“Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.”
– Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out
Less than two years ago, I had never been to an airport. As of today, I’ve been on nearly 30 different flights to several different countries, and in about six weeks, I will embark on a once-in-a-lifetime journey across the Eastern Hemisphere. So, let me tell you a story that has very little to do with me, but everything to do with the Lord’s faithfulness, how He called me to dive headfirst into traveling and on this upcoming expedition, the times He provided and the times when it seemed like He didn’t, and how even in uncertainty and pain, He is a redemptive God, whose goodness shines in all things.
A friend of mine from Outjo, Namibia once said, “If it’s God’s concern, it’s my concern.” That is the heart I’ve always had for missions; there is darkness and suffering in the world, and to the very best of my ability, I desire to live a life where I do something about it. So often, when we hear of suffering in the world, we tend to ignore it or simply “leave it to God.” But last time I checked, 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 teaches us that through Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself, and He has sent us, the Church, to be ministers of that reconciliation. It is our calling to participate in making all things new, to be ambassadors of this great hope we have in Christ, a hope so bold, so freeing, and so fierce that it eclipses even the darkest corners of the Earth. One does not always have to travel across the world to be a minister of reconciliation, for missions is more about being a good neighbor than it is about passports. But Jesus did call us to “go to the nations” (Matthew 28:19), and it wasn’t long after God miraculously provided me with the funds to attend Urbana 2015 that my journey into international missions began.
In April 2016, I applied to a month-long mission trip to northern Namibia through Experience Mission, where we would live in tents among the rural communities of the Himba people. I had never traveled or been on a missons trip before, and after making my deposit, I had less than 40 cents to my name. But I decided I would rather have next to nothing than not go on this journey, and long story short, the Lord provided. After a month or two of struggling to fundraise, the $5,000 I needed to go all came in about a week before the deadline! I was told via email that it was the most funds EM had ever seen come in for one person in one week, and the next hour my pastor called me and said my church, which hadn’t been really involved with international missions previously, would fund me the rest of the way! That month in Namibia was an incredible and eye-opening experience to Africa’s beauty and worth, how to do missions well, and how to live in Biblical community.
It wasn’t long after returning from Namibia that August that I found out about an opportunity to travel to Athens, Greece over winter break and work at a refugee camp. The camp wasn’t religiously affiliated whatsoever, meaning it wasn’t a typical missions trip by any means, it wasn’t through an organization, just a group of students I hardly knew, and my parents thought I was crazy, but God made a way. One of the girls who had already purchased her plane ticket suddenly felt called to stay home with her family over Christmas, and gave me her ticket instead! So over Christmas and News Years of 2016-17, I had the honor of serving Syrians, Afghans, Pakistanis, and all sorts of other residents at Eleonas Camp in her place.
If you ever want to see firsthand how beautiful the human race truly is: work at a refugee camp. You will look into the faces of those who have battled with death and won, who have chosen hope over despair, who have chosen gratefulness instead of bitterness, and who continue to choose those triumphant things even in the face of uncertainty, poverty, racism, and seemingly endless struggle. I supervised clothing distribution, ate too many cheese pastries, drank tea until it was coming out of my ears, distributed toys and food, laughed, cried, sobbed, and laughed some more with some of the sweetest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
While preparing to go to Athens, Greece, I applied for and was accepted on a service trip to Lusaka, Zambia through my school over Spring Break. A year prior to this I had never even been on a plane, and by March 2017, I was heading back to Africa for the second time in 8 months only by God’s grace. We partnered with Kids Alive International and worked at one of their orphanages, where I was highly favored enough to get my hands on some more Yum-Yum peanut butter, and where I heard more about the World Race.
For those of you who don’t know, the World Race is an 11-month missions trip to 11 different countries through Adventures in Missions. Several times a year, AIM sends out 4 or 5 large groups of crazy people to the four corners of the Earth, who are willing to surrender everything and travel around the world with nothing but a backpack and a mission.
For some time now, I have been pursuing a career in medical missions, which requires many years of schooling between undergrad, graduate school, and eventually medical school. To say “yes” to the World Race meant at least a gap year or two, which comes with lots of uncertainties, increased risk of not getting into my first-choice programs, and delays in a lifestyle typically lived in the fast lane.
So, I returned from hot Zambia to freezing Indiana, and between classes, still jetlagged, and with a cup of coffee, I wandered into the small prayer chapel on my school campus. I prayed for quite a while for direction because it was such a large decision, and it certainly wasn’t one I was going to make without strong nudging from the Lord. I clearly remember the last thing I prayed in my head was, “Lord, if this is you, you have to tell me whether to stay or to go,” and with that I gathered my things to leave. I was in the chapel by myself for most of the time until another student came in a few minutes before I left. Usually the atmosphere in this little chapel is reflective silence, and while occasionally people will pray for another, they typically respect each other’s space and tend not to engage with or approach one another. Thankfully, that was not the case this day. Right as I stood up to leave, literally the instant I finished that silent prayer, the other student in the chapel came up to me and kindly introduced himself.
He said he was riding his bike home when it started to rain, and he was trying to get to his dry house as quick as possible when he suddenly felt the Lord call him to this prayer chapel, and even though he didn’t want to stop, he obeyed nonetheless, and came in and sat down. “I don’t know you or your situation,” he said, “But the whole time I’ve been sitting here and praying, the only thing I can sense the Lord telling me is to tell you one thing loud and clear, and that’s to go.” Like, what?! That kind of thing you might hear about on some sort of Pentecostal TV show, but not in my little ordinary life! I started crying and told him what I had just prayed, and it wasn’t long after that day that he and his wife became my first donors toward the Race, a precious gift wrapped up in a piece of paper that simply read, “GO :)”
Thus, in April of 2017, I applied to the World Race August 2017 Expedition Route and was accepted shortly thereafter, met and fell in love with my future team members, graduated from Indiana Wesleyan, moved back to Maryland, sent out my support letters and prepared to take the MCAT. I planned on getting my Masters when I returned in June 2018, and apply to med school shortly after that. Everything seemed to fit perfectly together, but something happened that I never expected.
