Belinda Ng is still actively involved in missions work. She trains and mentors new missionaries, bringing with her decades of experience. Photo courtesy of Antioch 21.
She was a young mother with a son who was only two and a half when she went to Africa with her husband to be a missionary. The year was 1978 and Belinda, then 29, and her husband Dr Andrew Ng, 31 at the time, were headed to Galmi. The village is in the West African country of Niger.
Dr Ng was going to be a missionary doctor while Belinda would be doing missions work with the womenfolk. They were the first missionaries from Singapore to Africa sent by the SIM Australia office and would spend the next 12 years there.
“When the plane landed in the capital of Niger, my first thought was: ‘We are finally here in Niger, Africa where God has called us to be.’
“Stepping out of the plane, it was a big culture shock. It was at least 45ºC,” Belinda, now 75, told Salt&Light.
It would take another flight by a light aircraft to get them to the village.
“The aerial view of the area was barren, no trees. There was no control tower, just a landing strip made of dirt.”
Galmi Hospital where Dr Andrew worked.
Her husband was whisked away to Galmi Hospital the moment they landed. He was the only qualified surgeon and there was a surgery awaiting him. Dr Ng would go on to bless countless with his surgical skills throughout his time in Niger. His ties to the country were so deep that when he passed away in 2019, his ashes were buried in Galmi.
Dr Andrew (right) was the only surgeon in the hospital when he first arrived in Galmi. It would be months before another surgeon joined the team.
Said Belinda of that first night: “I was left alone. Every sound from the roof made me scared. When I heard scratching, I remembered the story of a nurse in Galmi who was listening to the transistor radio and found the sound getting fainter and fainter because a thief was stealing the radio.
“I thought I might have a thief on the roof. My son Nat was so innocent. He was fine but I was scared.”
The Ng family in front of their house at Galmi village.
In time, Belinda would become familiar with the groans and creaks from the house. The scratching she had heard that first night had merely been the branches of trees swaying against the zinc roof of the house. Missionaries before them had planted trees around the house and the hospital to provide shade from the punishing African heat.
The call to Africa
Belinda became a Christian when she was 15 through Youth for Christ (YFC). Five years later at a Navigators’ Discipleship Conference, she heard God ask: “Are you willing to go to Africa?”
“Before the conference, I had prayed, ‘Lord, teach me a fresh lesson today.’ Now my question to God was, ‘Are You really calling me to be a missionary?’”
At the time, Belinda was actively involved in both YFC and The Navigators Singapore, and was attending Bartley Christian Church. Although she had been reading stories about missionaries, she knew nothing of locals being sent to mission fields.
“I thought maybe God was just testing my faith, like Abraham.”
Throughout the ride home on the bus, she debated with herself. Maybe God only wanted to see if she would go but did not really mean for her to go, much like how He wanted to see if Abraham could give up Isaac but did not mean for him to actually sacrifice his son.
She was an ordinary Christian who had not expected to become one to begin with, much less a missionary. She was still a young believer and had just started working. Besides, how would she be able to break the news to her parents?
“But I realised that I needed to say ‘yes’ because I love the Lord. There was no skirting around the question.
“My prayer was, ‘I will obey You but I will place everything into Your hands.’”
The next morning, during her quiet time, Hebrews 13:20-21 caught her attention.
“It assured me that God would equip me with everything good to do His will. My life is in God’s hands. He is going to do it. I don’t have to do anything. I held on to that verse.”
At church that day, she met Andrew who was just an acquaintance then. He handed her a few copies of a magazine called Africa Now which had been published by SIM. He himself had heard the call to go to Africa.
“At the time, he was interested in me and felt that the Lord was giving him the green light to start a relationship with me. His first attempt was to give me those magazines.”
Then during the service, the visiting speaker, an American who was passing through Liberia, West Africa, talked about how the “harvest in Africa is ripe” and to “ask the God of Harvest to supply the labourers”.
It was confirmation after confirmation of the call to Africa.
The long wait
God did indeed map things out for Belinda as she had asked. He led her to a man – Dr Andrew Ng – who had also been called to Africa. They got married in 1973 after about four years of courtship. At their wedding, Rev EN Poulson, who was then the Dean of Singapore Bible College and who officiated the ceremony, commissioned the couple to be missionaries in Africa.
Dr Andrew and Belinda being commissioned to be missionaries in Africa by Rev EN Poulson at their wedding ceremony.
But it would be another four years before they could set foot on the continent. During that time, they waited to see which part of Africa would open up for them and learnt French in preparation to be in French-speaking parts of Africa.
Belinda with Nathaniel and Dr Andrew when they were in a French school in Albertville, France in preparation for missions work in Africa.
“The waiting was the hardest. Not knowing what was ahead. But I had made a commitment and Andrew was very resolute. Ours was a joint calling,” she told Salt&Light.
“In the uncertainty, the verse that resonated with me was the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1). When God called him out of Ur, he didn’t know where to go. God was leading him to an unknown place. But we have a God we can trust.”
