Ok, so, it took me a bit to read the instructions and see that I needed to post a blog “about me”, but now I see thats what I’m supposed to do. It makes sense. so, here goes. I guess I’m not sure how deep I’m supposed to get into all of this, but I guess I will just start from when I became interested in missions. I always thought that languages were intreiguing, I mean, I was taking french in high school, but the summer after my junior year of highschool, I went with my church to an orphanage in Mexico and that really did change my life. I saw how God had made me….different. I saw how serving his people and loving them gave me joy and fulfillment. Its hard to describe how I felt….but I didn’t even want to come home at that point. On the way home I was planning how I was going to come back and how I would change my language to Spanish for that next year.
Well, going from there I also decided to dedicate my life to missions and went to Nebraska Christian College and got a degree in World Missions. In my time at NCC I took trips to Honduras as well as my internship where I spent time in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
So….I guess that is a bit about my past, but now I would say that I am still here in the US trying to use the skills that he has given me to help people here. It is a weird 3rd culture that has developed here in the US…where the families are mixed between the life that they once knew in their counry and the life that the live now and where their kids are growing up in this new culture. And yes, there are interpreters at some places or there are some places where everyone speaks Spanish, but there is still a lot of miscommunications that happen. In fact, I worked for the state for about 4 years, and although many of the abuse/neglect cases that I worked were in fact true and we helped the familes to move forward and fix the issues that brought them into the system, there were also many cases where, culture and language were a HUGE barrier as far as communication.
One of the biggest areas that has also helped me to develop skills and where God has used me and helped build my confidence is in the prison. It was very random that I was even invited in the first place, but God showed me a way to use my skills to build his kingdom even in there. In fact, that is one of the areas that I will miss the most on this trip. I will miss my churches that I help at and that I consider my family, but I would say that the prison is one of those churches where I feel that my brothers in there are going to support me and help send me on my way and pray for me that God will be doing his will in my life while I am gone.
Beyond that I would say that my family is very important to me, and I want to make them proud as well. I really do have the best family in the world. My family is full of very compassionate people who really know how to put other people first and love other people. I would say that my life is very blessed.
I guess thats all for now. 🙂
