#86 | Hospitality, Modeling, & Taking a Risk for Christ, Pt. 1 | Ruth Ripken

And so as I would put Nik on an airplane, I always even later, when we began going to Believers in Persecution, we didn't get to travel together as much as we had when we were in Malawi and South Africa. And suddenly I realized I had the toughest job. I had to be the one on my knees, I had to be the one praying.

I had to be the one doing all the logistics things that kept him going. And I'm on the rol.

It's watering time, everybody. It's time for Apollos Watered, a podcast.

To saturate your faith with the things.

Of God so that you might saturate.

Your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And it's time for another one of our deep conversations, a deep conversation with Ruth Ripken.

We often hear missionaries and pastors talk about the price for following Jesus, but rarely do we see what that looks like in the day to day with their families. Also, how does the mission of God play out between genders? For example, what does it look like among Muslim women?

You know, oftentimes whenever we hear of missionaries, we get the perspective of the man and his ministry. But what about the wife and those among the women or those women who minister as single women among women in these different cultures?

Well, that's where Ruth Ripken's perspective is so important. Ruth and Nick, along with their three children, served for over 32 years obeying Christ's command to share Jesus across the globe.

They were doing such things as resettling refugees, providing famine relief and operating mobile medical clinics. Formerly Muslims, many of these Somali believers suffered for their faith. Most were martyred near the end of the Ripkens tenure among the Somalis.

Their 16 year old son died of an asthma attack on Easter Sunday morning. He's buried at the school from which the other Ripken children graduated.

It was one year after that that the Holy Spirit led the Ripkens to begin a global pilgrimage to learn from believers in persecution how to recapture a biblical missiology of witness and house church planting in the midst of persecution and martyrdom. Most of all, believers in Persecution modeled for the Ripkens how to trust Jesus completely.

Many of these lessons have been lost or forgotten by the church in the West. Currently, the Ripkens have interviewed over 600 believers in persecution, exceeding 72 countries. Sitting at their feet.

The Ripkens have learned from the suffering church how to thrive amidst suffering and not merely survive.

The Ripkens, using everything that they've learned from these believers in persecution, have been creating resources as gifts from the church to the church. And as you listen in, you'll see why. Today, they've created articles, books, a music cd, a documentary.

They've done workshops in so many different places and created other tools that allow the church in persecution to teach us in the west about its biblical heritage of both crucifixion and resurrection. All these tools are designed to challenge believers to boldly follow Jesus, sharing their faith with others, no matter what the cost.

I invite you to listen in to Ruth's story. There's much about their story chronicled in Nick's books. But Nick and Ruth are a team, and her faith is not less than her more vocal counterpart.

Her faith is deep, as are her convictions. And her voice, no less valuable. In fact, it might be more so. Happy listening.

Ruth Ripken, welcome to Apollo Watered.

Well, thank you so much. I am excited to be here.

Well, I am excited to have you here, but are you ready for the fast five?

Yes.

Okay. Who is your favorite Kentucky basketball player in UK history?

Oh, Anthony Davis.

Oh, that's a good choice. That's a safe choice, too, but that's a good choice. That's a safe choice, but that's a good choice. Okay, here's the next question. Second question.

What is your favorite relaxing activity?

That was hard because I am a busybody and I love to be busy, but probably my favorite is sitting in my prayer room and looking out at the woods.

That sounds very relaxing.

That sounds relaxing to me right now.

Yeah, well, that's where we're sitting right now is in the prayer room.

Awesome. Awesome. All right. We know that you've been in Africa.

But now you are back in the West. What is the dish you missed most, though, when you were in Africa?

The dish I went, ooh, probably, you know, I love so much food. A big chocolate ice cream cone.

Did you ever get ice cream when.

You were in Africa?

Every once in a while, but it wasn't. I ate a lot of ice cream that tasted like dishwash, so that's no fun.

Okay, here we go. The next question.

Number four.

If you were a store, what Store.

Would you be and why store?

