A few weeks back I was talking to a friend who is a missionary in Turkey. He talked about the verses in Luke 10 where God says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” God had already been stirring up my spirit, but that conversation pushed me to move. Hearing a friend talk about unreached people groups and how amazing it was to share the Gospel with someone who had never heard it inspired me. I decided that I wanted to be a laborer for the Lord. I shortly thereafter began to pursue my new dream of being a missionary.
I wish I could say everything came together perfectly, but working internationally is way more complex than I had ever realized. I was excited to go and was almost ready to just buy a plane ticket to Turkey to join my friend. However, there was a few issues with that plan. He was only in Turkey under a student visa and actually had to leave. Some of his friends were trying to go, but it wasn’t very organized. As eager as I was to go, I was decided that missions was not something to dive into without a plan.
I decided it would benefit me to seek out an established organization that was actively sending people to the ends of the earth. In previous conversations about missions, my Dad mentioned the World Race organization to me, and it had always been in the back of my mind. Now that I was really pushing to do missions, I decided to look into it more. When I initially looked into World Race, I saw a lot on their Gap year program. That looked awesome, but I was pretty set on going to the mission field as soon as possible. I did some more digging around and found a link to the World Race Semesters. The World Race Semesters seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. It is a three month mission trip that would introduce me to that field with an established organization that offered future opportunities.
There was only one issue, by the time I found out about the semester programs, I only had a week before the application deadline. I prayed about it and considered the possibility of going on this trip. I decided to go for it. I went and flew through the application and went to submit it but somehow deleted it. I was absolutely distraught. For those of you who don’t know the application, it includes your contact info, medical history, education background, and thirteen essay questions. That’s a lot to have to redo, and I almost quit right there.
I went to God in prayer and just asked that if it was His will, he would open the doors that needed to be opened. I went back and worked through the application process and was able to submit it with four days to spare. I scheduled my phone interview with only two days left before the application deadline. The phone interview went well, and I was accepted to go on the World Race Semesters trip to Peru.
Many of people ask me why I chose Peru and honestly at the time I could not have told you why. I stared at the list of different countries they were sending people to, and it just stuck out to me. I found out just the other day that it was another example of God opening up doors. The team at World Race had been praying over that trip and was on the verge of canceling their outreach to Peru because they didn’t have people to send. Apparently multiple people, which I was one of, came forward within the last week of application and decided to go to work in Peru.
So now I am accepted into the World Race organization, and approved to go to Peru. I thought that would be the end of my problems, but turns out that was just the beginning. Apparently after you get accepted into an organization like this you still have to do a lot before you can go to the mission field. The two big obstacles that stood in my way were getting a passport and raising funds.
The organization had a deadline for getting a passport that was already past when I got accepted. Honestly I didn’t even put in a passport application until I applied. That application had only been in a week at this time and I was told I wouldn’t get a response for 4-6 weeks.
I was way behind the game at this point, so I went to God. He says if we act in faith believing he will provide, so I asked him to again open doors. I was sitting in my living room the day after I got accepted into World Race, and my mother came home. I mentioned these obstacles and she said she was thinking about these things and had specifically prayed that if this was God’s will my passport would come. Later that afternoon, my Father came home with mail in his hand and in that stack was my passport. It came in less than two weeks, which to my understanding is ridiculously fast for a passport.
I am finding God will keep opening doors as long as I am faithful to walk through them. A week ago, I had not even been accepted to go to Peru and over the course of this week God has been blowing open doors and tearing down walls. Right now the only thing standing in my way is the lack of funds, but I know if I continue to trust God and ask him to provide He will.
