Hello! For my first post, I figure I would let you all know how I came to choose Thailand as my choice of ministry. Buckle up, it’s story time.
Last summer, I spent two weeks in El Salvador on an Ambassadors trip with AIM. It wasn’t my first choice, but I was unable to raise the money to travel to Swaziland, so I decided to go ahead and commit to a trip that I could afford with what I had raised at that time. I was a wreck on the phone with my admissions advisor Casey that day, and we spent some time allowing me to let go of what I really, really wanted in order to still at least due some form of ministry. That’s all that I thought of it at the time. I just wanted to do some kind of ministry even if it wasn’t my first choice. This was maybe two months before launch/training camp, and I had spent over six with my mind set on Africa. It was really, really hard to think that it wasn’t gonna happen.
When I arrived at training camp, I was a mess. I had just spent a week with my new friend Mackenzi, who was my original teammate for the Swaziland trip. We bonded and got really close over the week she spent at my house. Not only was I upset that I wouldn’t see her again for a long time because she lives on the opposite side of the country, but I was incredibly jealous that she was going on the trip that I had prepared my heart and mind for. I felt like God was keeping something really amazing from me and I had no idea why.
I watched other teams bond and I felt like a total outcast in the beginning. I had a wall up towards my team that I couldn’t seem to let go of. I was jealous and selfish and I thought that I had a better plan in mind than what was really in store.
And then, we had a night session that completely changed my life.
We were singing King of My Heart, and I just lost it. The Lord had convicted me and it hit me HARD. It hit me that I was calling myself a servant, yet I was unwilling to go where I was being sent. I was set on thinking that what I had in mind was better. I was limiting the Lord of the Universe to working only in one country, not realizing that I need to follow Him WHEREVER He goes. He commands us in Matthew 28 to “go and make disciples of all nations”. He means that. He means the whole world, every person.
A flip switched in me and from that point on I wanted to be led fully and completely by Him, and not by my own desires.
El Salvador was exactly where I needed to be. I got the opportunity to speak at a church and be used to set people free from unforgiveness and hurt. I witnessed multiple people come to Christ at a skate park, and even got to lead one of them in prayer. I got to play with little kiddos at an orphanage, and I came to find that my gift of communicating applies a lot more with the adults, because they’re the ones who need to hear my story. I saw two girls on my team be baptized in the rocky ocean, and I now have a team of sisters who I still talk to (and plan to visit when I can).
Coming home, I was overwhelmed more than ever with the desire to do this every day of my life. I automatically searched up the options for World Race Semester trips 2020. I agreed to go to college for at least this year before pursuing missions full time if that indeed is where I’m led, so I focused on summer trips. I had the desire to go to Swazi and see why I felt so strongly and why I felt such a heavy heart to be there, but then I saw the Thailand trip. I started comparing the ministry opportunities in each summer trip, because I’m really wanting to figure out and invest into those specific parts of ministry that I feel I was created for, no matter where in the world that is. I read that Thailand is focused on prison ministry and working with refugees, and I automatically knew it was for me. I’ve had the desire to do prison ministry since I was in middle school at least, and my heart breaks for those refugees who feel as though they have no place to go. I want them to know their home is with the one who made them, and to show them as much love as possible over the few months I spend there.
Long story short- never pictured myself doing ministry in Asia, but here we are! God’s just that cool and that personal with us! I am so excited to learn even more about being a servant to any place or people or ministry He calls me to. That’s where I will go.
