For those of you who have been following me, you know that God has called me to the mission field. I have been pursuing a missions opportunity called The World Race, which is an 11 months long missions trip to 11 different countries. After months of praying and patiently waiting on the Lord, pressing in to Gods heart and listening to where He would have me go, God is fine tuning the desires in my heart and leading me to the exact calling He has for my life. Sometimes, He doesn’t reveal all the pieces to the puzzle all at once. Instead, He wants us to continue to seek Him with an open and willing heart. Although at first I thought for sure that The World Race was the calling God was placing in my heart, He has expanded, yet given me exact, intricate directions as to where He wants me to pour out my heart to the hurting people of this world. I want to share with you the passions, desires, and particular issues God has impressed upon my heart over the last few years, the things I know for sure that my Father is developing inside of me and planning to use me in: taking care of children, orphans, foster children, medically ill children, international missions, Asia, special needs children, sign language, being a mom… These things have stayed engraved upon my heart and have never fled. They are the driving force to why I am here on earth, I was just never certain as to how God would bring them all together for the His glory. The World Race is a specific missions opportunity, and after careful consideration and waiting for Gods input, The World Race is not where I should be.
God brought me to a place of falling so in love with Him that He just wanted me to answer the question, “Melissa, would you sell all you have, leave the comfort of home, travel half way around the world and do whatever it takes to share about me to the nations?” I think I actually took it very seriously and prepared myself to HAVE to do just that. Travel the world non-stop for the rest of my life and not have a home or a community. But its funny how we put God in a box. He wanted to see just how willing and sold out for Him I really was and if, even if it cost me my life, I would do what He asked me to do. The decision was not EASY to make, it was very hard to come to terms that I would be leaving everything I knew and putting full trust in Him as to where money was gonna come from, a place to sleep and where I would be ministering. But my answer was SIMPLE. It was, IS, and alwayssss will be a YES! It makes me laugh looking back at the situation of deciding to go on the world race now, because God lead me to that moment to test me. It was just a question. And He wanted my answer to be “YES IM ALL IN!!” And once He had my heart and full attention, He gently said, “but its okay Melissa, I know your heart and that’s not what I have in mind. I don’t want to break you, I want to lift you up.” I hope you’re able to follow along with what God was producing inside of me. He wanted me to commit and He had to bring me to actually deciding to commit to something like the World Race like Abraham committed giving back his son Isaac to God. He would do what the Lord asked and take his son, Isaac, up to the alter to sacrifice him. Abraham was not aware that it was a test. But he committed with his whole heart, not understanding why God would ask him such a thing. And when God knew that Abrahams heart was fully surrendered to Him, he gently layed his hand on Abrahams shoulder and said, that’s all I wanted was your heart. Untie your son.
The story of Isaac is parallel to what God asked of me when the World Race crossed my path. Now that God has my attention, He is revealing one detail at a time the exact calling He has placed on my life.
So, I have followed the Lords leading and I transferred from The World Race to a three month long trip to India. As I mentioned earlier, the Lord has placed specific desires and passions inside of me and I could never figure out how to put them all into one job or how to collectively use them for His glory. But, by coming across the world race, I was lead to explore other missions trips through the Adventures In Missions organization. God has been developing a love in my heart for Asia ever since my family and I moved there in 2006. India, has been in the front of my mind more than any other Asian country. He has placed a love and yearning for the people of India in my heart. In looking at other missions trip opportunities through the AIM organization I clicked on the India trip and in reading the first few sentences, tears began to well in my eyes. The trip to India would solely be focused on ministering to special needs orphans. All of the desires that God has been stirring up inside of me culminated into ONE purpose. One place. My heart was overwhelmed looking at all the faces of these precious children knowing that this would soon be my new family.
So, to my friends, my prayer warriors, my encouragers, supporters, financial givers, partners in crime… God has lead me to go to India to work at Sarah’s Covenant Home with medically unstable, special needs, abandoned, hurting, and neglected children and I could not be more sure or more excited about knowing that every lesson, pruning, teaching, and chastening from the Lord was for this very purpose. Know that you are apart of this! You have invested in my personal testimony and the transformation God is doing in my own life. But not just that, you have sewn seed into the very children of the Father. It will be multiplied. I feel like being a Disney Channel show host, “stay tuned! Up next, WHO KNOWS!” I pray that God uses my journey to speak life and truth into you and your own journey. That you would see just how deeply known, loved and cared about we are by the Lord. He knows the desires of your heart. Listen closely to the Father and submit with a humble and sincere heart and He will lead you. You have all blessed me beyond words. Thank you for your continued support.
In thanking you, I want to involve you all as much as possible in what God is doing. Watch the video below and get a snippet of just what Sarah’s Covenant Home is all about. This is Gods heart and also my own.
They Have A Voice from SCH INDIA on Vimeo.
If you would like to know more about this orphanage and their mission please visit schindia.com.