Well, definitely be a clothing store, because I love to shop, and with COVID I haven't gotten to do that for a while, so that would be a fun place to be.

Okay, a clothing shop.

That's a good one. I like that one too.

Here we go, the next one. What was your funniest moment overseas?

Funniest moment overseas.

Ooh, there's a lot of those, I think going to a village and watching my children figure out how to play with other children and what they were doing when they didn't know the language. And so that was fun to watch. Probably not the funniest thing, but Nick made some great mistakes in language.

And I'm sitting there going, he didn't really get to say that. And then everybody laughed and it was fun. So, yeah, that might be up there above my kids. So.

Okay. Okay. Well, let's then hear your story. Let's hear Ruth Ripken Square.

Where did you grow up? How did you meet Nick, and how.

Did you get into ministry?

Well, it's a fun story. I grew up in a pastor's home in Kentucky. My parents loved missions. They loved to have missionaries in our home. So I met lots of fun people.

And just a little bit of that story, when I was nine years old, I met a missionary at a camp. And that's when God began to work in my heart. And I definitely said, that's where I'm headed. I want to do that.

It's not fair that all these people that I have never heard. So as a nine year old, I said yes. I told my parents, I told the church.

A funny part of this story that kind of involves Nick coming into the story is that I was told, write the mission board and tell them of your interest.

So at nine years old, my little scrutiny writing, I sent that letter, they wrote me back and they said, every year, just kind of write us a note and tell us where you are in the process. And I did that.

And Nick likes to laugh that when we were appointed and they brought my folder out, there was this folder with all these letters in it. And that's true. They had kept all my letters. You know, now we do email. We don't have that kind of connection with people, but that's what I did.

So as a 12 year old, I wrote a paper in school about Africa and I started saying that's where I wanted to go. So when I got to the college that I went to in Kentucky, Nick was a sophomore at that time and we met. He had Never met a missionary.

And he may have told this part of his story. So, you know, he met this missionary and said, I'm ready to go.

And then, you know, the missionary reminded him, you've got a few more hurdles to jump over. But it was great because as I wove my way through college, he was there and watched.

And he'd go up to guys and say, you know, she's going to the mission field. You don't want to date her. But he was a little scared to date me. So, you know, there I was, trying to figure it out. But when.

When he went off to seminary, he realized that he could come back and get me. And I kind of forgave him for all those things he did. And that's kind of the journey.

Another really fun part of our story is when we went to ask my parents for their, you know, their blessing to be married. My dad looked at me and he said, ruth, what about your desire to go to the nations? What about your desire to do missions?

And I said, dad, that's what we want to do. And Nick and I want to do it together. And my dad said, then I bless you.

If you're going to do what God asked you to do and told you to do all those years ago, then I bless you in this marriage. And my dad and mom really did bless us. It was a big part of our lives. And I think the blessings that our parents give us are so huge.

And we have a whole generation of young people whose parents are not really doing that scriptural way of blessing. My dad would have us kneel before him as we went each time back overseas, and he would lay his hand on us and bless us to go.

So a blessing is a big part of our lives and something that I want to do for young people who are not having that blessing. Because you don't want to be out on the edge of lostness without a blessing from. You get the blessing from God.

But to have a blessing from somebody that can really hold you accountable to that, that's huge.

Why do you think we've lost this idea of blessing?

I don't think we catch it in the scriptures.

If we go through the Old Testament, how many times does it talk about blessing, you know, blessing your children to go and God blessing Abraham to go? So I don't think that.

And I think also it has to do with us realizing that if we're going to go with Jesus to the tough places, some parents aren't ready to do that. And we don't think it's really, really hard to go on that edge if you aren't blessed. And parents need to grasp the, the joy of doing that.

Even though it's hard to send your children, to send your grandchildren, but just think of the energizing part of that blessing that gets people across the globe.

Yeah, you get to the field, you've.

Honored the Lord by that commitment that.

He called you to so many years ago.

It's still, though, a transition for, for.

