I’ve shared with many people the God-sized dream that has been placed in my heart the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college. Here are the background facts necessary to understand where I’m at now.
-I got my degree in early childhood education and love and value education.
-I went to a liberal arts college that integrated many things together, and while in a civ class we were reading about Frederick Douglass and how he didn’t know he was enslaved until he learned to read and was educated.
-I spent 3 months in Pattaya, Thailand working in the slums and befriending people in the church who had been stuck in sex trafficking because of a lack of education and skills. They come from their village to the city to get a job, realized they’re unqualified, and are stuck and in need with only one outlet, sex-trafficking.
-I found a ministry in Thailand dedicated to sending children from the village to the city every week, sending a “baby-sitter” during the week, and escorting them back to their village every weekend because there was no school in their village.
Thus, God planted the dream of planting schools in rural areas around the world that has no way of receiving education as a means of providing a hope and a future while also educating and preventing a need to get stuck in the sex trafficking industry.
This dream has been on my heart for over 3 years now, and it has only grown more and more. God’s shown me that it’s going to be bigger than I think it’s going to be and I need to adequately prepare. He’s expanded it from just a school to a means of offering jobs, training for teachers, teaching practical skills for people in villages, providing education for adults in the evenings after the work day, making home visits, providing basic needs, and potentially a church (definitely not called to start that myself, but maybe I’ll find someone to partner with in that aspect).
All I know is that Asia is the place for it to start.
One of the steps in that dream was going on the world race.
The next step was learning how to disciple others while squad leading.
And now leads me to the next step, and the scariest step I’ve had to take so far: Going to learn how to plant schools in another country and learning what it means to depend solely on God for everything.
That’s a lot packed into one.
What does that actually look like?
It looks like me going to Nepal after month 5 of the World Race part 2. It means me coming alongside a ministry that is a ministry contact for the World Race and learning how to teach teachers, how to write curriculum for different cultures in different languages, and how to actually plant a school (Which I was told we would do while I am going to be there)
What does it look like for me to do this while solely depending on God for everything?
It means buying my one way ticket there last night even though I haven’t fundraised for this venture. It means not fundraising at all, only living off what the Lord provides, whether he does that through financial gifts or through giving people or literally manna from heaven. It means conquering my biggest fear of loneliness and going to Nepal for 2 months by myself, not knowing anyone or anything about Nepal. It means not only knowing that God is enough, but experiencing it.
If you were to ask me right now if I were to live in a hut in the middle of nowhere with no one around me eating only rice for the rest of my life, would God still be enough? I would say no.
But God says he is enough, so it’s about time I allow myself to be in a situation where I can allow him to show me first hand that yes, he is enough. He’s more than enough, actually.
So I officially, as of yesterday, fly into Kathmandu at 7:30PM on February 1st, 2016.
It’s about to get real.
