Salvation, and the Image of God

Several years ago we showed a documentary in our church. The documentary told of a missionary couple who went to a remote village and lived with the people.
After they had been there for a while they presented the Gospel. As I remember, the entire village "accepted Christ."
After all the villagers had been baptized in water, they asked the missionaries, "What should we do next?" The missionaries replied, "Absolutely nothing!"
That answer astonished me. Absolutely nothing? Christ and His Apostles issued numerous commands, not the least of which is that we are to take up our cross of deferred desires and patiently follow Jesus each day.
The missionaries could have used that as an answer. They could have used the Apostle Paul as an example when he said he was pressing forward to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, (Philippians 3:12,13)
"Forgetting what is behind and straining toward" sure does not sound like "absolutely nothing."