One of the things they asked us to start out with was our call to missions, so here we go! I can’t pinpoint an exact time when I realized that’s what I was called to, but I went on my first mission trip the summer before my senior year of high school. Like many people, I had grown up in a home where I was loved, had friends who were awesome, a nice home, and a town where bad things rarely happen, so when we pulled up to the neighborhood in St. Louis we would be working and I saw bars on windows and bullet holes in doors, I immediately knew this was going to be an eye opening experience! Our goal while we were there was to set up a Vacation Bible School at the church in the neighborhood for the children that lived near by. The first day we had probably 10-15 kids show up. The next day there was about twice as many kids standing on the corner waiting for us! And as the week went on thr grou p only continued to grow. We even had some older kids show up that we weren’t really prepared for, so some of the guys played basketball with them then had a Bible Study with them! As we got to know the kids throughout the week my heart just broke for them. I had seen people who were homeless and didn’t have the best home lives and things like that before, but I had never seen a 13 yr old girl carry her baby brother with her all day because her mom was passed out on the couch at home, or kids who had never really experienced love, let alone the love Christ has to offer. I walked away from that trip realized how fortunate I truely am and how much I take advantage of that on such a regular basis.
Towards the end of my senior year of high school I started distancing myself from the church and from God and stayed that way for a bit until my second year in college when I started going to church and a college group with a co-worker. That’s when I feel like I started a real relationship with the Lord. That’s also when I realized I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, bu that nothing made me happier or feel more complete than when I was doing the Lord’s work and serving people. Even my mom, who is not yet a Christian, would tell people if I could I would just travel the world doing missions and only come home every now and then. At this point I had attempted to go on a few other mission trips that never seemed to work out. Then a few weeks later I met a random man in a gas station parking lot that was in a small town where people rarely stop. He started asking me questions and eventually told me he could tell I had the Lord inside me and asked where I went to church and what I wanted my profession to be. I told him I was thinking of being a teacher and he promptly told me no, and followed it with the Lord was telling him that I was supposed to go into the mission field. That I had a heart for people and that God wanted to use him to encourage me to follow Him in that. To be honest, it kinda freaked me out. A lot. Then he asked if he could pray for me and proceeded to. I drove off speachless, still freaked out, but excited all at the same time! I wasn’t sure if this man was really hearing from the Lord, or if he was just some crazy guy walking around the parking lot! So a few days later I talked to a good friend about it who pointed out that that was the second time people who have no reason to encourage me in going into the mision field (in fact, one who is opposed to it!) had brought it up to me. And then began to tell me about his friend who had just come back from a year long mission trip and told me to look into that. This was right before I was about to move by myself to a new state, not kowing anyone, with no good reason and how there are only a certain number of people are called to do things like that and do missions because it took a strength and calling from God and if I felt like that’s what I was being pulled toward then I shouldn’t fight it.
I took what he said to heart then moved hundreds of miles away to a new place that seemed to be completely oposite of everything I knew! If anyone knows anything about Texas, it’s usually that it’s a fairly conservative place. Almost like a bubble world. Colorado, however, is very opposite, and very libral. Once I made friends and got involved in a church here I realized that God moved me up here to prepare me for something bigger. To give me a stepping stone outside of the sheltered world I had been in before jumping into a completely different country (which to me, Colorado felt like already!)! Before moving I had Googled year long mission trips and found TWR and started looking into it and finding out what they were all about and found a trip I fell in love with, but for some reason hesitated applying. Soon after, I broke both of my wrists and decided it was probably better if I jsut held off and didn’t go on the trip. A few months went by and for some reason I still found myself looking into the trip, telling people about it, and thinking about it on a regular basis. One night I was talking to a friend up here about it and wa so excited to tell him about it and he got excited for me and I realized maybe I shoudl still give it a try. So the next day I talekd to one of my closest friends and they helped me realize that if I went ahead and applied and got in, that if it was really God’s plan for me it would work out and that I should try. So I did, and now, after a long road and kind of ignoring the calling for awhile, here I am, and I couldn’t be more excited about the things I know God is going to do both in me and through me on this trip!
