So it’s the beginning of the new year. Like most do, I spent a good bit of time, while I waited for the ball to drop, thinking back on the last year of my life. After careful thought, I can now say that 2011 was the most transformative year of my life, thus far. After the ball dropped, two of my friends and I sat around and tried to come up with our five most important memories of 2011. Every time I thought that I had figured out my five, I remembered another memory that seemed to top one of the others. By the end of the night, I had a jumbled list of at least 20 things that happened, or that I experienced, last year that I genuinely believe had a life changing impact on me. I thought back on what I was doing and who I was this time last year. I was going to Appalachian State but had no clear direction as to where my life was headed. I was pursuing a major for which I had no real passion. I seldom ever did anything that could be deemed as a “productive activity”. It’s not that I was living a rebellious or destructive life. It’s just that I was simply living apathetically. This didn’t begin to change until last march when I went to Peru. The people and experiences from Peru were humbling and memorable, but the biggest take away was what God began to reveal to me while on that trip. He took my love for Uganda and ignited it into passion. He made it clear to me that missions work wasn’t going to just be something that I do a couple of times a year but is, instead, going to be the thing to which I give my life. He began to show me that this life I have, here in America, was given to me, not to take for granted or because I deserve it, but so that I can use what He has given me to help others and make Him famous.
