Before the applications for July were even up, I was pretty sure of two of the eleven countries I was supposed to go to.
The first, God told me when my younger brother realized my leaving in July would mean I wouldn’t be home for Christmas next year.
Almost in tears, he said “How can you leave us on Christmas??” Without thinking, I said, “Because I’ll be hugging orphans in Cambodia or something on Christmas!” I was just trying to throw out a random country, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I felt that little stirring in my heart, and I thought, “Hey God? Am I going to Cambodia?” He didn’t say anything out loud at the time, but every time I thought about it, I’d feel that tug again.
Then this summer at camp, one of the missionary guests one week was talking about Malaysia. The more I heard all week, the more I felt like I wanted to go. I asked God over the weekend if he’d be sending me there too, and again didn’t get a straight answer. That Monday when our next group of campers arrived, there was a girl in the cabin next door to mine whose name was…Malaysia. When she said that, I did my best to keep from laughing(I didn’t want her to think I was making fun of her name, poor thing), but it was like God was saying, “By the way, here’s one more of your countries.”
When I first saw that the routes for July had been posted, I clicked on the link, and for some reason my eyes glances right past routes 1 and 2 and landed on #3 first.
Puerto Rico Colombia
Bolivia
Peru
Ecuador
Thailand
Cambodia
Vietnam Japan
Malaysia
Swaziland
Botswana
South Africa
I read over them a few times, then figured I should probably look at the other routes too. But I kept coming back to #3. After comparing all of them, I realized that not only was #3 the only one that included both Cambodia and Malaysia, but it also had three of the five countries I most hoped I’d get to see(Vietnam, Swaziland and South Africa; the others on my list were Costa Rica and Uganda, which none of the routes are going to anyways so there was no competition) I only needed to pray for about five seconds before God dumped this overwhelming peace on me. This one was mine.
Oh, and by the way, if the order stays the same, I’ll actually be in Cambodia on Christmas. God is hilarious.
I’m SO excited every time I think about all these places! It’s crazy to think that just a few years ago I never wanted to set foot on a plane, much less leave America, and now I’m about to go to three continents in less than a year. I get to go more places in 11 months than most people will go in their whole lives, and I get to do it for Jesus!! I am ridiculously wonderfully blessed.
