“In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” Proverbs 16:9
If one were to ask me three years ago what my future career goals were I wouldn’t have answered them. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because the career path that I had chosen to pursue was in nature secretive. You see, for years I dreamed of nothing more than to work for the CIA. My freshman year of college I applied for an Internship with the CIA, and feeling that my resume was inadequate on every level; I didn’t expect a call back. To my surprise, a few weeks later I received a phone call saying that I was in the running and that it was a yearlong application process consisting of many steps. For the next year I would complete each step, but while waiting in between, I began to travel and volunteer with Christian mission organizations. During the summer of 2009 I spent a month volunteering in an orphanage in India, working alongside a doctor in the health clinic. The experience changed my life, and it also changed the direction my life was going in. In September of 2009 I found a church on my college campus and quickly got connected and began reaching out to the lost at Arizona State. In October after a series of events God began to make it clear to me that the CIA wasn’t what He had for me. That November I received a voicemail on my phone announcing that I had gotten the internship; my heart sank. For two days I did a lot of crying, a lot of praying and a lot of seeking. I remember in a conversation with my dad I told him, “I feel like I have to choose between the career of my dreams, or doing what God wants me to do, and I don’t even know what that is yet.” He simply replied, “You never lose when you choose Jesus.” Two days later I called them back and turned down the internship. I spent the summer of 2010 not in Washington D.C., but in Israel/Palestine for six weeks volunteering for a Christian NGO delivering food and clothing to Palestinian refugee camps.
During this last semester of college God began to show me the next step He has for me in my life. I felt God calling me to transfer from the mission field here in Arizona to the mission field overseas. This has been a desire of my heart for years now, to reach the nations with the love of Jesus Christ, to preach the gospel to those who have never heard it, to minister to the broken, poor, and sick, and bring the healing and hope that only comes through Jesus. I’m excited to say that after my graduation from Arizona State University in December, I’ll be serving as a missionary with Adventures in Missions, through the World Race program in January 2012!
