2010
After graduating from high school, missions were calling my name so I decided to go to Honduras with a local church. In two weeks, I experienced one of the most transformative times of my life. It was there, that God wrecked me for the ordinary. I saw poverty that still brings me to tears, and yet I saw (in the same eyes) joy that was beyond understanding. The people, who were physically poor, were spiritually alive in a way that I had never seen before.
After I returned to the states, with opened eyes, my heart slowly turned bitter. How could people be so obsessed and concerned with their riches that they stored their money away and ignored the immediate need around them? My whole heart had been changed and I longed to continue serving. So, in the next few months, I tried to make plans to return to Honduras but things didn't pan out. When I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get back to the mission field, I began to get angry. Why would God send me, break my heart, and then not let me return?
2012
My chance to return finally came. It had been two years. I was back in Honduras, I was serving the people, but somewhere within my anger and disappointment my heart had grown hard. Satan began whispering lies in my ear, "Maybe missions aren't for you after all. Maybe you were only supposed to be here once." By the second week of the trip, it was all that I could hear. I was physically in the place that I had been longing to be for so long and yet my heart was at home. Our trip was close to ending. We pulled alongside the entrance of Casita Kennedy, a public orphanage. Everything that went on in there broke me. As we got back on the bus, my heart wept with pain and compassion and sorrow for the suffering I had just stepped into and for the anger that I had been holding on to. For ten minutes, the tears came uncontrollably and as they did, the scales fell away from my eyes and the hardness that had built up on my heart melted.
I returned home from Honduras, with a new perspective, knowing that missions were still for me. After a month, I got a seasonal job working at a lodge in the middle of the Sawtooth Mountains. With so much time and freedom in the beauty of God's creation, I began to be intentional about my time with Him, I began to depend on Him, and I began to hear Him speak His purpose over my life. This was a time of deep contemplation and spiritual growth, where I began to understand the call to global missions and God began to whisper not just Honduras, but the world into my heart.
After returning home in October, I found those whispers to grow increasingly louder. I found myself thinking, "What if I could go to every country and spend a week or a month there?" So I got on the Internet and googled something along the lines of, "one year mission trip". From there I found Adventures in Missions and then The World Race. After reading a few blogs, I knew that it was exactly what God was calling me to. So here I am, looking forward to the next season of life!
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