Everyone must raise quite a large sum in order to go on the World Race, nearly $20,000 to be exact, and I had to have $5,000 of it by June 1st of that year. Come June 1st, despite all my efforts, I was $1,500 short of my goal with no prospects in sight. My team went on to training camp, and I was left feeling like the rug had just been pulled out from under my feet. I kept wondering if there was more I could have done, if there was something I had done wrong, and I couldn’t help but ask myself why God would do such a thing. I felt like I had been doing nothing but serve Him left and right, using every opportunity to serve others, dedicating my whole life to His work, and He had worked miracles before, why leave me high and dry now? If God had told me to go, why wouldn’t He provide?
People kept telling me with good intentions that “it just wasn’t meant to be,” or “it wasn’t God’s plan.” I kept telling myself if I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I would have been fully funded by now. I ended up delaying my MCAT because I had invested too much time in fundraising, and my grandmother and grandfather’s health began to decline, so I had to help with their fulltime care. Not long after taking the MCAT and getting a very average score, I had to move in and care for my grandfather fulltime while my grandmother was moved to a nursing home, and because of that I had to delay my Race yet again from January 2018 to August 2018. So, by October of this past year, I had no job, virtually no friends because they were all in the Mid-West, still trying but failing to fundraise for a trip that continued to seem more and more hopeless, and feeling like God had plum forgotten about me.
It was a very difficult season of my life, since I just felt stuck and like I had simply slipped between the cracks of my life plan. Some of the hardest days where those times when felt as though I had slaved away all day cleaning my grandfather’s house, had helped with his bathroom incidents, and endured a long day of his confusion, all the while watching via social media my previous teammates hike through Spain and ride camels in Morocco. But as the months passed by, even though they certainly got no easier, I realized that I was still living life.
I wasn’t slaving away in school work or at a 9-5, I wasn’t boarding a plane onto my next picturesque, Instagram-worthy adventure, I wasn’t heralding some great and mighty social cause, I wasn’t even “intentionally” taking time off, just sort-of stuck in this strange, unexpected season of waiting that I no more chose than I would have chosen a bullet in the head or to listen to pop music all day long. I was angry with God because it felt as if I had been robbed of so many great opportunities and that I “didn’t have a life.” And yet, time kept moving forward, people kept aging, the Earth kept spinning, and despite my resistance, life kept on going. Before long, I realized it had been almost a year since my last semester in college, and though it certainly wasn’t how I had planned for it to go, I had indeed lived that year. I had made fond memories of my grandfather trying to pronounce the local weather station without his dentures, uncontrollable laughter with my sisters over some silly joke while doing the dishes, doing local missions outreach with my church, late night group chats with my best friends from college, deep conversations with my precious mother about life, and plenty of jokes with my dad while washing cars. It had been a difficult year with many lonely and despair moments, but there was also joy, laughter, beauty, and life well lived.
Because of not going on the World Race in 2017, I was able to return to Athens, Greece over New Years and serve with the same refugee camp as before. It was a precious and beautiful three-week period of deepening my old relationships and building new ones. I was also able to serve at a church plant back home as a leader for the children’s church. And while it has been slow but sure, enough funds have finally come in for me to launch with the World Race this August! And even though this team is now the third one I have been on, they are a marvelous group of people whose soul’s long and heart’s thirst for the Lord and His kingdom, who have become my family, and who, after a long, hard year, have loved me well and remind me that I’m worth loving.
So, was this “hiccup” year what I needed to discover myself, or to lay in wait for something greater God has in store? Honestly, who knows? I have no idea what this year of waiting was for, but it was a year in my life nonetheless, and I simply had to learn to make the most of it. Was it God’s plan to have me leave this August instead of last? Maybe. Or maybe not. I don’t know why my trip was delayed, I don’t know why the Lord did not provide that mere $1500 bucks last June, or why I ended up living with my grandfather for over 6 months instead of traveling the world. In truth, the only thing I really know is that I don’t know much of anything at all, except that all I have is Christ.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus told a large group of people that they must eat of his flesh and drink of his blood to inherit eternal life, which caused many, possibly hundreds, of his followers to leave his side (John 6:53-66). After which, Jesus turns to the twelve disciples and asks, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” to which Peter replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (67-68). Following many nights of wrestling with God and many days of dealing with bitterness, anger, and doubt, I realized that I had nowhere else to go. I don’t have great and mighty faith by any means, but at the end of the day, I simply couldn’t not believe in the God of the universe and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And at this point, my life is too intertwined with the Lord to turn back now.
I don’t possess the theological knowledge to explain this last year, whether it was a part of some “plan,” or whether it was meant to be or not to be. And while enough money has come in for me to launch this August, I still need to raise over $8,000 to be fully funded. I’ll be honest, I still worry that the Lord won’t provide this time around, or that despite all my fundraising efforts, I’ll still come up short just like last year. But, my hope lies not in whatever funds I can raise, countries I may or may not travel to, but in the hope of glory through Jesus Christ. Whatever may come to pass, whether I’m in the waiting or in the going, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
