If anyone knew me growing up, perhaps you’d been surprised to hear I was going overseas on a mission. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have thought that I could ever be a missionary, or anything that resembled it. I wouldn’t preach the gospel to my own church, let alone live it in front of the world. This would’ve been a bizarre concept back then. I had never felt like this was my calling.
But in more recent years, as my relationship with Jesus has grown tremendously and my heart has been softened to know the love He has for His people, I’ve found myself over and over again drawn to the idea. I have this desire in my heart to bring God into the lives of so many, because I know what it does to your soul. I know the healing He can bring. I want to live and breathe and move with Jesus in everything. It has become a passion that I can’t resist anymore, I can’t ignore. So where did this journey begin? Why Adventures in Missions? What changed that made me feel like yes, God is calling me to missions.
It was actually in early October, 2018 while I was still attending beauty school in Spokane. I remember I was having a particularly difficult time with the idea of going into the beauty industry for the rest, or for any small portion of my career. Something about it just didn’t sit right with me. While I loved the school more than anything, and I really was having a great time learning and getting to know my classmates, the real struggle was that I felt like God was calling me away from that. To something different. Not necessarily “bigger things,” but I felt very conflicted in my heart as to why I was even at beauty school in the first place. I wanted to quit so badly, but I didn’t want to let anyone down who had encouraged me in this journey.
Finally it became such a huge matter of prayer I could hardly pray over anything else. It was obviously draining my soul in a way I couldn’t comprehend. There was nothing wrong with the beauty industry itself; but I quickly learned that God had other plans.
I can vividly recall one night driving home from my part-time restaurant gig when the answer came through a song and through a friend. I clearly felt like God had reached out to me through them and told me it was all going to be okay, that He’s got me and no matter where I go or what I do, He’s with me in this. Well then I thought, great, but that doesn’t give me an answer. Do I stick it out or do I quit right now? And He said, “Darling, I know you. You wouldn’t be happy doing this. Ask yourself, what is this doing to help My kingdom?” Which, to me, became an important question.
In that moment I knew I had to leave school. When I got home, or perhaps sometime the next day a friend of mine posted on social media about a missions organization. It was like God had shut one door and immediately presented me with another. I was used to it taking a little bit longer to go from one door to the next, so it was a little bit surprising and suspiciously timed that I was seeing and feeling the call to missions. But nonetheless I looked into it. I read article after article from the Adventures in Missions team, and I fell in love with the idea of reaching people through Christ. It became an uphill battle, during which I nearly gave up on the idea that God could’ve called me, thinking perhaps I’d made a mistake and misheard, but every time God just made it clearer this was where He wanted me, and I can’t turn my back now. I remind myself I am not in the business of saying no to God, and that is enough to keep me pushing forward despite my fears and reservations. Even if I can’t see the way, God knows it backwards and forwards. He’s got this. If it’s His will, He will make a way.
