Area missionary eyes return to Estonia

Sarabeth Waller’s dreams of being a journalist sharing the news, good and bad, have expanded into proclaiming the Lord’s love with the world.

Waller, whose family lives in Ellsinore, was dedicated to her career as a reporter when she felt called to missions. She wasn’t aware the Lord’s plans were for her to serve in a country one-third the size of Missouri, with 1.3 million people in the whole country and 400,000 of them living in Tallinn, where she lives.

Since the Soviet occupation ended, Waller said, Estonia has advanced financially, and especially technologically, but it has the 16th highest suicide rate in the world. Alcohol abuse is a major issue, and every winter several people freeze to death after passing out outdoors. Prostitution is legal and the age of consent is 14.

She didn’t realize or ask as she begins her third term in the mission field for what she considers her dream job.

“I was offered the opportunity. It’s really cool, because it combines missions, Jesus, travel and writing. If I came up with a perfect position, for me, it would be something similar to this,” she said.

Waller was working as a reporter at the Daily American Republic when she “felt it was time to move on. I did look at other newspapers, but nothing felt right.”

Her church, Bluff First Assembly in Poplar Bluff, had a mission convention and Waller began thinking about mission work, but “I didn’t have a passport. I’d never been on an airplane, but ended up visiting a friend in Estonia.”

That friend was serving as a missionary. During her first visit, Waller toured Estonia and Poland.

“I was offered a position on both teams,” Waller said. “I hadn’t thought about church planting, but then I came to Estonia. I saw what church planting was like in Estonia.”

Returning to Southeast Missouri, she began raising funds to serve her first year in Estonia. She was not certain about her future, but she was certain the Lord would show her the way. After the first term, she wanted to continue serving in Estonia, the third least religious country in the world, behind China and Japan. It’s about 80 to 85% atheist or agnostic.

After raising her financial backing, Waller served her second term of two years and three months. She returned home to see family and friends and gather pledges to help with her commitment to becoming a career missionary associate and spend three years in the mission field.

Excited her next term is to work in an area called Eurasia Northwest, which includes seven countries, Waller said, “I’ve been asked to help with recruiting new missionaries and promoting what’s happening in those countries. That will require some travel. I’ve been to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. I have not yet been to Georgia, Armenia or Moldova. I will be traveling in those countries, writing about what’s happening. It wasn’t even anything I asked about or applied for, I was just offered the opportunity.”

She’s reached 100% of her mission budget, and “that’s when the Assemblies of God will approve me to begin the paperwork process,” Waller said.

Returning to Estonia’s mission field for the third time will be a joyous, as well as a sad, occasion for Waller. Her furlough provided an opportunity to work on raising funds to finance her next pilgrimage, and also time to spend with a grandmother. This grandmother played an important role in her faith, and recently died.

Receiving her new budget in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, gave Waller little time before she had to postpone fundraising efforts. People could still give online, “but I wasn’t meeting with people. I wasn’t visiting churches due to COVID,” she said.

“I have to laugh sometimes and ask God what he’s thinking to send me home to raise a larger budget during a pandemic,” she said. “Maybe it’s, I’ll know that it’s not me. It’s not how awesome I am. I didn’t realize when I applied that it would lead to my budget increasing by about 30%.”

Reasons for the increase “is I’ll have more intensive language study. I will have three hours per day, five days per week from my first six months back. I’m paying someone part-time to teach me Estonian. I’ll have more work-related travel in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia.”

Learning Estonian “is a very difficult language,” she said. “It is a Finno-Ugric language. So it’s not related to any other Indo-European languages. Its only real relatives that are widely spoken are Hungarian and Finnish.

“One of my language teachers said, it’s the fifth hardest language for English speakers to learn after Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Korean. It’s so complicated and so different from English. It takes seven years to become fluent. I’ve been there three years.”

Waller’s goal is to be fluent within six months of returning.

“We’re trying to double-time the process, and I’m in an English-speaking church,” she said. “People open up a lot more if you can speak in their language. Older Estonians’ second language is Russian. Unless I speak Estonian, I can’t communicate with them. Small children haven’t learned English yet. I joked if I only wanted to talk with people like teenagers to 40-somethings, I’d be fine with English, but it still cuts me off from a good part of the population.,”

She also will be provided a vehicle to use in her work, but her budget is required to include the cost of tires, gas and insurance.

Once she returns to Estonia, Waller will continue working to become licensed with the Assemblies of God.

“I want to finish that when I’m in Estonia,” she said.

Assuming she goes back for the term after this, “then I will become a fully-appointed missionary and go for four years. I never know, the plans could change because I thought I would be a reporter in Missouri for my whole life.”

While her financing is secured, she’s started gathering paperwork to receive permission to enter Estonia. She needs things from AGWM headquarters in Springfield, some from her bosses, who are currently in Minnesota, and some from her pastor in Estonia. Once she gets all those things, she’ll submit them to the Estonian government, and once it’s approved, which can take a week or more, she’ll order her ticket.

“I’m looking at leaving toward the end of March,” she said.

When Waller returns to Estonia, she has to quarantine for at least a week in an Airbnb before she can start looking at apartments.

The giving website is s1.ag.org/sarabeth and the best way for people to reach her is sbwaller@outlook.com.