How did I get to this point, “being called to the mission field,” you ask? Well, where
do I begin? As I look back over my life, I believe there are several things
that have been influential in getting me to this point, but for sake of time
and space, I will start with just a few years back.
Going into college, I thought that I would be the
student who never changed her major (as such a large percentage of college
students do), pursuing a degree in bioengineering and thus having a slight edge
on others entering the medical field, continue on to medical school, and have a
successful career. However, early in college, I realized this might not be my
path. Over the course of the next several semesters, I changed my major four
times, struggled to maintain my grades in order to keep my scholarships, and, as
time progressed, had less rather than more of an idea of what I wanted to do
with my life after graduating. And while I have had inklings of how I believe
God has equipped me and what may be calling me to do, I began considering the idea
of taking off a year between college and post-college schooling to work or do
some sort of missions work in order to figure out exactly what God wanted me to
do with my life. The idea of graduating became an increasingly scary,
depressing thought, because I would be leaving an environment that had become
safe and familiar and people whom I had come to love dearly to go…where? And do
what? I had no idea.
Fast-forward to this past December. After a couple
weeks of long times alone with the Lord, during which He did a great work in my
heart to make my spirit more quiet before and submissive to Him, I began to
earnestly seek what He would have me do with the coming year. At this point, He
began to develop a vision in me for what to do with the next year of my life.
There were a couple mission trips in which I had
interest, one in which I had been interested since my senior year of high
school that goes to India on an annual basis in December, working with an
orphanage there, and the other a trip to England and Ireland associated with a
church here in Clemson, taken on an annual basis every June. School always
interfered with the timing of the India trip for me, and since I
would be out of school by then, I decided this would be the best time of any to
go. Then I began to consider the possibility of extending my time in India to an
entire semester. There is a foundation in India that reaches out to abused
and neglected children with which I aspired to work, even wrote them a letter
just before the start of this semester to see if there was any possibility of
working with them in the coming year. I attended a Christian conference called
Passion my freshman year of college and first heard of human trafficking at
that conference. Something was stirred inside of me when I first heard about
it, and I felt a leading then to in some way devote part of my life to doing
something to counter this movement. The foundation in India was the closest thing I knew
to being involved with fighting that movement, so I wanted to work with them
for a period of time. I wanted to simultaneously challenge myself to get
outside my comfort zone and serve others in a way and environment I had never
experienced, and by completely radicalizing my world, put myself in a position
to hear from God more clearly than ever what His call on my life is. I also
considered extending my time in Ireland
to an entire semester, potentially doing something with athletic ministry there
during the months preceding the England
/ Ireland
trip with the church. I have been to Ireland once before and wanted to return
in an effort to take some time to just step back and process all I would have
experienced in India at that point, in combination with other past experiences
in my life, seeking the Lord’s heart with minimal distraction, growing in Him
and discerning His will and purposes. Each mission trip on which I hoped to go
costs around $3000, and though I wasn’t sure of exact living expenses in the
respective countries, I planned on shooting to raise about $10,000 as a base
amount for the two semesters abroad. I wrote a support letter the day before
the semester began in an effort to start giving wings to this vision.
A couple weeks into the semester, I was sharing my
vision for the coming year with a friend, and after having heard me out, he
asked me if I had ever heard of The World Race. I told him no. He suggested I
check it out, that I might be interested in it. I looked it up the next
night…and was stunned speechless as to how exactly the mission of The World Race
fit all that I was passionate about, had envisioned, and more. As I looked over
the destinations for the June 2010 race, over half of the places were ones God
had placed on my heart at some point, either for the country itself or the
mission opportunity to be pursued in that country. I felt right then in my
heart that this was where I was supposed to be for the coming year.
The only problem was that I wasn’t supposed to
graduate until August. This wouldn’t work if I was going on the June 2010 race.
I told God that if this is what He had planned for me, He was going to have to
work a miracle for me to graduate in May, because circumstances didn’t look
like that was a possibility. I had already been meeting with someone who works
in my college to make sure I had everything in order to graduate in August. And
in yet one more meeting with her, we found a class in my list of electives that
actually counted towards my major and had somehow been overlooked in our prior
meetings. Soon after, we found a couple more classes in my list of electives
that also could potentially count for credit towards my major. In a period of
about two weeks, all three of these classes were approved for credit…and I was
applying for May graduation, my heart pounding and hand shaking as I did so. My
miracle had happened.
Because this is already so long already, I won’t
detail all of the other confirmations and God-provisions that have taken place
since then right now, but let’s just suffice to say that God has made it
abundantly clear to me that this is what He has for me in this coming year and
has provided for every need I have had and held my hand, gently led and
directed me, every step of the way thus far. I trust He will continue to do so,
and I can hardly wait to see all that He will accomplish in and through me and
my team in this coming year!
