We
were asked to write a blog about how we were called to this mission
trip.
Here
is my story…
While
my life was never on a crash course to missions, it”s not like I’ve
wanted this since I was a child or anything, I shouldn’t have been
surprised when God called me to do this. The seeds were planted long
ago and pretty much completely forgotten.
When
I was in high school I befriended the foreign exchange student’s
thinking how cool and exotic it was for them to leave their own
country and live in the U.s. for a year. I dreamed of being one some
day. I think those friendships opened me up to want to learn about
cultures and meet all sorts of people in my life.
The
other thing that made such an impression on me in high school is a
guy who went to my bible study, he came back from a DTS trip (with
Ywam) my senior year. AS he told his story of what he did in south
America and how God changed his life, my heart strings were pulled
and from that point on, I’ve wanted to go to South America. I thought
a lot about what he said in the following weeks, desiring to do what
he did and to have those kind of experiences. I guess this is the
first point I ever wanted anything to do with missions. God spoke to
me during that time and told me that I would. (This is the completely
forgotten part).
Then
I went to Washington state university, where spring break my freshman
year I went on a missions trip to Puebla, Mexico. I loved going
and making friends in one week with the people there and it really
opened my eyes to what the world holds. This is the only “missions
trip” I’ve ever been on.
However,I did finally get my desire to be a foreign student as for my 4th
year of college I studied abroad in Granada, Spain. I befriended
missionaries there and that is when I learned a whole lot more about
what it means to be a missionary and how God uses whoever he wants
and whoever is willing to do His work. I got to travel some and make
really great friendships as well as share the gospel all while being
a student. I loved my time there!
Whenit came to graduating and figuring out my next step, well, I never
did find that one thing
I wanted to do with my life. So For a year I followed where God led
me. I applied for so many jobs and had so many doors closed. While I
was taking care of my mom, God told me to just stop, stop looking for
jobs, stop looking beyond where I’m at and focus on the task at hand,
which was to be a blessing to my family. That was hard to listen to,
but I did. Then one day I looked into DTS because it was something
that I wanted to do since high school. But as I looked I realized God
wasn’t calling me to it. So on a whim (I know it was God) I had
the thought to google “mission organizations” and I found the
World race. After all the searching, I knew that this is what God
wanted me to do.