Any missionary couple coming to the, going to the field. What did it look like and feel like to you? Was it what you expected it to be?

Well, I had gone as a junior in college to Zambia as a summer missionary. So I kind of had a feel for what it might be. But taking your children, that adds a whole nother dynamic to it.

But we got to Malawi and we probably didn't have a lot of culture shock because it was a lot like rural Kentucky and it was just so exciting. New foods and our boys, a three year old and a five year old, they were excited about meeting other children.

If you go to Malawi, it's called the Warm heart of Africa. And it truly is. They love you. They really are excited about you being there.

And I know that as I look back, kind of oasis as we began, because we would not have been prepared for what was coming. As we got to places that were a lot tougher. I mean, we had people begging us to come to their village. They said, we don't have a God in our village.

We want to know, are you those people who can bring God to our village? And we went weekends, just we go and live in the village and see a church start.

And I mean, you can deal with all kinds of stuff if you are watching people come to faith and being baptized. So it was exciting. The transition was not huge. Now, later on we'd have some issues, but we were together, we were doing it together.

And that was exciting for me. And it's what I had always envisioned, that I would go there, I would stay there in that one location and I would die there.

But God needed to stretch me and he did that.

Being in the field, not only as.

A missionary, but as a parent and with a spouse.

We talk about missions oftentimes, but we don't understand the personal dynamics at work, that it's not just that one person's ministry, it's our family and heavily involved in that.

What were the biggest challenges for you?

Being a mother and going into an.

African culture with young children, what were those challenges?

Well, learning to cook in Another culture is always a challenge. And it's interesting. We've moved about 38 times over our 35 years overseas.

And now back in Kentucky and everywhere I have gone, I've had to learn how to cook because it's different foods, different spices. They're called something different. And so cooking is a huge transition.

And I know some families pack American food in their suitcase, and we didn't do that. We said, we're going to live with what's available.

And our first two years, we lived in a culture that some of the time the only thing we could get in the market was cabbage, potatoes, onions, and liver. And so, you know that you learn to be a little creative with the liver and those kinds of things.

But, you know, but we would go to the village, they'd give us bananas, we'd have all kinds of stuff. And I learned a lot of different creative ways to do that. Another thing that we dealt with was homeschooling.

I was a teacher, which I am so grateful that God allowed me to be in that field, because at least I felt more confident when I looked at my boys and said, ok, we are going to start school this month. So that was another one, trying to balance being a Westerner in an African society that, you know, how do I.

How do I not bring everything that I love and I hold dear from America and blend it into the culture. It was really, you know, it was important. And living at a lifestyle as somebody in the village, or is there a way to live that I can live?

We couldn't have lived as somebody from the village. They grew up that way. I didn't. And so it was hard. So how to balance that?

So I don't look like I'm the rich American in a culture that is living a lot less with a lot less than I have.

Being in the field like that, learning.

To adjust, how did you then connect with the people that were there, especially the women, because you have an opportunity.

That Nick does not.

And those. Those societies, the gender roles are usually pretty. Pretty clear and in the interactions.

But what did you learn?

I mean, what were the challenges that.

You had and what did you learn.

And how did you connect with the women there?

Well, when we got to Muslim countries, definitely Nick had. He didn't have a voice with Muslim women. And I found that a Muslim woman is going to hear about Jesus. It's going to be through a woman.

And for many years, as missions went to that world, we assume that the man was the missionary and the woman was his wife, and that Won't work. It will not work.

In a Muslim world, we, as women have to have probably better language skills than the men do, because for the majority of Muslim women, they don't read, they don't write, and they're not stupid. It's just they communicate in oral means. And so we had to learn how to use our language skills to speak stories from the Bible to these women.

And every woman that you meet loves to hear a story. That's sort of how they interact with each other. They'll sit for hours in their living areas talking and sharing and telling stories.

I have a friend who lived in a very strict Muslim country, and she said when they. When she would go visit, they would sit around and try to tell the worst, most horrible story they could think of.