That trust was put to the test from the get go. Shortly after arriving at Galmi, Belinda discovered she was pregnant. Everyone had been on anti-malaria prophylaxis to protect them from the life-threatening mosquito-borne disease. Now they had a decision to make.
“Should I take the pills to keep malaria, which is endemic in the country, away but is harmful to the foetus? Or not take it and maybe come down with malaria which will also affect the foetus,” said Belinda.
Belinda with Nathaniel while pregnant with Joel.
A missionary’s young child had contracted blackwater fever, the severest type of malaria and, though he survived, had been in a coma for six weeks. The risks were real.
“We decided that I would not take the pills. We just had to keep away from the mosquitoes the best we can. But at night, it was bad. Mosquitoes everywhere.”
Belinda remained malaria-free throughout her pregnancy. In April 1979, baby Joel was born.
The work in Africa
While her husband was thrust into the thick of action as a missionary doctor at Galmi Hospital, a “bush hospital” owned and administered by SIM International, Belinda busied herself with reaching out to the women and children.
She noticed that when the nomads came to the area to attend discipleship programmes, their wives and children were just “hanging around”. So she started literacy classes for them to teach them to read in their native language, Hausas. She also opened her home to the children.
Belinda (with umbrella) walking through the airstrip with the nomadic women on their way to the local church.
Conducting literacy classes with the nomadic Fulani women.
Enjoying singing and storytelling with the children of the nomads at her veranda.
“Part of my ministry was to look for ways to reach out to the local people. I had to think of ways to connect with them.”
With another missionary wife, Belinda would go to the surrounding villages with a cassette tape to play Bible stories. They would start at the homes of hospital staff who would then introduce them to more people.
At the local church in which they worship, Belinda would get to know people and, through the relationships, meet others who had yet to hear the Gospel.
“It wasn’t structured. For example, I would hear of someone’s domestic helper who wanted to learn to read. And I would read the Bible with her.”
A small gardening project Belinda started became another source of connections for Christ.
The little garden that provided fresh vegetables that were hard to get in Galmi.
Joel with some of the lush produce from Belinda’s garden.
“We don’t get vegetables there. It’s a desert. So I grew vegetables. We have the theory and we hired locals to help with the labour,” she said.
What she grew, she would freeze in large quantities to share with fellow missionaries. In return, they shared their spoils with her. This became the start of what would be a food cooperative.
Belinda ran Galmi Cooperative twice a week for the missionaries.
“When Andrew went for field council, I would travel with him to buy groceries that were not easy to get where we were – canned food, cooking oil, jam, milk powder, oats.
“I connected with a local trader who would buy things in Nigeria. That’s how I found soya sauce and frozen chicken – because the chicken in Galmi were very scrawny, feathers and all they weighed only 1kg. Then I would set up a shop twice a week.”
Galmi Cooperative was thus born.
The life of a missionary family
The work in Africa did not come without personal sacrifices. There were no international schools where they were so the Ngs had to send their sons to a boarding school 900km or a two-day drive away from Galmi. Nathaniel was eight when he went away. Joel joined him three years later when he started Grade 1.
Dr Andrew and Belinda sending their sons Joel and Nathaniel off to boarding school.
“I prayed Jesus would come again so I didn’t have to send them away. But I was reminded of Isaiah 49:15, the strength of a mother’s love.
“I could get a picture of God’s love. If a mother can love so much, His love surpasses that. The depth of God’s love was something I learnt deeply,” said Belinda.
“Leaving Nat was very hard. There were no phones at the time, no internet. We didn’t even have snail mail. Instead, we had to depend on our plane to convey messages.
“We wrote every week. The kids were encouraged to write to their parents and we wrote also. I have a stack of their letters with me to this day.
“And I would stay up to make cookies for them so that when the plane came, I could send it to them and they could trade with other kids. I would bake into the night.”
The Ng family spent 12 years in Africa. Joel (baby in Belinda’s arms), who was born there, continues to have a heart for the continent.
The family returned to Singapore in 1989, having spent 12 years in Africa. It was Belinda’s experience in the field with her family that gave her a heart for caring for missionaries.
Today, she is based in the SIM East Asia office in Singapore, involved in member care and consulting on the care of missionary kids. She also does pre-field training for missionaries and mentors new missionaries in this region, visiting them in the field to ensure they are cared for even as they serve.
“We visit them so we can pray for them more specifically and share their stories so people know their needs,” she told Salt&Light.
“We also give them moral support, to recognise what they do and not just be interested in how many turn to Jesus. If you serve in a hard place, you can’t count (just the numbers saved).”
Belinda also works with sending churches to prepare not just missionaries but their families for cross-cultural missions.
“When we go, we want to serve, we want to bless the people in whatever capacity we have.
“But instead, God does a deeper work in us than what He does through us. We are more blessed than us blessing others. We come to know God deeper and to walk in faith.”
Written by: Christine Leow, Salt & Light.