How I got called to this mission trip

So how was I called into the mission field? Well, I believe that there were a series of events that only the Lord could perfectly orchestrate that have brought me to pursuing this mission! I can certainly say that up until recently I would have never imagined I would be a missionary, nor would I have imagined I would desire to give everything up to follow Jesus on this adventure! But as the scripture says in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” and my desires are all for Him, so here I am, preparing to embark on this mission!

 

OK, so back to the story…. immediately after I became a believer, a friend of mine who I truly believe was brought into my life to disciple me, had shared a Stephen Curtis Chapman documentary which showed the story (with amazing footage I must add!) of the 1956 Ecuador mission made my Jim Elliot, Nate Saint and others. So that was my first introduction to abandoning it all for the sake of the call (yes, to quote S.C.C’s lyrics…!).  So, about a month later I am visiting family in France. As a new believer and having just started to have my eyes open to God’s word, I am digging into the bible…seriously, I think my eyes were wide open, and my jaw dropped as the words just were just so powerful!  It was on that trip that I read the gospel of Matthew for the first time…I will never forget when I got to the end and read how Jesus was commissioning his disciples to go out into the nations for Him. As I read Jesus’ words telling them that He would be with them to the very end,  tears of joy and love just started flowing from my eyes!  Well, a few days later, as I’m traveling home, my airplane that I was supposed to be flying on had mechanical problems and they canceled my flight. so here I am, alone in some tiny airport in France, waiting for my bag to come through the baggage carousel, when a beautiful, bright-eyed, young American girl came up to me and started to make conversation. It turned out that this 19 year old girl was a missionary! She and I spent the next 4 hours or so talking, sharing our faith and exchanging stories. Hearing about her mission experience definitely made an impression on my heart. It was also on this trip that I read my first Beth Moore book…there was a passage at the beginning of the book that she had suggested we memorize while reading.  This scripture was Isaiah 61. This was a rather long passage and since this was my first attempt at memorizing scripture, and since I was struggling at getting it down, I let it go.  Now, lets fast forward one month…it’s my first day of my new women’s bible study. I ended up meeting my friend Jan on that first night. She had introduced me to her mom, who was also participating in the women’s bible study at our church.  Her mom, learning I was new to the area and new to my faith, was just so welcoming and loving and had invited me over for dinner later that week.  So, I go over for dinner and guess who they have over for dinner? A good friend of theirs who was Christian missionary! He had shared his powerful testimony of how he came to know Jesus as a Muslim! After hearing his amazing, mind-blowing story, I shared with everyone at the dinner table about the Stephen Curtis Chapman documentary that I had seen about Jim Elliot and Nate Saint and how I was really moved by what they had done. Well, everyone looked over at me and Monnie, the father, shared that they themselves were also missionaries and were dear friends of Nate Saints family! WOW…so, not by coincidence that I am sitting at the dinner table full of missionaries hearing their stories, their struggles and their love for serving!  I ended up becoming close with my friend’s mother from our bible study and she had invited me to visit her small community group.  Well, I just feel in love with this group and even more so with the book study they were working on, John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life.”  Throughout the following weeks I had become so enthralled in this book, the powerful message that was being shared about  the limited time that we have on Earth, what it means to follow Jesus and picking up our cross to follow Him. 

 

So about 3 months later, busy working with my new marketing job in Dallas, I start to become restless inside….I so badly wanted to run out of the building and proclaim the love of Jesus. I started to feel even more restless about the amount of time that I was putting towards things that I knew didn’t matter to God, nor to advancing His kingdom. I knew at that moment that I wanted to devote myself and every moment I had to serving Him.  All of the missionaries that the Lord had perfectly orchestrated in my life started to come to mind and that was when I decided to look into mission work.  When I came across the World Race, I knew that was the trip. It was around this time that the passage of Isaiah 61 started to come to mind and the Lord put it on my heart to memorize the first 3 verses:

 

 

 So, with those verses on my heart, I applied for the World Race and started to seek counsel about the trip.  I prayed and prayed about this trip, especially because I was nervous that I didn’t know enough of the bible, nervous that I wasn’t a Christian very long. I so badly wanted to be in God’s will and wanted to be obedient to Him.  I remember reading one night part of the Gospel of Luke and I came across the verse in 9:62, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is suited for the work in the kingdom of God.” The verse is as clear as day to me now, but that night when I read that I was like, “uhhh. OK..I don’t get it”.  Well, the next morning as I’m driving to work, it hit me!  I remember thinking, “Yes, I get it! God, you’re telling me that if I go on this trip, life as I know it now will never be the same and that I have to be willing make this commitment to you!” I was so excited to know that God had revealed this to me.  Still, I so desperate to be sure of Him, I prayed and prayed some more!! One Sunday as I was driving to church I prayed and begged to God, “God, please! Let me know that this is your will for me! Let me know that you are OK with me pursuing this trip!” Well, one of the first hymns we sang that morning in church was the old hymn, ” Here I am Lord”.  I had an answer in my heart from Him as I was singing the words, “Here I am Lord, is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.”