And then they would say, oh, you win. You won. You know, it was kind of like a game. Telling stories is always fun. And so as.

As we go into their homes and we share a story from the Bible, you know, I read something this morning. Can I tell you what I read? And we tell the story of the woman at the well or the woman with the issue of blood. And those stories communicate.

And so I think that's one thing that I learned. When we were in Malawi and in South Africa, it was more open. And so I would go to women's homes, we would sew together, we would talk together.

They would try to teach me to cook. That was always a challenge. Doing those things that women do allows you to be with women, and you learn to tell the stories of the Bible.

And that really does connect a great part of this story. We went to a wedding in a Muslim country, and if you know anything for Muslim women, weddings last a long time.

I mean, it's not like the one hour where you walk down the aisle and it's all done. No, it's several days preparation. And then at the wedding, you're there 20, 20 hours or so. They dress up in. It's like going to your prom.

They're all dressed up, and they're excited. So we get into this wedding, and I had a lady with me who is superb in Arabic.

And when she walked in the door, one of the women that she had told a Bible story to just a few days earlier shouted across this room of over 150 women. Oh, here is my friend. Oh, she will tell wonderful stories. And we were sitting there going, we're gonna get kicked out the story.

And everybody loved it. And I said, well, tell another one. So at the wedding, there she was just telling Story after story.

And the women gathered around her, hearing the stories. And the great thing about women is we don't keep quiet. As all these women went back to their villages, they were telling the stories along the way.

And so God is at work. We've just got to figure out how to partner with him and get the stories of the Bible out there. Because women's hearts can be changed.

And even though they are in an environment that's oppressive, that's demeaning to them, all of a sudden they have worth in who they are. Because you've told us, and, you know, we think, oh, well, that'll only work over there. No, that works right here in Americ or wherever you are.

It's so important that we. We learn the Bible stories and we share them.

What then was the biggest challenge with these women that you're interacting with as a Western woman coming in because you said, you can't abandon your culture. You have this mentality. What was the biggest adjustment for you as you were interacting with these women that you had to put that.

That filter on saying, no, no, no.

This is a different culture. This is a different society. How do I live in this society and communicate Christ?

Being a learner and a listener is huge.

I think one of the words that I, as I work with women, I say be helpless, go into a culture helpless, because once you are helpless, you will ask for help. And that's when you begin to meet people. That's when you begin to connect with people.

You know, everything about your washing machine in another country is different than what I grew up with. For one lady, what she decided to do so she could be close to women.

She got rid of her washing machine and she went to the watering area where the women all washed their clothes. For one woman, she couldn't read the directions, and they hadn't been in the apartment for a week.

And she walked across the hall in the apartment and held the book up and looked puzzled. And the family that was in that other apartment walked over, helped her learn how to use her washing machine. They couldn't communicate at all.

But by being helpless and being a listener and a learner, she learned that. And then they became best of friends. And these people help with language. So I think being helpless is huge.

And those of us from the west, we have a hard time being helpless. We think we can get in our car and we can go wherever we want and all that. Well, in a lot of the Muslim areas, we were.

We took taxis, and standing there on the corner to get a Taxi. You had to figure out, how do I stop this taxi? And so you learn to watch and you learn to listen and it's really fun.

When my boys were little, I always wanted every day to be an adventure. And so we went on an adventure. And even as they grew up, it was an adventure.

And when it was just Nick and I in a Muslim country, we were on an adventure. And today we've got to learn how to stop that taxi going down the road.

And I think if we go in thinking, well, we know it all, we've got it all figured out, we won't get very far. But if we go in with open hands and say, I am a first grader today.

I don't even know how to say hello, I don't know how to ask how to find the toilet, you become a learner and that's, that's when you have fun. Nick's better at it than I am. I like when I talk in the language. I like to have it all lined out and all perfect. And he just blurts it out.

You know, it's like the Balaam and his donkey. One of us blurts it out and the other figure out what really is being said and then I can translate for him and he can blurred out another thing.

We make a great team together.

