy. That they are not your identity. Legos are fun, but Legos do not fulfill you!…It’s been a stripping period. A raw, difficult period. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

The Olsons vacated their home and moved in to a friend’s FROG (family room over the garage) for about a month, before departing last week for a 30 day training session at a camp-like facility in North Carolina. They head to Scotland in late October to begin their long-awaited work at Grace Church Leith. Ashley knows there will be some who will question the family’s decision to go to a well-developed, modernized region, as opposed to a place seemingly more in need.

“I know some will ask ‘If you want to do something that really makes a difference, why aren’t you going to a third world country?’ There are people hungry, people that need clean water…and yes, that is so important and God equips and calls people to do that. We also need people who are willing to lay down their lives and go minister to people in first world countries. The reality is it’s the depravity of the heart. The people who seemingly have it all together need Jesus just as much.”

And in the end, thousands of miles away from their Charleston area home and all the things they left behind, they hope to leave their own mark on a community that has so clearly touched their hearts.

Want to help?

The Olson family is raising money in support of their mission for World Witness in Scotland.

For more information on how you can help, send an email to olsonsteamscotland@gmail.com, or visit www.worldwitness.org.