We were asked to write a blog about how we were called to this missions trip. Here is my story…
I became a Christian when I was very young. My family went to church regularly and every year our church had a special week specifically devoted to missions. There would always be two or three missionaries on furlough who would come and speak at our church. I loved missions week and hearing the strangely dressed people talk about life in other countries and show slides of strange bugs and little African huts. I remember my sister after one of those weeks telling my mom that she wanted to be a missionary when she grew up. I remember thinking to myself that she must be crazy. Who in their right minds would want to go to some third world country with gigantic bugs and no electricity?
As I prepared to enter high school my plans were to go to college to become a veterinarian. I was going to marry a nice Christian man with a lot of money, live in a house with a white picket fence in the front, stables out back, and a swimming pool of course and have seven perfect children. And to keep God happy my husband and I would give a lot of money to missions. That way I wouldn’t have to go to those icky places myself.
But thank goodness we serve a God of radical change! In the summer of 2005 I read a book about two women who were missionaries to Afghanistan(Prisoners of Hope). This book completely changed my outlook on missions. Reading about how these women risked their lives to save the souls of others really touched me. In one afternoon, God changed my heart so much that I now couldn’t imagine being anything but a missionary.
After reading that book I immediately began searching for colleges that trained missionaries. I had just recently begun attending a community college to get my basic classes in and planned to transfer out next fall to a christian college. But I began to feel a very strong pull on my heart to leave everything and follow Jesus now.
“But that’s crazy God, nobody ever really does that, at least not here in the U.S….I don’t have any training, I wouldn’t know what to do or where to go…I mean you didn’t really mean it when you told the rich young man to give up everything and follow you…did you?” I said these things to God many times as the thoughts kept returning.
Until one day the call to missions in my heart became so strong that I finally gave in and began searching through missions trips and agencies online. That’s where I stumbled across the World Race. The rest is history.
I can’t put in to words how excited I was to discover that there are other “crazies” out there who desire to drop everything and follow Christ’s call.