We're going to take a quick break.

And hear a word from our sponsors.

And we'll be right back.

The most important Bible translation is the one you read at Apollos Watered. We use several different translations when we're studying, preaching or teaching.

But again and again we keep coming back to the new living translation, the nlt. That's why we are excited to partner with them. We are united in the belief that understanding the Bible changes everything.

Because if you can't understand it, then you won't read it. We want you to know the God.

Of the Bible to water your faith.

So that you will water your world. That's why we recommend getting an nlt. It's the Bible in the language we speak. It's not foreign or complicated, but up close and personal.

To save some Money, go to Tyndale.com, use the promo code NLTBIBLES. It will give you 15% off. There's an NLT for everyone from kids to adults. Devotional Bibles, study Bibles and so much more.

Get one today because understanding the Bible changes everything. And the NLT is the Bible you can understand.

You've been in Africa, been in Malawi, but I think most people are most familiar with the work and what happened In Somalia.

I know.

I've also been in South Africa during apartheid. Nick shared a lot about that. But the most challenging country for yourself was which one?

Oh, of course. Somalia. Our whole world changed. Suddenly we were living in one country and trying to get to this people group.

We couldn't take our children into Somalia or even where the Somalis lived in the five countries. Our oldest son one day was with his daddy, and accidentally, the plane landed in Somalia.

So he brags that he's been there, but he had gone with his dad to work with the polio victim, handing out crutches in the northern part of Kenya. And when the plane took off, it went the wrong way. And so there he was in Mogadishu.

But he likes to brag that he made it, even though his mama said, whoa, that's a little bit much. But, you know, I think the big thing was for me was all of a sudden, we weren't together. We never went into Somalia together.

We felt like if something happened, we didn't want to leave the boys without a parent. And so we made a decision that we would travel in separately. So Nick would go in, and he always went in a lot longer than I did. But when I.

When people needed encouragement or if the nurses needed something, then I would fly in. But we never went in together. All of a sudden, our world was totally different. In the beginning, we had no way to communicate.

It wasn't like now where you have a cell phone and you have a cell tower that will get that call to you. We didn't have that. We finally did get radios in, and it took a long time to get a license for a radio in Kenya.

And so we really struggled with which is better, to be able to communicate or be legal. We had those radios. It made a big difference because we made a set time every day to call in and make sure everyone was okay.

But, you know, Travis, it's really hard to send your husband into places like that, not knowing when he'll come back or if he'll come back. But, you know, I trusted God there. But it became harder to trust God when we started sending other people in. And we felt responsible for them.

And we found that we realized the hardest job is not going, because once you're going, you're focused on the task. The hardest job is sending because you're the one that's holding them up and needing to pray harder.

And we translated that to realize that for the church who sends their children to the nations, that's the hardest job, is being responsible for sending.

And I think Nick likes to say, if we really grasp the task of sending, either the church will become even stronger in her task or she'll quit because the task becomes too hard. For parents sending their children, their daughters, their grandparents to the nations, we say to them, you have the hardest job.

You have to be the one holding them up. As I would put Nick on an airplane, I always.

Even later, when we began going to believers in persecution, we didn't get to travel together as much as we had when we were in Malawi and South Africa. Suddenly I realized I had the toughest job. I had to be the one on my knees. I had to be the one praying.

I had to be the one doing all the logistics things that kept him going.

I had my children when we lived in Kenya, and he would go, our water would go off and I would have to go to the gas stations and haul five gallon buckets home so we had water. There were just so many tasks that I was doing. But I learned after I put him on the plane, I would sit in the car for a few minutes and I would pray.

And my prayer always was, okay, God, there is nothing more I can do. You've got to take care of him. And Lord, I pray you will bring him back to me. And then I would make a plan.

If he didn't come back, I knew what I would do first, who I would go to to help me. And I would set that plan in motion and just say, all right, number one, number two, number three.

And then I would go off and I would do all those other things that had to be done and just put it in God's hands and trust.

