He often used to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”
-The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
No matter how hard some people try, there really is no way to stop them from getting swept away. Bilbo Baggins was swept off on an adventure to Erebor (the Lonely Mountain). Frodo Baggins was swept off on an adventure to Mordor (not the number one tourist destination in middle-earth if you know what I mean). I am going to get swept off on an adventure to Guatemala, Thailand, Malaysia, and Swaziland.
I’ve imagined this point in my life more times than I care to count. That point when my dreams of being a missionary were finally about to begin. I’ve had this dream for a long time. I can still remember what I felt at ten years old when I heard actual overseas missionaries speak for the first time. It was gradual. I could feel my feet gradually sliding into the River Road in the mere week long missions conference.
I was fascinated by the stories that the missionaries told. The way that God moved through them to touch the hearts of others was breathtakingly beautiful. I could almost physically feel the feather light touch of God’s loving hands on my own heart, encouraging me to listen and to dream. I submerged my feet into His great River Road, and I was swept away, loving every second of it.
If you guessed that I love reading by the quote at the beginning of this post then you would be correct. After I felt the calling to become a missionary, I gathered information about the subject in the best way I knew how, reading. I read books about some of the greatest missionaries of all time (Amy Carmichael, David Livingstone, Gladys Aylward, Jim Elliot, Lillian Trasher, Lottie Moon, Mary Slessor, William Carey) hoping to learn as much as I could about the life of a missionary. With every word I read about their life and convictions, I fell deeper and deeper in love with God.
The people I read about were willing to abandon their friends, their family, and their way of life as they knew it just so they could tell strangers about the One who bled and died an agonizingly human death for them. I’ve always been awed at what God’s love and forgiveness and sacrifice can inspire in a person. I prayed that God would inspire me and use me to further His kingdom.
They say change is a part of life. That’s certainly true for me, but I don’t think I realized how much I had changed as a person until last year in my Junior year of high school. I started looking into colleges, trying to find a fit for my long-term desire to become a missionary. That’s when one errant thought threw me for a head spinning loop. Do I really want to be a missionary?
I was honestly shocked at myself. After reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, I was more than a little concerned about Satan whispering lies in my ear. Seven years of dreaming, praying, planning, and now was when I started to doubt myself? I tried to dismiss it, but it was always there in the back of my mind. I was so young when I first felt the call. Was it really just youthful imaginings that I had mistaken for God’s beckoning?
After weeks of praying, I realized that experience was going to be the only thing that would decide which direction my life was going to take at this crossroads. I was blessed to be able to go to Haiti in June of 2017. I found my prayers answered there. The call that I felt when I was young is indeed real, and it is so much more wonderful than I had ever imagined. I eventually want to be a full-time missionary.
So now here I am, writing this blog for whoever will listen to me ramble. I’m going to go on the adventure of a lifetime and I praise God for giving me the strength and opportunity to do this. I know I’m going to get swept away, but if I’m being swept away into God’s loving embrace, how bad can it be? 