When you made the decision to go to Kenya and reach Somalians, I mean, you had been in South Africa and Malawi, which we just talked about. How did you discern the will of God, that it was your time to go there? And was it you? Was it you feeling that first? Or was it Nick?

And then how did you continue to let him go into those situations? And in contrast, how did he let you go? I mean, as a husband, I want to. I want to keep my wife protected and safe.

The idea of letting her go, I mean, you're right that sending. I feel that pressure to be praying and thinking, but how did you guys make that decision to do it?

And then how did you continue to support one another in the middle of all that?

We lived on a generator in South Africa. And so in the afternoon, we would turn the generator on for a couple hours and we had a TV and in South Africa, you got news at certain times.

And those pictures of children in Somalia with those bloated bellies, the bodies that just become unproportioned, they kept flashing on the tv. And my heart just broke. Nick, at the same time, was in a meeting in Kenya. He had flown to Kenya.

And in that meeting, they talked about where the needs in Africa were. And of course, Somalia was mentioned. We did a little research and found out that no one was there and no one was working there from our organization.

And we found a few other groups that were there, but it just seemed like no one. The world did not see what was happening. And Nick and I decided to read the Book of Acts together.

And as we did, I warn you, couples, if you're going to go somewhere, read the Book of Acts. And as we did, we began to define for ourselves what was our role as a missionary.

And God just really burdened us that for us, a missionary was someone who went where people had no access to the gospel. And Somalia just blurted across our lives. And leadership called us at that time and said, are you serious about this?

And if you are, can you get to Kenya in a month? And I said, whoa, this is a little hard. But we packed up, we sold, we did all we needed to do, and in a month, we ended up there.

And then the journey really began as we tried to figure out, how can you do this? Leadership said, we've heard it'll take three years for you to even get inside the country.

Well, as we say, doors are always closed if you're not ready to walk through them. So when we were ready to walk through them, Nick made his first trip in six months in there after we studied Swahili and some Somali.

And I don't think we were prepared for what was going to happen. The devastation, the destruction. We'd never seen anything like this. But Nick was. Nick's really good. You know, I put him on the plane.

I prayed for him as he goes.

And as a husband, he really is an amazing man because he would take notes in a little notebook that he kept in his pocket so that when he came out, he would go through that notebook. So I feel like I was on the journey with him. I saw what he saw as he cried over what he was telling us.

Our boys listened to Daddy as he told the stories of what had happened in three weeks or four weeks or whatever. But he had that little notebook, and he always debriefed us. I talk like I've been to a lot of places he's been in Somalia that I've never been.

But he describes it for me and I taste it and I feel it, I smell it, I hear it. And so as a husband, he's been such a good partner of allowing us to be together even though we are miles apart.

That was part one of my conversation.

But join us next week as Ruth and I delve further into what God has done for them and what Ruth and Nick think God is doing among families to win families. If this episode has helped you, would you consider partnering with us?

We finished the year on a great note, but there's still so much more to do, so much more content to create, people to talk to, curriculum to develop and believers to equip. And we need your help. We can't do this without you, simply put. So we need you.

For those who have already partnered with us, we couldn't be where we are today without you. But we're still on that Runway.

And though we're getting a little bit more traction and that error is coming right underneath us, we need your help to really get into the air. And if we are helping you so that you can water your world and please consider partnering with us.

We'd love to have more people grow from connecting with Apollo is Watered.

If you've been impacted while listening to a podcast screenshot that text it to a friend or simply share it on stories or share it directly from your podcast platform, it would be an honor to have you subscribe and leave a review because that puts it out there to more people as well.

Remember, we have content on Instagram, Facebook and our website that is shareable and be paying attention in the next several weeks as we have several different things that we will be launching for you to share together. We want to leave a trickle of truth and encouragement from around the world and then watch people grow.

I want to thank our team, Kevin, Melissa, Donovan, Kevin, Eliana, Rebecca and Audrey. Water your faith, water your world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered. Stay watered, everybody.